麻豆社

Good morning.

The words of head teachers - those demi-gods of our childhoods - can echo down the years. Happily what has stuck in my ears is not the infamous 'you've let the school down, you've let your class down . . . and so on', but some altogether more resonant and telling sayings, including, from the Book of Proverbs the aphorism 'where there is no vision the people perish'.

We are in the midst of a political crisis - national and international, it might be said. There is instability at home and instability abroad. And in the rough and tumble of everyday national and international political conflicts, vision is in danger of going by the board. As individuals, parties and factions jockey for position, the here and now of political life may seem to allow neither time nor space for visionary thinking. There again the cynical may not shed too many tears about the loss of vision - when even a company making ice creams is likely to have a mission and a vision, there is a danger that we all become a bit sceptical about 'the vision thing' as the senior President Bush once referred to it.

That word 'vision' in the book of Proverbs is in fact, a little bit more tricky than it might at first appear. To our ears - and taken out of context - the word 'vision' could suggest a personal aspiration or goal. But we hear the word in the Old Testament in a rather different sense - it might be better translated as 'oracle' or 'revelation'. The prophets - Daniel, Isaiah, Ezekiel - often refer to their entire books as 'the vision' given to them - not something which relies on their creativity or personal insight, but something which they receive. Visions in the sense of revelations or oracles are not from below, but from above.

Taking the aphorism back to its original context however, may seem to make it redundant in our own, in which the people are of all faiths and none. And yet, it seems to me that the idea of values and visions as standing above us is one which resonates well beyond only those who revere the Hebrew or Christian scriptures. Someone just has to return some money which has ended up in their bank account by mistake. Another person must give some time to a local charity. Someone else is bound to care for a sick relative or neighbour. The 'has to', the 'must' and the 'bound to', are compelling in a way that mere preferences or choices or personal goals are not.

On the other side of the frenzy of the current political crisis, we will as individuals, and as a nation, need to connect with values and visions which inspire us to act for the common good. If not - well, the Headmaster's version of the saying was that without a vision the people will perish; but to give the striking and bleak literal translation, without a vision the people will become naked.

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