Religion professor asks
graduating seniors to choose 'solidarity over rivalry'
BY LARAMIE TREVIŅO
Taking a page or two from
Ursula K. LeGuin and borrowing scenes from The Matrix
and the Star Trek television series, a
theologian/science fiction aficionado offered advice to
Stanford's next generation of graduates.
In Saturday's
Baccalaureate Celebration address to Stanford's Class of
2000, Professor Theophus "Thee" Smith of Emory
University used science fiction as a metaphor for how
students might approach their interactions in the real
world.
And with his blessing, the
professor of religion left the more than 1,700 graduates
with the hope that they'll choose solidarity over
rivalry.
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"May you also discern
what your education and privileges are for, so that you
too may become not just one more rival among others, but
a living icon for the rest of us to see what it means to
be a human being in solidarity with others," Smith
said.
In the Inner Quadrangle
under a relentless sun, Smith navigated visitors through
"The Two Spirits: Managing Angelic Rivalry for the
Next Millennium," a speech in which he offered an
analysis of the violence at Columbine High School and the
true message of the blockbuster film The Matrix.
In the film, star Keanu
Reeves, clad in a black trenchcoat, fires multiple
automatic weapons in computer-simulated shooting sprees.
"The claim is that the film induced the youths to
reenact its fabricated world of violence -- thus in
contradiction to its effort to counteract pseudo-reality,
the film appears to have become a contagious source of
pseudo-reality."
Smith also touched on the
work of Stanford Professor Emeritus Rene Girard, who
indicated that the conflicts of individuals arise from
imitating the desires of their models. Smith wondered why
"that spiritual distemper endemic to our
species" holds our imagination captive -- to the
point where even in science fiction the extraterrestrial
species participate in rivalrous behavior.
"For all their
anatomical, genetic and personality differences, Star
Trek's Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans and, yes, all our
storied characters throughout history, appear just as
driven as we are by rivalrous desire," Smith said.
In contrast, the work of
New Testament theologian Walter Wink is about a
non-rivalrous way of being, Smith said. As he led his
listeners through the exercise of imagining such a state,
Smith pointed out that spiritual powers aren't based in
heaven or "out there somewhere," as in
traditional religious belief.
Wink portrays "the
principalities and the powers" -- the familiar term
from the King James version -- as the inner character, or
the "interiority," of our institutions and
relationships, as opposed to describing them in
traditional terms such as external or supernatural
beings. "Instead they exist integrally both inside
of us and between us -- at the center of political,
economic and cultural institutions of our day."
Smith localized his
remarks by noting that some graduates will begin
corporate careers with the financial resources to pursue
a privileged lifestyle so highly touted in the "gold
rush" that is Silicon Valley. He worried that those
trying to exercise a social conscience by working in
public service or for nonprofit agencies will find the
challenges too daunting.
"Will paying off your
student debt, or meeting your parents' high expectations,
or meeting your own ambitions regarding salary, career
and prestige overwhelm your ability to act in human
solidarity with those who are less privileged?"
Smith asked. "How will you counteract the power of
our collective wealth to fabricate a pseudo-reality for
us, making us forget the vast majority of the world's
people who are living an altogether different
reality?"
One can prevent the
captivity to the spirit of rivalry, he said, by
practicing a new asceticism, a set of practices that
would function like a type of spiritual cleansing.
"Our new training . .
. would help us realize that if we are in rivalrous
conflict with someone, then help is immediately at hand
in the persona itself of the rival," Smith said.
"From this perspective it is not a pious platitude
but a management strategy to love your enemies. Thereby
we outwit a spiritual power that uses our desires to
manage us against our best interests."
Cultivation of the spirit
was also high on the list of physics major Shaffique
Shiraz Adam, who in his student reflection lamented that
his formal Stanford education did not prepare him for
establishing a relationship "with God, my family and
friends."
Adam, a native of Kenya,
advised his fellow graduates to pause a second before
joining the rat race of real life and decide what is
fundamentally important to them.
"And second, we
should agree as a community that if the human experience
is as important as experimental data, then there is the
need for the modern university to increase its
appreciation of the spiritual and religious dimensions of
life," Adam said.
The annual ceremony drew
more than 2,000 who participated in prayer, listened to
readings of works by Howard Thurman and Abraham Joshua
Heschel, exchanged signs of peace and sat in rapt
attention as Talisman a cappella's high notes rose toward
the heavens during "Amazing Grace."
The baccalaureate
concluded with a drumming blessing by Stanford Taiko and
the recessional Hornpipe from Handel's Water Music
performed by the Bay Brass Quintet. SR
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