Lech Walesa Visits Colby
Edited by Daniel J. O'Connor
Lech Walesa burst into the world spotlight in 1980 when he climbed atop a bulldozer at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland, and rallied dispirited workers there. His leadership inspired a nationwide uprising that grew to include 10 million workers and emboldened freedom movements throughout Eastern Europe. Despite the crackdown of martial law and repeated imprisonment, Walesa prevailed to see the end of communist rule in Poland and Eastern Europe. For his heroic efforts, Walesa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983. He received praise from leaders worldwide for his honor. In 1990, he was elected President of Poland, winning more than 74 percent of the vote. His term in office set Poland firmly on the path to becoming a free market democracy, enabling Poland to receive one of the first invitations to join an expanded NATO. Now retired from politics, he heads the Lech Walesa Institute whose aim is to champion democracy and free market reform in Eastern Europe and throughout the developing world. On Monday, December 7, President Walesa spoke at Colby College. Below is a transcript of his formal address, with additional remarks added from his question and answer session with the Colby community.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we will be entering the 21st century eve in 1999. However, we are already living in a new year. Historians claim that the 19th century started with the Vienna Congress and it ended with the First World War. Then, the 20th century would last from Sarajevo to Sarajevo; that is, from the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand to the fall of the Berlin Wall and to the struggles on the ruins of the former Yugoslavia. However centuries do not have to last exactly 100 years, they are enclosed within major events. I come from the country and from there I remember people who’ll say that things happen either before the war or after the war. In fact this was a milestone in the history.
What is a century is a period when people think along the same lines where they not in a similar way where they have the same instincts. The 20th century was a time of hatred: hatred in the class sense, hatred in a national sense, and hatred to our neighbors. The 20th century was a century of the greatest crimes known in the history of humankind. The very implementation of communist utopia caused over 100 millions of victims and look at the holocaust, look at others in their exterminations. If we were to characterize the 20th century briefly we would call it a century of crime and hatred. Crime is accompanied by a special approach to a human person. It means that people look at each other as enemies. However the coming century will liberate us, I am completely confidant about it, from hostility. It is going to be a century of solidarity. People will realize that they have happiness and well being is achieved not at the cost of another human person, but thanks to the other human. People change their outlook from a hostile one to a friendly one.
How does this process occur? First of all, our individual perspective has to change to a global one. It can be done once people start feeling that the earth is the planet of the human race.
What are the challenges that we are going to face in the century that we are already living in but will officially begin in a year’s time? First of all, it is characterized by globalism. The world is shrinking. And it’s not shrinking in a physical sense but it is getting smaller in the information sense. For example, satellite television allows us in real time to watch things happening on the other side of the world. This has really made our planet a global village. Look a cellular phones, thanks for which we can get in contact with any place in the world at any moment. Not to mention the Internet in which without getting on any nice coat I can look at the Library of Congress or I can admire the masterpieces of the Paris Louvre. Information does not know any borders.
And this same one goes for ecology. The Chernobyl disaster taught us that such threats do not need passports or Visas. They don’t care about borders. Let’s look at American hurricanes that shape the weather on which Polish agriculture depends. And when the forests are on fire in Indonesia people are concerned in the Malasias. We are becoming a structure that is a set in which a change of one element causes the change of all the remaining elements. Therefore, we must not be selfish.
Economy also goes beyond borders. The UL reacts to changes on the Tokyo Exchange. The Asian tigers think that their economy is a resultant of an activity of a British banker of Hungarian origin. Huge companies have lost their national character. Their executive board is placed in one country, their shareholders live in a different one, whereas their plants are placed even elsewhere, and the recipient of the goods lives somewhere else. Through fiber optics money is pumped from one end of the world to another and I mean here electronic money that does not exist outside computers.
All this make us face the challenge of globalism. Computer scientists, ecologists, and economists can cope very well with these challenges. However, nations find it difficult too, meanwhile, a politician is faced with an electorate of a local character and a politician is dependant on his or her local electorate. A politician must flatter the electorate, mostly for the particular interest that the electorate will re-elect the politician. Politicians do not look further ahead than one term of office, and I mean here in the chronological aspect, and they do no look outside their constituency.
However, they should look their term of office globally. I think that this tension between globalism and the challenges of globalism and regional demands is the greatest threats of our times. Just as in a tight community if selfishness dominates the obligations resulting from the common coexistence, we must be aware of our responsibilities; the responsibilities for our continent, and for our planet of human race. Selfishness in this respect will be called stupidity, if not political blindness.
Therefore we lack politicians of vision, but often have politicians on television. People of left wing orientation say that we should provide solutions based merely and simply on laws. I do think law is one of the major factors but I have a fear that just merely law will not be effective in the 21st century. I’m sure that all of you gathered here, me included, have violated the law in one way or another, but we have not been punished because we are punished because we let ourselves be caught, not because of the crime committed.
Just imagine if we all specialize in avoiding being caught. We will find good assistance with computers. We will then find an extremely dangerous world. Just to prove my point, a story, perhaps you have heard it:
“There was a period in communist times when people living in the country couldn’t leave the country, they didn’t have passports to go abroad. Therefore people who wanted to run away to a free country would highjack planes. Then the communist authorities had a simple solution to the problem: they introduced security guards pretending to be tourists who were supposed to make sure that planes were not highjacked. However, on one occasion the security guard highjacked the plane because the guard wanted go to a free country. Then the natural solution was to introduce a second set of security to make sure the security guards supervised the plane. And thus, the opposite solution was obtained: the plane was full of security guards, no room for tourists, but the planes were still being highjacked.”
I am just telling you this story to prove how law can be inefficient. We have achieved many accomplishments in many spheres of our lives, especially technology. Whereas there is neglect and so we do not make any progress in the sphere of truth of our human cultures. Whereas we should have a reverse situation. We should base all of the laws that we create on human conscience: it would be less expensive and much more efficient. And here I encourage the young people again: if you want to enjoy a secure life, and a prosperous life, think about the development of human conscience.
The challenges that we face can be met with advanced technologies and can be met with our democratic order. But democratic subjects of international law should be treated equally. The traffic laws that tell us how we can drive along our roads does not make any exceptions. The road signs should be followed and should be complied with by all the vehicles-even the privileged ones. Therefore, it is unthinkable for a certain car to go up a one way street only because it is a big one. Either law exists equal for all the subjects or the law does not exist. The exact exceptions do not prove the rule, on the contrary, they deny it.
Therefore, one cannot establish different rules for the more powerful ones, not only because it is immoral, but also because it undermines the international order, just as a huge Mac truck would undermine road traffic if went up a one way street. The law should be implemented for everybody, and it should be implemented in the same way; otherwise, it ceases to be law and becomes its own negation.
I think that if people think like this, they refer to the remnants of the mental Cold War. However, the political situation changes faster than the habits of the politicians. People are already living in the 21st century, whereas mentally they are deeply rooted in the 20th century. In order to change their habits and their way of thinking we must administrate a stage for a new generation that is not tarnished just like our older generation with their older habits. Moses led his people for 40 years in wilderness in order to let the older generation that remembered slavery die out. We do not have too many deserts in Europe; here you maybe have a few more; I do not think they would be enough anyway.
Therefore, we must advance the promotion young generation. Our youth must enter the world without this burden of hostility that we participated in. Let them entire life with the message of solidarity. A Renaissance philosopher claimed homo homini lupus est, that is, that a man is a wolf to another man. Today, we should say that man should be supportive to another man, that the people should be in solidarity, and that is how we should enter the 21st century.