【英文版25】The Interdependence of Human Being - Bill Clinton

25 Bill Clinton

The Interdependence of Human Being

Harvard University/November 19, 2001

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Try to remember what you thought on September the 10th. If I had asked you on that day, “What do you believe is the single most dominant force of the early 21^st century world,” what would you have answered? I can think of four answers you might have given if you’re a positive, optimistic person. You might have said, first, the global economy. It brought America over 22 million jobs in the last eight years, and lifted more people out of poverty over the last 20 years than at any time before in history.

Or you might have said, “No, it’s the information technology revolution, that’s what’s given us the increased productivity that’s driven economic growth.” Listen to this, when I became President in 1993 there were 50 sites on the World Wide Web. When I left office, the number was 350 million and rising. Even before the anthrax scare slowed the mail, 30 times as many messages were sent by e-mail as the postal service every day.

Or you might have said, “No, even more important than the economics and the information technology would be the advances in the biological sciences.” The results of the sequencing of the human genome and other research now underway will rival the significance of the very discovery of DNA or even Newtonian physics. We’re developing microscopic testing mechanisms with Nano-technology to identify cancers just a few cells in size. Researching the possibility of digital chips to replicate sophisticated spinal nerve movements, raising the prospect that they can work for the spine like a pacemaker does for the heart, and people long in wheelchairs will get up and walk.

Or you might have said, fourthly, “The most important thing about this new world is the explosion of democracy and diversity within democratic societies, because they make all this other progress possible.” I was honored to be President when for the first time in history more than half the world’s people lived in democracies. And to see America and other advanced open societies dramatically increasing in racial and religious and ethnic diversity, proving that people from different backgrounds or different faiths can live and work together for common good.

You might have given one of those answers. On the other hand, if you’re from a poor country, are you more pessimistic? Or if you’re what my wife Hillary refers to as your family’s designated worrier—and every family has one, I think—you might have given one of four negative answers. You might have said, “No, the global economy is the problem, not the solution,” because half the world’s people live on less than $ 2 a day. A billion people live on less than a dollar a day. A billion people go to bed hungry every night, and a billion and a half people never get a clean glass of water.

Or you might have said, “Before that happens, environmental crises will consume us.” The deterioration of the oceans that provide so much of our water, our oxygen, the chronic water shortage. And most important, global warming. If the globe warms for the next 50 years at the same rate of the last 10, we’11 lose 50 feet of Manhattan Island and the Florida Everglades I worked so hard to save in America, whole Pacific Island nations will be flooded, and we will create tens of millions of flood refugees with more disruption and violence and war.

Or you might have said, “But before the global warming gets us, global health crises will.” We see public health systems breaking down across the globe, and epidemics rising. One in four people this year will die, of all the people who perish, will die of AIDS, TB, malaria and infections related to diarrhea. There are 36 million AIDS cases. If we don’t change the trends there will be a hundred million AIDS cases by 2005, making it the largest epidemic since the Black plague killed a quarter of Europe in the 14th century.

Or you might have said, “Well, even before the AIDS crisis descends on us, we will be plagued by terrorism.” The marriage of modem weapons of mass destruction to ancient racial, religious, ethnic and tribal hatreds. If you look at Rwanda, Sierra Leone, the Balkans, East Timor, the Middle East, or, until, God bless them, people finally did the right thing, Northern Ireland, you see that the central irony of our time is that with all of our progress we’re still bedeviled by the oldest problem of human society, the fear, hatred and demonization of people who are different from us.

Now, I mentioned four positive things and four negative things. What do they all have in common? They reflect the most breathtaking increase in global interdependence in all of history. Philosophers and theologians have talked for millennia about how we are interdependent because of our shared humanity. Politicians have taken it seriously at least since the end of World War II, the dropping of the bomb, and the establishment of the United Nations. But now it is a reality that no ordinary citizen of the world anywhere can escape.

Openness brings us both greater opportunity and greater vulnerability. The great question of our time is whether this interdependence is going to be good or bad for you and your children, and people like you all over the world. Since we cannot escape it, and we wouldn’t want to rebuild the walls we worked so hard to tear down, we must do everything we can to strengthen the positive forces of interdependence and to diminish the negative ones.

There are three things, in my view, we have to do. First, spread the benefits and shrink the burdens of the 21st century. Second, work to create conditions in poor countries that make progress possible, and give people the sense that they’ve got some control over their own lives, with special care for the challenges of the Muslim world. Third, we simply must develop a higher level of consciousness about how we can all cherish our faiths and our identities and still live and work together.

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Today, we and those on the other side have dramatically different notions about the most basic things in life. What is the nature of truth? What is the value of life？ What is the content of community? The Taliban and bin Laden, like fundamentalist fanatics today everywhere and throughout time immemorial, believe they have the truth. They have it, the whole truth. They believe the world is divided between those who agree with their truth and those who don’t. The Muslims who don’t are heretics. The non-Muslims are infidels. If you share their truth, your life has value, and if you don’t, you’re a legitimate target, even if you’re just a six-year old girl who went to work with her mother at the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11.

We believe the limits of the human condition prevent anyone from having the absolute truth. That’s the whole idea of this University, isn’t it? We believe that we’re all on a journey on which hopefully we gain greater understanding of the truth, that we can learn from each other, and therefore, that the lives of all God’s imperfect children have value. And everybody deserves a chance to make the journey.

Now this leads us to very different notions about the content of community. They believe that community is a group of people who think alike and act alike. And in the case of the Taliban, dress alike and have brutal enforcement by people who beat women. They’re especially hung up on keeping women in their place. You probably noticed that. Painting their windows black to deny them access to the world outside.

Well, we believe that everybody can be part of our community. Look around, this is our community. It doesn’t matter where you come from, doesn’t matter how you practice your faith. All you have to do is embrace certain rules of engagement. Everybody counts, everybody has got a role to play，everybody deserves a say. We all do better when we work together.

This is the heart of the matter. It all comes down to this. Which do you believe is more important，our interesting differences or our common humanity? The answer is so easy to give and so hard to live.

So my one sentence message is this，we live in a world without walls. We will have to defeat those who want to tear it down. We will have to do more to help everybody become a part of it. But most important，in our hearts we must make your world a home for all its children.