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Message from Václav Havel, former President of the Czech Republic
To the inaugural Interdependence Day in Philadelphia
Read on Interdependence Day 2003 in Philadelphia by Ambassador Martin Palou
Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Friends,
Let me send you my greetings under this special occasion and express my regret that I cannot be in Philadelphia today. The idea to promulgate the Declaration of Interdependence the day after the anniversary of the horrible events of September 11, 2001, in the city where the American Constitution was born two hundred seventeen years ago, is charged with lucid and compelling symbolism. The founding of the United States was definitely one of the most important events in the beginning of the modern "enlightened" era - a bold decision of its "founding fathers" to enter into a social contract and to create a political body whose essence was to be the respect for unalienable human rights, political liberties and social justice, the rule of law and republican form of government. Terrorism - regardless of being fed by fundamentalist religious visions or mere lust for power - represents the most dangerous phenomenon on our current historical crossroads. Observing the world affairs after 9/11, it is obvious that the United States is playing a crucial role in the struggle against this threat. Nonetheless, it is also obvious that the United States cannot do it alone. Does not mankind need in the 21st century - in order to protect and preserve the values that once ignited the American Revolution - a new social contract, this time concluded not only between American "founding fathers," but between all freedom-loving people on the earth, "a new political principle," Hannah Arendt called for in her "Origins of Totalitarianism"?
I realize how complicated and complex the current political problems can be, how challenging it is to cope with all the questions we have to deal with today in our political thought. I certainly wish your assembly - that in the favorable circumstances, may lay foundation to a new, important, genuinely post-modern political movement and a new political tradition - success. I hope it can start a new open-minded, tolerant and creative dialogue concerning our global situation and build gradually new transnational networks of commitment to public interest and common good.
I actually sense something here, what strongly reminds me of the atmosphere of our Charter 77, a Czechoslovak human rights movement of the 1970s and 1980s. There were two simple principles at stake vital for our ability to survive as a kind of political body (as a "parallel polis," named by one of my colleagues from that time): the principle of individual responsibility and the principle of solidarity. On the one hand, the only arbiter that one could appeal to when people were adding their signatures under Charter documents and participated in all kinds of Charter activities, was his/her own consciousness. In the last resort, everybody had to make up his or her mind alone and resist all sorts of doubts and pressures, to examine his/her own beliefs and opinions, to assess his/her courage, and to judge the sincerity of his/her own intentions. On the other hand, Charter 77 could not have survived without the spirit of solidarity between its members (or rather participants, because it was not an organization), between the people often different both in their past experience and current political opinions. Living together in one and the same situation, they were united by their common concern for human rights and desire for human freedom and authenticity.
Let us hope that the word "interdependence," used more and more often in our political vocabulary, does not indicate that we are more and more determined by the "objective," i.e. from an individual perspective unchangeable, factors of our situation; that being interdependent we should feel less and less free, and in the end of the day, become slaves of our irresistible fears of our unavoidable dark future.
Let us hope, that, in spite of all current challenges and threats, the word "interdependence" will always mean for us what it meant, for instance, for the Polish workers in the shipyard in Gdansk in 1980, when they started their way from serfdom to freedom: an appeal to liberate ourselves from our fears and petty idiosyncratic concerns, an appeal to live like the citizens of the world, true cosmopolitans, being aware of our common responsibility and solidarity.
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