Our very existence is based upon—and limited by—our capacity to overcome. As my time at Rensselaer comes to a close I leave with one conclusion, that we as students are those who will overcome. Our generation will face the next—and surely the most daunting—hurdle yet to come. Quite the bold statement for a generation that is almost unscathed by global conflict and perched on prosperity from the start, but the challenges are indeed mounting.
The Rev. Thomas Malthus, the British political economist, once postulated in his famous Essay on the Principle of Population, published in 1798, that humanity would cave in on itself through social evils such as war, starvation, and infanticide due to the relationship between population and the food supply. Malthus pointed out that population grows exponentially, while the rate at which food can be produced could only increase arithmetically. So Malthus reasoned that it was a mathematical inevitability that human history would follow this grim course. Unfortunately for Malthus, he did not recognize that the world was on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution—which overcame and avoided his certain collapse.
In this day and age, once again, I believe we are on the cusp of something big just like Malthus was some 200 years ago. This time, however, the challenges are far more complicated than getting a higher yield out of the arable land on earth.
Today we face the challenges of a new interconnected world. Advances in communication and technology have enabled the entire world’s population to get a taste of the true fruits of economic growth—with billions feeling shut out we see the clash of the haves and the have nots, with entire cultures lashing out. We can no longer assume that our actions have no long-term impact on our environments and ecosystems. Furthermore, recent natural disasters even leave many questioning whether we have already gone too far. With the recent glitch in energy prices, we are beginning to see that the age of fossil fuels has passed its zenith and coming to a close.
With that said it is not hard to see why so many become pessimistic—much like Malthus—and see a tomorrow with a digressing society. So how do we move forward?
Through my experience I can simply cite two timeless principles. The first, which supersedes the second, is the work ethic that is essential for any success. We are born with a certain set of skills and talents—that we can not control. What we can control is how we implement and develop them—and the extent to which we apply them to our lives. The second principle is optimism. The power of positive thinking and the belief that you can and will overcome is too often passed off as unguided idealism. I am not a complete idealist, but more accurately a true believer that everyday there are those that change paradigms and leap the unleapable.
The promise in our students far outweighs the magnitude and complexity of our challenges. I would venture to say that there are those among our student population today that will be integral in finding a renewable, alternative energy resource. There are those among us who will be the future brokers between cultures and nations, making real economic opportunity available to all. There will be those who will continue to mold the belief that what we have and enjoy today is not only sustainable—but has tremendous room for improvement.
So why all this hard work, leadership, and so on? It is simply a mathematical principle, or the defiance of one yet again. The challenge set forth to our generation is to once again find a way to meet our exponentially growing needs and desires through abstracting more out from our linearly expanding resource base.
