Dave Carey was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, former UN correspondent, and for fifteen years a volunteer with an international agency helping to put the pieces together in postwar Europe and Asia. This Agency reported to General MacArthur in Japan and worked under the umbrella of the Marshall Plan in Europe.
Since retiring to Asheville with his wife Peg, he was a Founding Board member of the Asheville Mediation Center. He and Peg were among the first group of mediators trained. He was also a Founding Board member of the Western North Carolina World Affairs Council and worked with former UNCA Chancellor Dave Brown helping to start the College for seniors. Peg was a founding member of Life after Cancer, which became a national organization, later renamed Pathways, and served as its Executive Director.
Dave has been inducted into the North Carolina Hall of Fame and the Western North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame. In 2000, playing in Cape Town South Africa, he became #1 in the world in the 85 and over age bracket in singles. The United States Tennis Association ranked him #1 in singles and doubles for the year 2005 in the 90+ age group.
I trust that you have read the information about our speaker in your bulletin this morning so I need not repeat it all. I have known Dave Carey for almost twenty years. Never once have I seen him behave as other than the true gentleman that he is. And that includes many hours that I have been privileged to observe him in the highly competitive context of a tennis match. He has always managed to direct the energy of his aggression into his tennis racquet and let his racquet do the talking. And believe me that racquet speaks eloquently. Just recently the USTA came out with the 2005 rankings and Dave is listed as # 1 in the nation in both singles and doubles in the ninety and over age group. I’ll never forget the occasion when Dave had invited Gardner Malloy to come and play in the Asheville City Open Tennis Tournament. Gardner is a former Wimbledon Champion, with whom Dave had teamed up to become the #1 doubles team in the world. Dave called me one morning and said that he and Gardner had their first tournament match scheduled that afternoon and wondered if I could get a partner and give them a warm up match that morning. Now this was in July, Dave and Gardner were playing in the 85 and over age group, and they wanted to play a warm up match in the morning before their first tournament match that afternoon. At that time I was playing in the 65 age group and I was doing well to get through one match a day. Well now Dave is in the over ninety age group and I see no signs of his slowing down. We are privileged to have Dave with us this morning as we are about to discover that it is not only on the tennis court that Dave has something to say. Dave we are delighted to have you with us today.
Today events are moving and changing at an incredible speed. Right now technological change is doubling every ten years. By 2015 most of the stuff we have today will be obsolete. By 2030 scientists predict that we will have reached the post human era, humanly created robots more intelligent than humans. Figure that one out.
I have lived though most of the 1900s and we thought that things were moving fast. Henry Ford had produced the Model T. “Any color you like,” he said, “but make it black,” the Great Depression of the 1930s and four world wars. In 1913 there were 4 German Marks to the dollar. In 1931 my father bought our house for $5000.00. Today it is on the market for $1 million.
My first job as Athletic Director at a small Boys Boarding School paid me 80 cents a day. For this I also did some teaching, lived at the school and was on duty 24 hours a day. But in those days I could get a decent meal for 25 cents. I wouldn’t take my girlfriend there; that would cost me 35 cents.
The lesson of history is how we cope with these changes. In the past these massive changes generally occurred centuries apart. After thousands of years fire was discovered, then writing and reading. You all watched the Olympics. You saw the many shots of the ruined Acropolis and other ancient ruins. The Greeks never invented the Arch so what you saw was avenues of crowded pillars. The Romans invented the arch and you got those incredible aqueducts and the later cathedrals. Of Europe.
The Incas never invented the wheel yet they controlled an Empire covering 3000 miles, ate with gold utensils, and used gold toothpicks.
Around the 100s A.D. the Chinese invented paper, or a form of it. Some 1300 years later Guttenberg produced a printing press. Both of these created an explosion of knowledge. And you can go on and on. I think it is helpful to get the perspective of the ages to help us cope intelligently with what is going on today.
For want of a better word I have called this The Hinges of History. They are turning points that have changed the direction of history. A Washington Think Tank friend calls the next 30 years the most decisive in all of history. Let’s look at some of these hinges for a moment.
In the 500s B.C. there was a period of remarkable intellectual growth. Both Buddha and Confucius were born in this century. The early Greek philosophers were talking about life springing from an original source. In Persia Zoroaster was preaching about people needing to choose between good and evil. Now we are trying to decide what is good and what is evil. You see how far we have advanced! Jeremiah was suggesting that more than fate determined a person’s destiny. These were very revolutionary ideas for that time.
Then around the 110s you had another great leap forward, an extraordinary outpouring of energy and growth. The evidence is all around us today in the art and cathedrals of that day. Kings, saints, popes, scholars were all larger than life. I’m thinking of St. Francis, Thomas a Becket, Abelard and Heloise, Joan of Arc, Michelangelo, Leonard da Vinci, Galileo, Elizabeth and Henry VIII.
