[短文分享] Address by Václav Havel in assuming the office of president (abridged)

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Address by Václav Havel in Assuming the office of president (abridged)
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/ O* u3 W+ K" g# e8 ^' u' y公仔箱論壇Our country is not flourishing. The state, which calls itself a workers' state, humiliates and exploits workers. Our outmoded economy wastes what little energy we have. A country that once could be proud of the educational level of its citizens now spends so little on education that it ranks seventy-second in the world. We have polluted our land, rivers, and forests, bequeathed to us by our ancestors; we now have the most contaminated environment in all of Europe. 公仔箱論壇" S7 i4 T" n; J$ z1 c7 n

+ z( r" g) n! r8 R7 N1 yThe worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We have fallen morally ill because we became used to saying one thing and thinking another. We have learned not to believe in anything, to ignore each other, to care only about ourselves. Notions such as love, friendship, compassion, humility, or forgiveness have lost their depth and dimensions; for many of us, they represent nothing more than psychological idiosyncrasies, ... It reduced gifted and autonomous people to nuts and bolts in some monstrously huge, noisy, and stinking machine, whose real purpose is not clear to anyone. Such a machine can do nothing but slowly and inexorably wear itself out along with all its nuts and bolts.0 s$ v7 F! O) E2 w

+ w$ ?+ m  ~% ?* D4 w5.39.217.76We have all become used to the totalitarian system and accepted it as immutable fact, thus helping to perpetuate it. We cannot blame the previous rulers for everything - not only because it is untrue but also because it would weaken our sense of duty, our obligation to act independently, freely, sensibly, and quickly.
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Self-respect is not pride. Only a person or a nation with self-respect, in the best sense of the word, is capable of listening to others while expiating their own sins. Let us try to infuse our communities with this kind of self-respect; let our country's behavior on the international stage be marked by this kind of self-respect. Our main enemy today is our bad habits: indifference to the common good, vanity, personal ambition, selfishness, and envy. The main struggle will have to be fought against these foes.