April 19th, 2007

A lecture by Elie Wiesel

Posted by Alex Payson at 9:55 am

Last night I had the fortune of attending a speech by Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Laureate and renowned spokesman for peace, sponsored by the Institute for International Sport. He spoke about war, and peace, and suicide terrorists. One of the problems with suicide murders/terrorists he said (and excuse my poor paraphrasing), was that if they are ready to kill themselves, then they are already past the point where they can be convinced to change their ways. It is too late to reach them. So we must teach our youth while they are still young, with the hope and conviction that they can make the next generation a little better.

Professor Wiesel went one step further, saying that when teaching, imparting knowledge is not sufficient. He proposed that if all you teach is knowledge, then what prevents that knowledge from being used to exploit another human? He brought up a very important point, but never quite explained what needed to be taught alongside knowledge to prevent its misuse.

After the lecture I was pondering what the missing ingredient was from Elie’s speech when I remembered a quote from the founder of my high school, written circa 1780.

“Goodness without knowledge is weak and feeble, yet knowledge without goodness is dangerous, and that both united form the noblest character, and lay the surest foundation of usefulness to mankind.” -John Phillips

Perhaps this is our problem today. We focus too much on knowledge, through instant communication and surrounding ourselves in an isolated world where everyone is connected and can get the answers to anything, but is looking not into the eyes of another human, but at the screen of their computer, phone, or pda. We proclaim ourselves a global community, yet spend less time interacting with other humans than ever before in history.

Let us not forget about knowledge with goodness.

Posted in General news, Personal