Rex Murphy at The Vancouver Board of Trade’s Governor’s Banquet, April 2, 2009. Photo: D.Roels[NOTE FROM REX MURPHY: This is a paraphrase of the remarks given at the Vancouver Board of Trade’s Governors’ Banquet 2009. Some of those remarks were unscripted but all revolved around the theme of the response to the current economic upheaval, and adddressed themselves as well to the Board’s philosophy of community involvement and engagement. I’d like to add that – at least for me – it is very difficult to catch the flavour, and even in some measure the flow of thought, of a spoken (partly extemporaneous) presentation in the colder, calculated medium of print. For those who attended the (delightful) dinner, if this rendering is at odds with you particular memory of the talk, what follows is something of a ‘translation.’ And remember Oscar Wilde’s injunction, picked up from a notice in a Western saloon/brothel: Please do not shoot the piano player: he is doing his best.”]
The biggest question of today is confidence. Hidden in that word is the root word of “faith” – not the faith of religion or churches, but the faith a people have in themselves, what they can do and have done under the shared understanding of a community – and at its widest verge, a country.
That confidence is nothing but the exuberant faith in their capacity – their ability to do and achieve. It is grounded, incontestably, in the record of achievements past: all that has already been built, made, or done – the miracles of science, art and imagination, all three in harness to industry and enterprise. Grounded in what has already been brought into the world – in every domain – the very capstones of human accomplishment, from (by way of example) the awesome frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, the rise of rational investigation and scientific method, to the building of those near infinite technologies that have introduced us to the wonders and ease of life in the 21st century.
We are naked of the wonder that should beckon us at every waking moment when we contemplate the constructs, intellectual and otherwise, that are the hallmarks of our civilization at this time. Instead of viewing how deep and wide-ranging has been the progress of our kind, and responding with something like awe and amazement, we have taken to looking upon the artifacts and accomplishments of modernity as routine, or “natural,” and, in darker moods, even devaluing these accomplishments by some strange interpretation as taking away from our “best” selves. It is almost as if we fear to take proper pride in the near miracles of our own making. We shake our faith in ourselves. We lack, in the deep sense of the word, a proper appreciation of just how much has been done, and the deep skills and near fantastic abilities that have allowed us to accomplish what we have accomplished.
That is the “confidence” I am referencing, the faith in ourselves that is self-eroding.
We are timid in the face of our own accomplishment; reticent to acknowledge the genius that has brought us where we are. We quiver before every “indictment” of modernity, seek almost to disown the travail and intellect of the great succession of minds and backs (both were called for) that have brought us into the wonder of life as now we know it.
We must learn to draw, a little more carefully, the line between (collective) modesty and (collective) self-mortification. We drain away our confidence, we steal our soul’s own energies, when we back away, withhold honest applause, from what we have wrought. “Imagine a world with anesthetics” is a good tag line to underscore how much our age has separated itself from the struggle and pain of previous times. Imagine a world without electrification, hospitals and the miracles of modern health, without the instruments of our science and the resources of our arts; imagine a world without travel, and schools and democracy, without, in other words, the collective inheritance of industry, science, art, and education which has brought us to the pitch of accomplishment and (relative) ease we now enjoy.
Were any one of us, starkly, to be taken from the daily life of a mere century ago, and dropped into the daily life of today, our whole function and sensibility would be overwhelmed, would collapse – it could not bear – the immensity and number and wonder of the advances that have been made; the mysteries unlocked, the wonders unfolded, the inventions and technologies deployed.
Is this not something to take pride in? Is this not a grand substructure for the most enduring confidence?
I take this wide view (and this far too compressed survey) merely to highlight the singular point that whatever challenges we now face – however grim they look in a daily headline – they are insignificant when placed in the scale of our continuous achievements. We have so much, we have the vast historical record on which to anchor our confidence in ourselves, that it is the ultimate in shortsightedness to take a “present” crisis as some signal of central failure.
Yet, everywhere you may hear whispers that we have trespassed beyond our limits, that we have passed the point of our fullest energies, that modernity is winding down, that our capacity to continue to grow, to innovate, and to meet new challenges is less than that of previous times. I do not know how that thought or sentiment – in the face of all the evidence to the contrary – has entered modern consciousness. It would surely be incomprehensible to my postulated “witness” of a century ago. That witness would look around him and think that nothing was impossible to the people who have done and achieved what has been achieved.
My main point is that it is not the particulars of our present circumstance that should distract us. We have had upheavals before, and we will have upheavals again. We have wandered through the century just past and met there crises of unimaginably greater reach and power, of genuine horror and even absolute threat. It is in the nature of our time always to be placed front-to-front with great challenge. It is that which calls forth our best and most powerful energies.
Five centuries ago there were doubts: John Donne, wrote these frightening lines:
The new philosophy calls all in doubt,
The sun is lost, and the earth, and no man’s wit
Can well direct him where to look for it.
A century ago, William Yeats echoed the same existential anxiety:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
These are but two (superlative) voices to place beside this “moment of doubt” we are experiencing, and beside those moments of Donne and Yeats ours is almost trivial. I say again, it is in the nature of our being here that we will, must, be challenged. And in a moment of challenge we may deplore, weep, or wish the world away. Or – we may resist, and counter, and turn the moment to advantage. That requires calling on the store of confidence that a glimpse at our current reality should inspire.
I see the moment as one of potential. Great challenge calls forth great response. What will fire the exceptional among us to see in the present storm, in the ominous tempest, a call to their most exceptional powers? Some people are built, only to blossom – only to unfold their full strength and wisdom, under the most arduous pressures, only they are called out in the extraordinary moment.
From your position here as The Board of Trade of a great modern city, take this moment for what it is, but no more. A period of challenge sharpens the wits, should in fact almost be a tease to test your powers and resolve, rather than an episode of gloom and despondency. Challenge should give a new edge of appreciation to how fortunate you are to be where you are, in a great modern city, in some ways the envy of the globe. The current crisis should sharpen your appreciation of what your city already is, the kind of life it offers – and that appreciation should impart a freshened vigour to meet the current moment head on.
Business is always more than business. Enterprise is a word far wider than anything that can be contained in a bank statement. The drive to build and achieve is linked to the collective endeavour of us all – to impart purpose and meaning to our dealings with each other, to subtract from the woes and hardships of life, and to compound the virtues and
rewards of our interactions with each other. Business is a social enterprise, as much or more than – as it is caricatured – a race to the top or the fattening of a bank account.
Vancouver is an illustration of this thesis.
Copyright Rex Murphy, 2009
Social commentator and editorial journalist Rex Murphy is made an Honorary Fellow of the Rix Center for Corporate Citizenship and Engaged Leadership at The Vancouver Board of Trade’s 2009 Governors’ Banquet, April 2. See photos & summary.
