Future -- on canvas - Thought Leader

By Erik de Ridder

Foreword
“This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease.” As it were, Robert Kennedy stated this in a speech delivered at the University of Cape Town in 1966.

I am Frederik Thomas de Ridder, an individual of Afrikaner birth and heritage but I say this to you only in pre-amble, for in truth: I am South African. By which I mean I reside within the bounds of that beautiful country.

I will spare you the journey through my personal struggles growing up in South Africa in the humbling knowledge that others have experienced far worse and far greater.

I am the product of a difficult history and triumph of liberty in my country, of my parents and of those who entertain my existence on a daily basis, many of them here with us this evening.

I am no different from any of you in the following sense:
I share the dream of a bright future with my fellow South Africans. In the same way that each of you share that very same spirit with your fellow countrymen and women. A shared vision for peace and prosperity and the conquest of good over evil.

I am a small part of the whole, as such; I cannot claim to be all that it means to be South African in the knowledge that a once divided country will never really find itself a perfect representative.

That said, I am inseparable from my ideals … my beliefs and outlook defines me. In so far as I am a product of my environment, these beliefs, ideals and outlook speak to the South African story.

In telling this story … bear with me as I try to unshackle the oppressive bounds of history and craft the world to which I awake.

Allow me to begin …
Esteemed members of the Congress of the United States,
your excellencies, members of the diplomatic corps,
board members of the various programmes
distinguished guests, comrades, friends and fellow South Africans;

I believe that a realist painter cannot paint what she has not seen but an abstract artist can establish nothing short of a new reality.

A painter recognises her unique conditions and circumstances, the unique time and her place in history in progressing her understanding … of herself and the world around her so that she may fulfil her destiny and best depict her observances to benefit the wider world.

Tonight — by whatever course we have followed — we find ourselves in this room.

We have different histories and yet we share a common future.

We are at the apex of the arch of history. Once upon a time each of us used to face our own canvas.

In this 21st century, however, we are amidst the onslaught of the age of globalisation and inter-connectedness so much so that we are now inexcusably bound to a common canvas.

A canvas that stretches from the emerging east to the prosperous west. From the long established power of the north to the new burgeoning potential of the south. It is a canvas that allows each and every human being on the planet, to assert themselves and stake their democratic claim.

We cannot afford to think that our destinies are not tied or that our futures are mutually exclusive. Global discourse will be the collective product of our thoughts and beliefs and actions … now, more than ever.

I consider myself in relation to the world, the stars, the planets, the streets, the poverty, the war, the diseases and pandemics and, the hopes and the dreams all in the passages of time and fear the possibility that we may not emerge victorious.

I fear that we often forget that the pictures that we bring to this communal canvas may be torn, battered or burnt and incomplete but are all equally valid in their honest form. Where there are no honest stories told … there is little hope to be had.

I am not alone in the knowledge that for as long as there is oppression and violence anywhere in this world, our communal future is compromised.

To paint the future we seek, together we must relent and become abstract painters, letting go of our realist tendencies and conformist ways.

Our world systems have been established by people of a certain mind and will. Through this very birthright, reward that same mind into the future of their existence.

When ideas different to that original mind enter the structure, seeking change, it is termed revolution or anarchy.

It is called a revolution because these institutions rely on history to derive function and form rather than true and comprehensive necessity for the future.

The world needs us to be that original mind, to be unreasonable and disrupt the accepted norm. It is not enough to simply enter these structures and conform to be rewarded.

It needs us to be abstract revolutionaries and exert an unimaginable force on these systems, for the greater good of humanity.

[…]

Creation and innovation is an ultimate freedom and dignity, respect and truth are sub-sets of that self-determination.

These are not self-standing concepts — they are all bound to each other. There can be no truth where there is no freedom; no dignity where there is no respect.

Albert Camus once said that “nothing can discourage the appetite for divinity in the heart of man”.

The divine aspiration to reach for that, which is greater than himself;

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It is that very appetite that moves an entire people to choose reconciliation and peace over violence and retribution and establishes a world precedent for contemporary political, social and democratic ideology at the southern tip of Africa.

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It is this pursuit of divinity captured in the hearts of each and every man, woman and child that come together to form the soul and spirit of a nation.

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The pursuit of happiness — bound to the deepening of democracy, proliferation of broader and substantive social justice, equality, and peace and the rule of law and rooted in the principles of Ubuntu — is our pursuit as the young people of this planet.
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Inkululeko … vryheid … freedom;

I thank you.

Erik de Ridder is a student of civil engineering and economics at the University of Cape Town. He is passionate about the reinvention of the political archetype towards systems, processes and dialogues, which make government and business more transparent, accountable and efficient than ever.
Extracts from a speech delivered on July 12 at the South Africa-Washington Internship Programme Congressional Forum 2011. The full speech can be found on the SAWIP website or here on Erik de Ridder’s blog, Animus.