Campaign Blog: Vaclav Havel on Morality and Environmentalism

Posted from the campaign site. Link and discuss here.

I had the great honor of campaigning and conversing over beers with Vaclav Havel in 1990. If there is anyone in the world who can speak from a position of moral authority it is him. Here is a boigraphical sketch of Havel.

This week Havel wrote an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, "Our Moral Footprint." What does morality and environmentalism have to do with city government, you may ask? Havel writes:

We must return again and again to the roots of human existence and consider our prospects in centuries to come. We must analyze everything open-mindedly, soberly, unideologically and unobsessively, and project our knowledge into practical policies. Maybe it is no longer a matter of simply promoting energy-saving technologies, but chiefly of introducing ecologically clean technologies, of diversifying resources and of not relying on just one invention as a panacea.

I’m skeptical that a problem as complex as climate change can be solved by any single branch of science. Technological measures and regulations are important, but equally important is support for education, ecological training and ethics — a consciousness of the commonality of all living beings and an emphasis on shared responsibility.

Either we will achieve an awareness of our place in the living and life-giving organism of our planet, or we will face the threat that our evolutionary journey may be set back thousands or even millions of years. That is why we must see this issue as a challenge to behave responsibly and not as a harbinger of the end of the world.

What Havel is saying is something I completely agree with; that we cannot fix our society's problems -- from the environmental crisis to corruption in government -- with technical or proceedural changes. The changes have to begin with us. We need to rediscover the moral and ethical core in our society.

This moral rediscovery most certainly does not include the culture of moral judgement-making that is so popular among certain political parties. No, it must first and foremost be, as Havel points out, the consciousness of the commonality of all living beings and an emphasis on shared responsibility.

Part of that shared responsibility is the duty of Americans to be involved in their own government. That is the genius of the dream of the Founding Fathers -- that free people can govern their own affairs through involvement with and holding accountable their elected representatives.

----------------
Now playing: Lupe Fiasco - The Cool
via FoxyTunes