This year, Darko Radović was asked to deliver a Systems Design Engineering Graduation Speech at the SD Graduation Ceremony at Yokohama Pacifico. Here is full text of that speech (of course - minus Darko's digressions).
SD Graduation Speech
delivered
25.3.2019
It was a great honour for me to be
selected to deliver this Graduation Speech today. I would like to express my most sincere congratulations
for the accomplishment which we are celebrating here today!
You
are the 22nd generation of SD graduates. My compliments, to each and
every of you! I extend my congratulations to your parents,
family members, friends and colleagues, to professors and all of those who have
helped you reach this important landmark, and who should feel proud of you
today.
Every graduation marks an ending;
with
this ceremony today, you have formally completed your first university degree.
Every graduation also marks a new
beginning;
in
your case, that is the beginning of your Graduate Studies, or of your professional
life.
That is why this brief address will
consist of two parts – the official congratulations, and one personal advice.
While, in the name of the staff and
students of the Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Systems Design
Engineering I congratulate you all on successful competition of one important,
formative stage in your lives, the focus of my talk will be on future, on the
steps in front of you, on reaching academic and professional maturity. I want
to give you one advice.
*
That advice is not original. It is,
actually, two thousand and five hundred years old. I will communicate it to you
by telling a story with four characters. Three of them are old (much older than
I am), while the fourth one is very young.
The first character which I want to
introduce is a famous Greek philosopher, Socrates. Socrates died many years
ago. If he was still alive, he would be 2580 years old. He has died, but his
thought is as alive and as relevant as ever.
The other character in the story which I
want to tell today is a great Japanese intellectual and activist whose work you
all should know very well – Fukuzawa Yukichi. If still with us, the founder of
Keio University would be 184 years old. While he has died more than a century
ago, the results of his work are evidently alive and relevant.
The third character which I invoke here
is Alain Badiou. He is a 82 years old, famous and still very active French
philosopher. In the central part of my talk I will use Badiou’s voice to convey
I what want to tell to you.
And the final, fourth and most
important of the characters in this story is each and every of you -
individually.
So, let me begin …
**
Two years ago, Alain Badiou has
published his new book, entitled The True
Life. This tiny volume explains the main point of my talk today. Badiou addresses
young people, talking about their future - precisely as I am doing today. He
tells a story of Socrates, a story of the great teacher who used to talk regularly
to the youth of ancient Athens, giving them advice which remains as relevant
today and here, as it was relevant then and there.
The thought of Socrates is 2,000 years
old, but still relevant – because it is profoundly human.
Socrates has lived a full and eventful
life. History and legends say how he used to be a stone mason. He knew physical
labour. Then, he was a soldier, a hoplit
who knew the war. Eventually, as a philosopher, he started exploring Alathea, the ancient Greek Goddess of
Truth. That dangerous theme, the truth, brought about his demise. In the year
399 b.c.e. Socrates was sentenced to death and executed.
***
What was the mortal sin of one of the
greatest thinkers of all times?
That is what Alain Badiou explains in The True Life, and from there I borrow some
of the words that follow:
“Socrates,
the father of all philosophers, was condemned to death on charges of ‘corrupting
youth’. …
It is important to understand that there:
“Essentially,
to corrupt youth means only one thing: to try to ensure that young people don’t
go down the path already mapped
out, that they are not just condemned to obey social customs, that they can create something new, propose a
different direction as regards to true life.”
The problems which you are going to face today if
you chose the Socratic path are very similar to those which the Greeks of your
age had to confront 2,500 years ago.
Badiou continues
how:
“… the starting point is Socrates’
belief that young people have two inner enemies …
and he summarises
that:
“Basically,
when you’re young, you’re faced, often without being clearly aware of it, with
two possible life directions,
which are somewhat overlapping and contradictory. I could sum up these two
temptations like this: either the
passion for burning up your life or the passion for building it.”
