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Humility and glory

One of my good friends from Lafayette, who is currently travelling the world supporting international study programs, sent me Thabo Mbeki's "I am African" speech.

My favorite part of this speech comes near the end:

Together with the best in the world, we too are prone to pettiness, petulance, selfishness and short-sightedness.  
But it seems to have happened that we looked at ourselves and said the time had come that we make a super-human effort to be other than human, to respond to the call to create for ourselves a glorious future, to remind ourselves of the Latin saying: Gloria est consequenda - Glory must be sought after!

What does he mean when he says "together with the best of the world, we are too prone to pettiness..."? Does he mean to say that all humans are fallible, regardless of who they are? Or does he mean that we have conditioned ourselves to think temporarily, when in fact, we are built to think of eternity?

Whichever it is, I think these are important considerations. We are usually caught up with value that helps us live today. We are not usually caught up value because we want to see the next 200 years provide a constructive envirionment in which future kin can improve what and how we know about our world.

So I agree - Glory must be sought after - but it implies a lot: It implies acknowledging how our pursuit of "value" today may not be productive for the future. It also implies significantly shifting efforts - education, employment, systems of public provision, industry, etc. - to building the next 50-250 years. And it implies a form of knowledge exchange that is not only restricted to formal settings, but a fluid exchange that can happen anywhere because the value of knowledge is seen in direct relation with building a future.

(Thanks, Sancho)
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