Hinges are interesting things. They open up spaces and close them down. They get rusty and creaky and need oiling. And this is true of history. You know the Greeks with all that they have contributed to history nearly didn’t make it. In the 1300s B.C. the mainland tribal Greek chieftains were subject to the Minoan kings centered on Crete and paid tribute to them. Around this time an immense earthquake accompanied by a massive tidal wave totally wiped out the Minoan kingdom and thereby freed the mainland Greeks to develop on their own.
The Minoan culture was highly advanced. In 1875 an olive farmer digging in his grove on Crete came across some old stones. Archeologists came along and found what they were excavating was the original palace of King Minos that had been partly destroyed by the earthquake. They found that the Queen’s suite had running water plus a flushing toilet plus a sewer system for the palace. This is interesting because the Palace of Versailles over a thousand years later had no running water anywhere in it; nor did Buckingham Palace when Victoria became Queen. Over these hundreds of years what happened to personal hygiene? But that is another story.
I was at Oxford when the war broke out in 1939. I had met Stanley Baldwin. He and others like Chamberlain and Atlee were ambivalent about Hitler. The mentality was “Don’t rock the boat.” This was in spite of the concentration camps and the military build-up. I remember seeing Chamberlain with his arms in the air returning from Munich crying, “Peace in our time.”
Churchill was about the only voice warning about Hitler. History of the 30s and early 40s is confirming that without two men, Roosevelt and Churchill the U.S. might have confronted a Hitlerized Europe. When war broke out the materiel support that Roosevelt provided certainly helped to turn the tide. He did this at a time when Americans were dead against any involvement. When Wilkie was running for President in 1940, when the Battle of Britain was being fought, he told a Boston audience, “When I am elected no American boys will be sent to the shambles of the European trenches.”
The postwar statesmanship of Truman, Marshall, Atchison, Monet, Adenauer and Schuman and others did not make the same mistakes as after WWI. The Marshall Plan was probably the most generous act in history and put Europe back on its feet.
I mention all this because right now we are in another of those defining points of history. We are facing:
One: The possibility of a nuclear disaster, the ultimate weapon of world terrorism. And let’s face it, if terrorism wins out in Iraq, we will be up to our necks in World War III. We may be already.
Two: We are going to have to decide who is going to run things, human or robotics science.
Three: Are we going to learn the arts of reconciliation and apply them in our homes, businesses and between nations?
What I am talk about is not wishful thinking. The future will depend on our answers.
By 2030 we will have computers a thousand times more powerful than the human mind. By 2050 these computers will have the brainpower of the combined human race. Artificial intelligence may become not only smarter but also wiser. In other words, machines may merge with us, manage us, mimic us, or simply leave us in the dust.
What is already on the drawing boards is an elite super race of people with characteristics of our choosing. Today women can choose the characteristics they want for their unborn children. The realm of the born, the natural and the realm of the humanly constructed is rapidly becoming one. As I mentioned before we are rapidly approaching the post human life era.
On another point: “Are our moral fences coming down?” When I was growing up right and wrong were pretty clearly defined. Are they now? Are we today being consumed by a culture of materialism and excess?
This brings me to another point, which, historically, is a very defining hinge. America has assumed her leadership role in the world very rapidly. We have assumed this position in a very short time and done it very reluctantly. The British who held this position for a couple of centuries were being groomed form the time of Queen Elizabeth when England defeated the Spanish Armada. Contrast this to the fact that it is in the lifetime of most of us in this room that the U.S. has become a global power.
After WWI we had something like the world’s 15th largest army, smaller than the Dutch. America has had an ambivalent attitude toward power. In WWI Wilson was elected President because he said he would keep us out of any involvement. In 1935, 36, and 37, Congress passed Neutrality Acts outlawing any involvement in European wars.
In 1939 just after Hitler had invaded Poland, a Gallup Poll found 95% of Americans polled wanted to stay out of any war in Europe. And after Hitler had overrun Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland and France, and Britain stood alone, 40% polled said they wanted no involvement.
What I’m simply saying is that America has assumed this world leadership not of her own choosing. After all most of the early immigrants came here because they wanted to get away from all the squabbles in Europe. We are slow learners and have made mistakes, as have others. America came of age as far as world leadership is concerned when Roosevelt in a Fireside Chat in 1940 said that the time had come for America to be the arsenal of democracy.
Another hinge of major factor in the picture is that for the first time in history much of the world is being confronted with western ideas and thought. In America we prize individuality and thought. The Asians, though, emphasize relationships and community. We see humans dominating nature. Asians see humans as part of nature. Part of the trouble today is that much of the Muslim world feels that our secular scientific rationalism will destroy Islam.
Part of all this uncertainty comes from the fact that today we are in the midst of the largest migration in history. In China alone there are 100 million people on the move from the countryside to the cities. This, of course, is undermining the traditional Chinese village culture that has existed for centuries.
The same is true of Europe. The European Union will need 180 million immigrants in the next three decades to keep its population at 1995 levels and keep the current level of retirees to workers. And where do you think they will come from?
