Pining for a Hero

At last! Someone has finally said what the whole rational world has been thinking. We finally have a new hero in Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada. At the Davos World Economic Forum, Carney delivered a succinct and inspiring 30 minute speech that brought the collective audience of politicians, national leaders, corporate chieftains, and members of the global power elite to their feet in a standing ovation. These are the moments that define history and unsettle autocrats. It was a speech from a member of what are becoming known as the “Middle Powers”. Canada is ranked 9th in GDP in the world and yet it only has a population of 42 million. When I heard that number this morning, something rang in my head from a movie I was watching last night. I was watching Invictus, the story of Nelson Mandela during his first years in power in South Africa.

Invictus is a movie made in 2009 and directed by Clint Eastwood, starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar. This film tells the story of how Mandela used the 1995 Rugby World Cup to help unite post-apartheid South Africa. Set in 1994-1995, just after Mandela became South Africa’s first black president, when the country was deeply divided along racial lines. Mandela saw the national rugby team, the Springboks—traditionally a symbol of white Afrikaner culture—as an opportunity to bring the nation together. He enlisted team captain Francois Pienaar to help inspire the team to win the World Cup on home soil, using sports as a bridge across racial divides. Mandela uses the 1875 poem by William Ernest Henley to inspire Pienaar. This powerful Victorian poem has become one of the most famous expressions of human resilience and unconquerable spirit. The title and a key scene reference Henley’s poem. Mandela gives Pienaar a copy of Invictus, explaining how it sustained him during his 27 years in prison. The poem’s themes of unconquerable spirit mirror both Mandela’s personal journey and the challenge facing the Rainbow Nation.

Henley wrote Invictus (Latin for “unconquered”) while recovering from tuberculosis of the bone, which had already cost him one leg and threatened the other. Despite his suffering, he refused amputation of his remaining leg and eventually recovered. The poem’s final stanza is particularly renowned:

“I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul”

The poem gained renewed prominence when Nelson Mandela recited it during his 27 years of imprisonment on Robben Island, drawing strength from its message of self-determination in the face of brutal circumstances. The themes of stoic resilience in the face of suffering, of personal sovereignty and self-mastery, of defiance against fate and circumstance, and of dignity maintained through hardship are particularly relevant in today’s world. Its message of unconquerable will has made it a touchstone for personal motivation and mental fortitude and must have certainly come to mind as Carney prepared his speech for Davos. Strangely enough, when Mandela was asked if he had any children, he said, in the movie, that he had 42 million children. That made me think of the connection between Invictus and Mark Carney’s speech, but if I were asked what Carney should have said, it would have been that his children numbered 8.3 billion because what he spoke for was the entire population of the world. I suspect that Mark Carney may go down in history as the Nelson Mandela of our generation based on that speech, just like Trump will go down as more akin to Il Duce, speaking from his pulpit in the Victor Emmanuel Square in Rome as he spew his wrath and inane commentary on his cowed audience in the cheap seats below. Naturally, Trump reacted to Carney’s words in his typical vengeful approach, he removed Canada (and therefore Carney) from consideration for membership in his newest elite club, his “Board of Peace” that has become his latest billionaire’s club, supposedly to govern Gaza and become a pseudo-replacement for the UN Security Council. I’m sure if you asked Carney, he would thank Trump for removing his name from consideration.

With all of the sycophantic action in Davos, with people jockeying for position to get close enough to Emperor Trump’s hem, there was a strong and decidedly anti-Trump air about the proceedings this year. There was the journalistic commentary about Trump’s rambling diatribe of a speech being analyzed for its indicators of dementia. There was Christine Legard’s mid-speech departure from Howard Lutnick’s anti-European rant. And there was Al Gore’s outspoken subsequent booing of the Lutnick speech. The Davos master of ceremonies, Larry Fink of Blackrock, must be questioning his decision about taking on the task of leading this seemingly fracturing band of elite power brokers.

So what did Mark Carney say that was so very powerful? Here was his best quote:

“In a time of rising walls and thickening borders, we demonstrate how a country can be both open and secure, welcoming and strong, principled and powerful. There are literally billions of people who aspire to what we have built. A pluralistic society that works. A public square that’s loud, diverse and free. An economy that delivers broadly shared prosperity. A democracy that chooses to protect the most vulnerable against the powerful.”

Those are beautiful and meaningful words that represent the goodness of the human soul at a time of rampant self-interest and autocracy. Through time there has been realization that self-interest is fleeting. Many ranging from Marcus Aurelius to Shakespeare have spoken of it, but an obscure author, Albert Pine, most famously said it best…

“What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.”

The Pine quote seems most directly aligned with what Mark Carney talked about – the idea that self-interested actions end when we do, but contributions to others endure beyond our lifetime. It’s just a matter of time until this trend of self-interest, epitomized by the evolution of the Davis World Economic Forum since 1971, runs its course and dies out. History tells us that the end of the cycle gets expressed through the hyperbole of a zealot. Our time’s mindless and soulless spokesman is Donald Trump. But for every “dark lord” there is also a beacon of light, and Mark Carney has now ascended to that podium with his brave and righteous speech. We have been pining for a hero and it seems we’ve found one now.