Monday, 17 January 2000
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In June of 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King gave the Commencement Address at Oberlin College. He spoke of Rip Van Winkle, who slept through a revolution. He spoke of technology, which was even then beginning to tie the world together in ways until then unimaginable. And he spoke of the plight of many of the world's poor. His words still have great relevance today.
All I'm saying is simply this: that all mankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be - this is the interrelated structure of reality.
...
Now it is true that the geographic togetherness of our world has been brought into being, to a large extent, through modern man's scientific ingenuity. Modern man, through his scientific genius, has been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. Yes, we've been able to carve highways through the stratosphere, and our jet planes have compressed into minutes distances that once took weeks and months. And so this is a small world from a geographical point of view. What we are facing today is the fact that through our scientific and technological genius we've made of this world a neighborhood. And now through our moral and ethical commitment we must make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together as brothers - or we will all perish together as fools. This is the great issue facing us today. No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone. We are tied together.
This is Sleeping Through a Revolution <http://monkeyfist.com/articles/57>