In Germany the death rate has exceeded the birth rate for years. So today they have to fly in planeloads of technicians from places like India to maintain their high tech structure. Here at home while the population continues to grow, 80% is due to immigration and the rest comes from Spanish and African-American births. None of the increase is due to Caucasians.
It used to be when you thought of Frenchmen or Englishmen or Americans a certain picture came to mind. No more. In a few years there will be more Muslims in Europe than Catholics, more Muslims in England than Anglicans.
The point of all this is how do we move ahead now. Today we are confronted not so much with a crisis between civilizations and cultures, but a crisis within them. None of the old standbys of the past – religion, heritage, language, even nationhood, is adequate in the context of an era that is becoming global. The answers to all this, however, are human not technological.
In a world growing more and more complicated we all have to learn the values of simplicity and silence. Some call it thinking with the heart. When you put this together with our analytical thought process then you begin to get real wisdom. People, not things, have got to be the key. Corporate industry today is using the phrase “Servant Leadership.” This intuitive thing is the real us. Gestalt therapy calls it the Id. It’s the true essence of greatness. It is the eternal element in every human being. Our brainpower has outrun our hearts and we need to restore the balance.
Tennyson was talking about this 130 years ago in a poem he wrote:
Let knowledge grow from more to more
But more of reverence in us dwell
That mind and soul according well
Make one music as before.
As you were told I spent some 25 years after the war as a volunteer helping to put the pieces together in Europe and Asia. Our agency reported to General MacArthur in Asia and worked under the umbrella of the Marshall Plan in Europe. In 1957 the Japanese Prime Minister, Nobosuke Kishi, was planning a trip through Asia and Australasia in an attempt to stimulate trade and restore diplomatic relations. The arrangements for the tour had been made and all speeches written. The Prime Minister asked for our advice. From our experience in Southeast Asia we knew that anti Japanese feeling was still running very high in these areas. Most of us remember the treatment of our prisoners at Corregidor. But the treatment of the Philippine people was far worse. At one point the Japanese herded some thousand leading citizens into a warehouse and set it on fire. People tend not to forget these things.
So we told the Prime Minister we thought his trip with the purpose he had in mind, was unwise. “Well,” he said, “we’ve got to get trade and diplomatic relations going again, what do you suggest?” What do you say to a Prime Minister who asks you a question like that? What do you say to a child who has hurt another child? “You say you are sorry and you really mean it.” This was our advice to this Japanese statesman, simply to go and say you are very sorry and really mean it. Do not raise these other points of trade and diplomatic relations; let them do that if they want to.
So all the speeches were rewritten, much shorter this time, and he took off. He spoke to nine Parliaments. In Manila he stunned the Congress by his sincere apology. A bogged down reparation treaty was settled a few months later. The day before his arrival in Canberra, the Australian press carried a stinging attack launched by veterans’ groups asking who let this “war criminal” into our county. A shocked Parliament listened to his apology as a man and as a statesman. THE WASHINGTON EVENING STAR in an editorial called this Asian tour of Kishi’s “One of the most unusual missions ever undertaken by a statesman of his rank.” The report in THE NEW YORK TIMES carried the headline “The foreign policy of the humble heart.”
In one blow this mission of Kishi’s restored Japan’s relations with Asia, and you all know the story from then on. Many of you may recall the very senior delegation that came to the U.S. in the early 50s and made a sincere humble apology to a joint session of Congress.
One of the people with whom we worked closely in the immediate post war years in Japan was Shinzo Hamai, the Mayor of Hiroshima. As the city was being rebuilt a monument in the shape of an arch was being erected to those who died from the bomb. Mayor Hamai said to us, there are many who want the inscription on the arch to read, “They will never do this to us again.” I have instructed that the words on that monument will say, “We will never let this happen again.”
There’s a great difference in those two phrases and this to me epitomizes this new era into which we are moving. Will it be characterized by the qualities that emerge from that inner space, that intuitive thinking that is the well of greatness and compassion or will it be characterized by the brittle uncaring, often bitter, adversary me first mentality that has got us into so much trouble so far?
Today we have the brainpower and resources to turn the whole world right side up. Just supposing we had used the money and brainpower that created something like Viagra or wrinkle proof cream to invent a pill with the nutrient power of a decent meal. At least we could have passed this around Africa until the real food arrived.
A father, sitting after dinner, was being bothered by his young son. He saw in his newspaper a full page map of the world. He tore it up into small pieces and suggested that his son put the pieces together. He figured that would keep him busy for some time. The boy returned with the finished product in a few minutes. His father asked how he had done it so quickly. “Oh,” said the boy, “I found there was a picture of a man on the back and when I got the man together, the world was easy.”
So let me repeat again. Behind all this upheaval and turmoil we are today caught between two ages. Through the chaos and the killing, through the heartache and the inner emptiness, the birth of a heightened consciousness is fighting its way out. I’m optimistic about the future. The world has survived so far. I believe the next thirty years, the next hinge of history, is in good hands with people like you sitting in many rooms like this around the country. I have grandchildren who are counting on you to keep us on track and keep this new hinge well oiled.