Volume CXXXIII, Number 14 February 1, 2002 f

Character and our generation
GENEVIEVE CREEDON

I had begun writing a response to the Martin Luther King Jr. celebration last week when someone came into the room; then the phone rang, and I never got to finish, which, in the end, may have been for the best. Maybe some of you will think that it's a bit late to still be reflecting on an event that took place almost two weeks ago, but the reflections are always relevant, and the message should be universal.

I was once asked to define character, and I realize now that it can mean any number of things. Certainly each person on this campus would come up with a different definition.

However, whatever your own definition may be, I don't think there are many people in this world who would disagree that Martin Luther King Jr. was a man of character. In a sense, it is that character that we celebrate every year. King's many accomplishments are almost secondary. His character makes him the American hero he rightly deserves to be.

It seemed wrong to me, however, that instead of celebrating that character, Robert Johnson speculated in his lecture about what King would have done or thought, had he been living today. I don't think the matter has anything to do with political leanings. I don't disagree necessarily with what Johnson said, but it didn't seem to me to be an appropriate honor to a man who certainly deserves proper commemoration.

As I listened to Johnson speak last week, I realized that we are stuck in a time that has no Martin Luther Kings. Instead, we look back on this "heroic age" of the past, stirring a deep nostalgia that is almost as frustrating as it is moving. We talk about what King would have done. We compare our current politicians to the righteous founding fathers. We pose an oft-harsh (if deserved) critique of the people who lead us, but we remain merely content to throw the words around and do nothing.

Our parents and grandparents fought wars so that we wouldn't have to do the same, and in a sense, they succeeded. Even though we have a war going on thousands of miles away, it hasn't swept the country the way wars have in the past. We've got men fighting in that distant "over there," but back here, we can go about pretending that everything is just fine.

Our greatest problem is, of course, that we start believing in the illusion that everything is "just fine." I think part of Johnson's motivation was to make us realize that complacency is not a viable option, even if we've relied on it thus far. We have been lucky and sheltered members of the information age, and we've been given so much in the interest of our great future.

And that future is vaster and greater now than anyone could have anticipated. It may be that we are fighting a war that is unlike any other war in history. It may be that we didn't have the tools to fight a "new" war, so we're fighting the old one. But all it truly means is that our generation will be required to provide answers to all the questions we've been asking.

Whether or not we will have those answers is very much up for grabs. We certainly have been prepared to make valiant attempts at finding them, but there is a lot we have to let go of in order to do so. Blind idealism may be a strong characteristic of our generation, and we have to sacrifice it eventually. Every generation does.

In spite of all the counts that have been placed against us, I still want to believe that we won't remain satisfied with the complacently amorphous character we've cultivated thus far. Maybe that belief is my own little piece of idealism, but more often than not, it's a manifestation of hope. It is a strong but fragile hope that we will define our character and become it, because it is and will be our destiny.