On graduating into a changing world

The college students going through commencement this spring in Missouri and all around the nation are entering the larger world outside their schools’ walls at a time when that world is changing more rapidly than ever before, for better and worse. They are joining a world with exploding medical knowledge that is affording longer, healthier lives for many, though access to health care continues to be denied to many low-income people, often due to the whims of ideologically driven Republican legislators. They are joining a world where with the advent of Google Glass many people will soon have a phone in their peripheral vision, so even more of us will be walking around talking to themselves. We are more connected – yet more distant – than ever before, steadily losing the ability to talk to one another face to face, spending entire family meals and dinner dates with faces buried in gadgets. 

What does all of this rapid change mean, in a world bursting with 7 billion people – a billion of whom are malnourished with another billion living near starvation? It means we must be willing to change to meet the evolving 21^st century dynamic of global infrastructure, especially the transformational electronic, digital and mobile environments. It means our new graduates have the opportunity to use what they have learned at university to help meet these challenges, get engaged in what’s going on in the world and make their voices heard. 

They must realize that where they stand today is a result of fortuitous birthplace and circumstances, as well as the subsequent intersection of luck, talent, hard work and the support of others. They should live with an awareness of just how grim and desperate daily life is in many other places on the globe – and in many other neighborhoods in our own cities and states. They must commit to leave this world better than they found it, no matter how big or how small their contribution. We all have that responsibility. If you are sitting in a cubicle counting down the hours nearly every day of your life, something is wrong. If that goes on for too long, one day you’ll wake up and be a shell of the person you were meant to become. If some passion or hunger isn’t driving you in some important aspect of your life, you’re not being fair to yourself.

The world is changing fast. St. Louis, Missouri and the rest of the United States are facing huge economic challenges. China, India and other emerging nations are rapidly growing as economic competitors. The internet and broadband infrastructure have leveled the playing field and made it possible for people over the world to be connected and to rigorously compete. When there are changes in monetary policy in Japan or the ability to service public debt in Greece, the impact is felt all around the world, including here in St. Louis. We will all need to function at a higher level to claim our share of a global pie that is both expanding but increasingly more complex.

In our nation, the demographic shifts demand that we change as a people. The U.S. Census says that non-Hispanic whites will be a numerical minority by 2050. Therefore, we must learn to live together across racial and cultural divides. George Washington Carver was born in 1864, before the abolition of slavery, yet he revolutionized agriculture. In addition to his remarkable scientific accomplishments, he was concerned about improving race relations, mentoring children, writing, poetry, painting and religion. We would all do well to remember something simple, yet profound, that he once said: “How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because some day in life you will have been all these.”

Edited from remarks made by publisher and executive editor Donald M. Suggs at the Spring 2013 Commencement of Missouri State University in Springfield, Mo.