Seeing what we've never seen before

Samuel Gorovitz
Knight Ridder
Published Tuesday, April 17, 2001

Recently I stood in the prison on Robben Island looking into the tiny cell where Nelson Mandela lived for 18 years. The guide had explained the humiliations and deprivations that attended this long imprisonment, but what seemed beyond explaining is the strength of character that enabled a man to endure such things for such a time, and then to emerge as a national leader possessed of optimism, generosity of spirit and a commitment to reconciliation rather than revenge. How is this possible?

When Elie Wiesel spoke last fall to the freshmen in Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences, he emphasized that hatred is as poisonous when one is facing one's tormentors as at any other time. Like Mandela, Wiesel suffered unfathomable personal losses that could easily have crushed the spirit or bred a blazing vindictiveness. Yet each became a force for the power of love, tolerance, respect for difference -- for the joy of human potential even in the face of dreadful human realities.

Here is some of what I learned about how Mandela did it: On Robben Island, just outside Table Bay at Cape Town, South Africa, there is a lime quarry. In the brilliant sun, its white walls glare with painful brightness. Mandela and the other prisoners made to work long hours there were not allowed dark glasses. The fine lime dust from their back-breaking work pervaded their clothes, invaded their lungs, irritated their squinting eyes.

Some of them were, like Mandela, educated men who knew that even as their bodies labored and suffered, their minds were free and strong. But many other prisoners were uneducated -- even illiterate. So the quarry became a place of teaching and learning.

Writing in the dust with sticks, the educated prisoners brought a reverence for the power of knowledge to those who had never had the opportunity to develop their minds. Even prisoners who were criminals, rather than political prisoners, came to understand that grinding poverty, discrimination, ignorance and lack of opportunity -- the wellsprings of crime -- were best addressed by empowering their own minds. So some of them became students, too.

All this happened before the watchful eyes of prison guards, many of whom were untutored louts. Yet, louts though they were, they saw something valuable going on, something that attracted them more than it threatened them. So they also became students, and Mandela and the others taught them out of respect for their humanity and their interest in learning. Those guards experienced affirmations both of mind and of heart -- in sharing their knowledge, the educated prisoners displayed a generosity of spirit that prompted both admiration and growing respect from some of the guards.

For Mandela this was an early stage of the movement toward reconciliation. We marvel at the tenacity and endurance of Ernest Shackelton, whose failed Antarctic exploration in 1914 threatened the lives of his 21 stranded crewmen. Shackelton persevered for 14 months, in the end saving all against very long odds. How much more ought we marvel at Mandela, who persevered for 18 years and more, saving his nation in the end!

Mandela shares the credit for this triumphant accomplishment, for he too was a learner, like all good teachers. And he cites especially the influence of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., whose own hearts and minds helped forge the insight and power that Mandela brought to Robben Island.

As we drove in the bush one day along what could only satirically be called a road, our guide suddenly stopped the Land Rover and looked intently down at the roadside. ''There'' -- he pointed -- ''rhino,'' indicating a fresh track. It was there -- we could see it. But he had been driving at 25 kph. How could he possibly have spotted it?

Later, he stopped again, staring into the distance. Then he looked with binoculars. ''Yes,'' he affirmed, pointing into a valley in the far distance. ''There they are.'' We saw nothing. But when we, too, used binoculars, we could just make out some small gray dots near a watering hole. A Londoner in the group exclaimed: ''How did he do that? I couldn't spot a double-decker bus at that distance!''

How is this possible? The guide had highly refined capacities, powers of perception, that seemed unavailable to the rest of us.

We inquired. He explained that he uses all his senses, all the time -- that the air smells different if an antelope has recently crossed the road, that a few blades of grass at an odd angle are signs one can read, that a speck of gray in an otherwise green landscape or a rustling sound from the bush are clues. Hearing this did not enable us to do what he does, of course, yet we were changed by that hearing, by that reminder of how underdeveloped some of our own potentials are.

We were not suddenly able to see rhinos, or even buses, a mile off, but we started attending in new ways, seeing more. Instead of just looking around, we were self-conscious about how we were seeing. We smelled the air, scanned the grasses, scrutinized the distant views, listened. Our heightened sensibilities enriched us, made us more fully present in and connected with our natural environment.

This is like Mandela's heritage to us. In seeing the humanity of his oppressors, he displayed rare moral discernment. He was more fully present in, more fully connected with, his moral environment than what we typically think is possible. He thus enlarges our own moral sensitivity, our sense of the possibilities of moral discernment.


Samuel Gorovitz is a professor of philosophy and of public administration at Syracuse University. Readers may write to him at: Hall of Languages 541, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y. 13244.