Thousands of students have by now returned to the lecture rooms to pursue their tertiary education. Some will be planning their future after they leave the security of their homes. The future is a clean sheet on a drawing board. All they have to do is design the life of their dreams.
For some, these dreams will be made up of knowing the right people in business and politics to become rich in the shortest possible time. They quickly learn to desensitise their conscience and change the meaning of words like greed, hypocrisy, solidarity and the common good. They learn about networking with the rich and powerful – the kind of people who will open all doors that can lead to success. They study hard to leave tertiary education with a paper certificate that confirms their academic achievement even if it says nothing about their moral fibre.
Others will immerse themselves in academia to excel in the profession that they love. They insulate themselves from the social realities that surround them and leave it to business and political leaders to sort out the mess that we live in. Money and status may not be their ultimate objective, but at least they aspire to serve their community by excelling in their profession.
For a small minority, tertiary education is about discovering themselves and the community they live in. They reflect on how almost everywhere older adults find nothing wrong with the proliferation of corruption, the neglect of the environment and the attitude that what matters is one’s wellbeing. They despair when they look unsuccessfully for role models in public life that inspire them aim for achieving happiness through social cohesion and building a caring society. There are indeed few role models that inspire those young people who are not motivated solely by wealth and all its trimmings.
You have stolen my dreams and childhood. You’re still not mature enough to tell it like it is, the eyes of future generations are upon you
One such role model is Greta Thunberg, a frail and lonely teenager who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s, obsessive-compulsive disorder and selective mutism, which means she only speaks when necessary. Thunberg’s strength is not her rhetoric, her ability to manipulate public opinion, her networking with the powerful of this world, her media savviness, or her like for wearing masks. She excels because she speaks from the heart and is prepared to say things that her much older listeners find uncomfortable.
Speaking at the United Nations general assembly, she lambasted world leaders who are simply not doing enough to deal with the disastrous effect of climate change. Breaking down in tears, she angrily told them: “You have stolen my dreams and childhood. You’re still not mature enough to tell it like it is, the eyes of future generations are upon you.”
The president of the most powerful country in the world, Donald Trump, tried to upstage her. Trump sat at the conference for just 15 minutes and was seen shutting his eyes and checking his watch. The sad thing for the world is that there are many political and business leaders who try to imitate Trump to perpetuate their power than inspirational leaders who promote the common good.
How often do we hear politicians or even businesspeople telling us that their mission in life is to make our lives better? It does not take long to discover that such people are often moral bankrupts who exploit fickle crowds by selling the dream of comfortable living and limitless consumption.
My generation and that after it are leaving a shameful legacy to today’s young people. We forgot the hardships our parents and grandparents had to endure to bring us up in an environment free of illiteracy, disease, and material deprivation. We squandered this legacy by destroying large parts of our natural environment, left the wealth gap between the haves and the have-nots to grow wider, and put money and status on the high altar of our inner sanctuaries.
Thunberg will never be a political leader in the traditional sense of the word. She considers her Asperger’s condition as her strength. She says: “If I would have been normal like everyone else, I could just continue like everyone else and get stuck in the social game, and just continue like before. But since I was different, I see the world from a different perspective, I see things very black and white.”
For many of today’s politicians, realities come in many different shades of grey. This conveniently desensitises their conscience as it condones and tolerates most traces of corrosive behaviour.