Yesterday I came across this little jewel and thought I'd share it. It is the speech that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn delivered address at Harvard University on June 8 - 1978.
In the speech he makes a remarkable description of the western world, its narrowness of vision and its social/cultural decadence. IMO it is astonishing how this man, who suffered in his own flesh the horrors of Soviet communism, preserves the sanity, good sense and a certain meekness of spirit that allows him to turn suffering into wisdom and pain into spiritual strength. It is also remarkable that, being a speech delivered almost 40 years ago, some passages are so current that if I had not indicated the date and the author would look like a speech delivered yesterday.
Among the most prominent topics, Solzhenitsyn talks about:
and here is a transcription Alexandr Solzhenitsyn: Harvard Commencement Address (A World Split Apart)
In the speech he makes a remarkable description of the western world, its narrowness of vision and its social/cultural decadence. IMO it is astonishing how this man, who suffered in his own flesh the horrors of Soviet communism, preserves the sanity, good sense and a certain meekness of spirit that allows him to turn suffering into wisdom and pain into spiritual strength. It is also remarkable that, being a speech delivered almost 40 years ago, some passages are so current that if I had not indicated the date and the author would look like a speech delivered yesterday.
Among the most prominent topics, Solzhenitsyn talks about:
- The material welfare state that has been reached by Western society and that constitutes the goal of every citizen, has been transformed into a heavy ballast that prevents the development of consciousness and the flowering of higher spiritual values that inspire and enrich humanity as a whole.
- Western society has placed its faith and trust in a System of Laws disconnected from human consciousness. While listening to him I could not help but connect his words to the passage from Guyénot (From Yahweh to Zion) when he writes about how for the Jewish people, a Law emanating from a "superior" entity that cannot be questioned frees man from the obligation to evaluate and judge his own acts as long as they are done according to the Law.
- The defence of "human rights" or/and "freedom of speech" has become a kind of "freedom to do what I want" that must be guaranteed to every individual. This absurd conception has become one of the main vehicles for evil to spread in the world. He himself proposes that "it is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations".
- ... and more
and here is a transcription Alexandr Solzhenitsyn: Harvard Commencement Address (A World Split Apart)