The following is a short editorial I wrote for my AP Government class. Several of my classmates were having trouble focusing in class and appreciating the value of what was being discussed. Applying lipgloss, painting fingernails, and in general making a mockery of the classroom all seemed to be more captivating. So, in response, my teacher assigned this paper. We were to read a chapter from Kurt Vonnegut's Man Without A Country and discuss whether or not honors students/highly capable intellectuals were responsible for or obligated to work toward the betterment of our society.
Modern Day Heroes
The educated few, the increasingly small margin of people that possess both a desire to learn and compassion for the overall well being of the world – those are the individuals that hold the fate of humanity. There are plenty of educated people who recklessly parade around as ignorant for the sole purpose of self-gain. There are even more people who truly lack the ability or opportunity to understand what is necessary to achieve the greater good. Our entire existence rests on those unique persons that can rise above greed and hate and dedicate their intellect to saving what traces of love, peace, and goodness are left in the world today. If not for want, this responsibility becomes an obligation. Laziness or inconvenience is not an excuse to just coast along as leaders watching their pocketbooks instead of the best interests of their constituents crash humanity into a burning heap of nonexistence. These make one no better than the people who just don’t or can’t know any better, and society would be an even sorrier state of affairs if this were the case for all of its members.
Kurt Vonnegut describes humanists as people who “try to behave has decently, as fairly, and as honorably as we can…” and “serve as best we can the only abstraction with which we have any real familiarity, which is our community.” In this regard, we should all be humanists, especially those who are more intellectually capable than the general populace because those individuals can more readily conceive of ways to put this ideal in action. The brightest minds should be held most accountable for adhering to this principle because they are most able to understand its value and apply that in their every day lives. Because “[s]ome of the loudest, most proudly ignorant guessing in the world is going on in Washington today,” it will require some of the loudest, most distinctly intelligent intellectuals to grind the ugly gears of hatred and greed to a halt. The ignorant cannot recognize when they are blindly following and being controlled by ignorance, but the community of the gifted and knowledgeable individuals who can recognize this utilization of fear and ignorance as an agent of power have the ability, and obligation, to stop it. Because if these individuals refuse to take responsibility for reversing the direction the global community has set itself into, who is left to save humanity from its own destruction?
As citizens, people with increased intellectual potential are responsible for honoring, defending, and advancing the rights of all members of the human race, as well as the natural and cultural environment future generations will inherit from us. We must give back to the community that we share in to the greatest extent of our ability, not comparing any one person’s capacity to give to another’s. It is not enough to occasionally muster an act of kindness. Donating tokens of money once every year or helping an old lady across the street once in a blue moon, while a nice gesture, does not suffice as acting as a responsible global citizen. It must be a constant effort, an ever present thought in each of our lives. Using the skills we have been blessed with to aid those who benefit from our services needs to become more than something we occasionally do. It must become a significant part of who we are.
In today’s perpetual cycle of doom and gloom news reels and a sense of diminishing hope in society as a whole, humanity is searching for a hero. Since the heroines of our childhood are not expected to swoop down from the clouds anytime soon, it is time for the intellectual community to step up and become that hero, simply because they should – and because they can.