The superficiality
of computer games explain what Socrates meant by this definition of your “first
enemy”.
Your … shukatsu could serve us as a good
example of the “second enemy” facing the youth.
Both are conditioned by an overwhelming power of the
present, by the world as it is now, by ruling power relations. The System.
Then, Badiou gives that concrete Socratic advice
which I want to convey to you today:
“There’s
is nothing more important for everyone, but particularly for young people, than
being attentive to the signs
that something different from what is happening might happen.
…
To
put it another way, there’s what you are capable of – building your life, using
what you’re capable of – but there’s
also what do don’t yet know you’re capable of, which is actually the most
important thing …
…
what
you discover when you encounter something that was unforeseeable. …
you
discover a capacity in yourself that you were unaware of.”
****
That is precisely what happened to Yukichi
Fukuzawa. In 1853, when American Black Ships entered the Bay of Edo, he was 18
years old. As Tokugawa Japan faced a dramatic, unforeseeable situation,
Fukuzawa discovered in himself the capacity which he was not previously aware
of.
Today, while congratulating you the great
achievement which we are celebrating today, as your professor I feel
responsible to … corrupt your minds, precisely in the way Socrates was, and
Badiou is doing. I feel obliged to continue with great Socratic tradition.
Yukichi Fukuzawa was not seeking an
easy career. He was not following the paths beaten by his sempai. He embarked on the path of voracious learning of foreign
languages, on communication with other cultures, on travels and
contextualisation of the best of
what he has seen elsewhere into the realities of the 19th century Japan.
Do not
forget – when he discovered in himself the capacity which
he was not previously aware of, the capacity to lead, Yukichi Fukuzawa was of your age! In the year 1858 (which
you can find on the coat of arms of Keio University) Fukuzawa has established a
school for Dutch studies in Edo. He was 23 years old. Almost all of you who are
graduating today are only one year younger; the majority of you are 22 years
old.
Fukuzawa obviously did not think that
he was too young. He did not seek the safe paths charted out by the precedents.
There were no precedents. And, there are no excuses for saying how one is too
young to be brave, too young to be innovative, especially too young to dream. Dreams
challenge the System, they produce change.
Fukuzawa followed the “corruptive”
logic of Socrates. In himself he discovered a capacity he was unaware
of.
He
was brave, progressive, and he sought change.
He
rebelled against timid, conservative, status quo.
(But, I often get told how “Japanese
people” are, somehow, precisely that; shy, timid and conservative.
As a foreigner (the foreigner who chose
to live and work in Japan) I dare to say, I know that is not true!
In
that argument, the example of Yukichi Fukuzawa is on my side.
No
one can dispute that he was Japanese, a Japanese par excellence.)
*****
The advice which I promised to give to you today,
the best advice which one can give to the young people at the opening a new
phase in their lives which was formulated more than 2,500 years ago, is:
Do
not follow the paths which are already mapped out for you, do not blindly obey
social customs.
Seek,
propose and create new, different directions which lead to a true life.
Seek
how to be good and how to do good; how to be happy.
At your next step – which is now – when entering your Masters studies
or the workforce, please remember Socrates, remember Yukichi Fukuzawa, remember
Alain Badiou and - be brave. Seek in yourself the capacity to dream,
and try to make this world a better place.
You are young, and the future literally
belongs to you.
There is a lot to learn from us,
professors (including those among us who are 2,500 thousand years old). In The True Life Badiou, importantly,
proposes “an alliance of disoriented youth and old veterans of life”. But -
think critically. Learn from us and – judge. As the great Modernist architect Charles-Édouard
Jeanneret, whom you know as Le Corbusier, once said - seek to stand on our
shoulders, see further than we are capable to see .
******
Once again, it is my great honour to, in
the name of System Design Engineering, congratulate you and all of those who
love you and trust in you, the successful completion of your SD degree and I
wish you all the best in the future.
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