Commencement Speech

May 18, 2008

Robert Jay Lifton
Members of the Class of 2008 and their families, Rev. Cregan, members of the faculty, students, and friends.

This is a marvelous moment for you and I am delighted to be part of it - to be with you right here, at this time and this place. I urge you to take in this exquisite image, store it where images are collected in your mind, and have it ready to call forth at future moments, especially in situations that might not be as exquisite as this one.

I know I am sometimes thought of as a "heavy" because of the highly threatening human events that I've studied and written about-as someone who can be expected to bring only bad news about the human condition. I get a bit sensitive about walking into a room because I know that people may be wondering, "What horror will he bring us next?" The fact is I have words of hope-strong hope-for you this morning. But it is hope that must be earned, and we'll earn it together, by acknowledging the predicament from which we are emerging, and in that way the hope can be most genuine. So you will hear a few snippets of bad news, but in the service of emphasizing the good news, the developing commitment in our society to a more life-enhancing direction. I will say something about an ailment our country has been suffering from what I call Superpower Syndrome. And, if I were to sum up in a few words what I want to talk to you about this morning, they would be, Stepping Out of the Superpower Syndrome.

What do I mean by Superpower Syndrome? It consists of a sense of omnipotence-of being all powerful-that has not only existed in the minds of many of our political leaders but has made its way into the minds of Americans in general. The Superpower Syndrome includes a sense of unlimited entitlement - because we are the world's greatest military power, we must remain militarily dominant as the only superpower. And as such, we must have no vulnerabilities, no signs of weakness.

In playing out our version of the Superpower Syndrome, we have reacted to the extreme behavior of others with extreme behavior of our own. With the assaults of 9/11-which surely were "a crime against humanity" in the language of the Nuremburg trials following World War II-wisdom would have consisted of a measured response, joining with allies throughout the world who wished to help us, and focusing on bringing to justice those specifically responsible, while re-examining our relationship to the forces in the Middle East. But instead of that measured response we embarked on unilaterally on what we call a "war on terror" - an amorphous form of eternal combat which has no beginning and no end, and is bound up with the vision of eliminating evil in the world. In that way we responded to an apocalyptic attack in our own apocalyptic manner.

And indeed we have ourselves expressed two forms of extremism. One is religious, a fundamentalist projection that polarizes the world into American virtue and our evil enemies. But our second form of extremism, less appreciated, is secular - a form of all consuming American nationalism, which is at the heart of the Superpower Syndrome, and views us as not just a world leader but an unerring fount of our version of democratic principles to be disseminated throughout the world as we see fit and by force if necessary. We have embarked on a process in which we have sought to dictate historical outcomes, now in one place, now in another.

Okay, now you've heard the bad news and it's time for the good news.

First, as you may have noticed, Superpower Syndrome is based on fantasy. No person or group can be omnipotent; no one can win an amorphous "war on terror" or in the process eliminate evil from the world; much of history is unpredictable and nobody can control its major events.

Once we recognize our collective fantasy - and you don't have to be a psychiatrist like me to recognize it - we have taken our first step out of this harmful syndrome. And many Americans have come to precisely that recognition and have spoken out for more modest and humane American behavior in the world.

There is an interesting paradox here: by renouncing superpower omnipotence, we become less not more fearful-because we cease to be frightened by our own vulnerability and recognize that vulnerability is part of the human condition.

Americans are also coming to recognize that superpower arrogance is inseparable from incompetence, whether in international politics or handling of our domestic economy, and we are witnessing a creative flood of policy suggestions to bring about improvements in our relation to the world as well as in our individual lives.

And this takes us to a principle of patriotism. I urge each of you to be patriotic throughout your lives. Patriotism, in strict dictionary definition, means love of and devotion to one's country. For myself, I assure you that the harsh things I've said about American behavior derive from precisely that kind of love and devotion, along with the sense that America has the potential for so much better. True patriotism includes a critical spirit that insists that we call forth what Abraham Lincoln termed our better angels, our more decent traditions and capabilities. However trampled upon recently, these persist and remain available to us. They include not only our democratic structures but our cultural wellsprings of bold imagination. Rather than give up on our institutions and our society, we need to engage them and take full advantage of them. I think that this is happening, and as it does we gain an enlarged and improved sense of what it means to be a patriotic American.

Many are applying this kind of patriotism to the Iraq War. In response to American deaths we've heard our leaders rotely apply a version of the warrior ethos: we must not permit our soldiers to have died in vain, and therefore we must expand and intensify the war. But a more genuine form of patriotism-as expressed by many family members of Americans killed-has insisted that the meaning we draw from those deaths is the opposite one: that we look critically at the falsifications that brought about this ill-advised war and embark on a mission of ending the war. In that way, these tragic deaths - and equally tragic deaths of tens if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis - can lead us to the more loving form of patriotism I am describing.

By stepping out of the Superpower Syndrome we liberate ourselves as Americans from a burden of illusion, and of violent behavior stemming from illusion. In fits and starts Americans have already begun to imagine the relief this brings to our selves and to the world at large.

None of this means that the world can be suddenly divested of violence. But it does suggest that we are capable of embarking on less violent, more diplomatic, more shared directions.

We can also regain our capacity for empathy for others, for responding to their suffering-whether in Darfur, Myanmar, China, or New Orleans.

In the process, we question a need for certainty and we recover our capacity for ambiguity and nuance. The humane political projects have always been self-questioning and skeptical of absolute claims. Similarly, as Catholic theologian David Tracy has shown us, the same is true of great religious visionaries, who have never been without their doubts.

Americans, in our own imperfect and often confused ways, are struggling toward constructive forms of openness and self-questioning. This is what Albert Camus, the French writer and philosopher, meant when he insisted that to live and die as human beings, we need to "refuse to be a god" and to embrace "thought which recognizes limits."

In graduating you are entering an American society struggling with new ways to achieve both economic improvement and better means of serving others. Nothing will be easy, but at this moment there is a profound call to reconnect with those "better angels" - that more noble potential that Lincoln spoke of. Each of you has a chance to answer that call.

Let me close with a quotation that expresses this sense of open possibility. It is from Gershom Scholem, the great student of Jewish mysticism who wrote:

"The story is not ended. It has not yet become history. And the secret life it holds may break out tomorrow in you or in me."

Thank you and go in peace.