《Because We Can， We Must》歌词

[00:00:02] Because We Can, We Must - 英语演讲

[00:00:06] Commencement Address by Bono

[00:00:09] at University of Pennsylvania

[00:00:12] My name is Bono and I am a rock star.

[00:00:16] Don't get me too excited because

[00:00:19] I use four letter words when I get excited.

[00:00:21] I'd just like to say to the parents,

[00:00:24] your children are safe, your country is safe,

[00:00:27] the FCC has taught me a lesson

[00:00:30] and the only four letter word

[00:00:32] I'm going to use today is P-E-N-N.

[00:00:35] Come to think of it, “Bono” is a four-letter word.

[00:00:39] The whole business of obscenity -

[00:00:42] I don't think there's anything certainly more unseemly

[00:00:45] than the sight of a rock star in academic robes.

[00:00:48] It's a bit like when people put their King Charles

[00:00:51] spaniels in little tartan sweats and hats.

[00:00:54] It's not natural, and it doesn't make the dog any smarter.

[00:00:58] It's true we were here before with U2

[00:01:03] and I would like to thank them for giving me a great life,

[00:01:06] as well as you. I've got a great rock

[00:01:09] and roll band that normally stand in the back

[00:01:12] when I'm talking to thousands of people

[00:01:14] in a football stadium and they were here with me,

[00:01:17] I think it was seven years ago.

[00:01:21] Actually then I was with some other sartorial problems.

[00:01:23] I was wearing a mirror-ball suit

[00:01:26] at the time and I emerged from a forty-foot high revolving lemon.

[00:01:29] It was sort of a cross between a space ship,

[00:01:32] a disco and a plastic fruit.

[00:01:34] I guess it was at that point

[00:01:38] when your Trustees decided to give me their highest honor.

[00:01:41] Doctor of Laws, wow! I know it's an honor,

[00:01:46] and it really is an honor, but are you sure?

[00:01:49] Doctor of Law, all I can think about

[00:01:53] is the laws I've broken - laws of nature,

[00:01:56] laws of physics, laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,

[00:02:00] and on a memorable night in the late seventies,

[00:02:03] I think it was Newton's law of motion...sickness.

[00:02:06] No, it's true, my resume reads like a rap sheet.

[00:02:11] I have to come clean. I've broken a lot of laws,

[00:02:15] and the ones I haven't I've certainly thought about.

[00:02:18] God forgive me. Actually God forgave me.

[00:02:23] I'm here getting a doctorate, getting respectable,

[00:02:26] getting in the good graces of the powers that be.

[00:02:29] So I humbly accept the honor,

[00:02:33] keeping in mind the words of a British playwright,

[00:02:37] John Mortimer it was, "No brilliance is needed in the law.

[00:02:40] Nothing but common sense and relatively clean fingernails."

[00:02:44] Well at best I've got one of the two of those.

[00:02:49] I studied rock and roll and I grew up in Dublin in the 70s,

[00:02:55] music was an alarm bell for me, it woke me up to the world.

[00:03:00] I was 17 when I first saw The Clash,

[00:03:03] and it just sounded like revolution.

[00:03:06] The Clash were like, "This is a public service announcement -

[00:03:10] with guitars." I was the kid in the crowd

[00:03:14] who took it at face value.

[00:03:15] Later I learned that a lot of the rebels

[00:03:18] were in it for the T-shirt.

[00:03:20] I didn't expect change to come so slow,

[00:03:24] so agonizingly slow.

[00:03:26] I didn't realize that the biggest obstacle

[00:03:29] to political and social progress wasn't the Free Masons,

[00:03:33] or the Establishment, it was something much more subtle.

[00:03:36] As the Provost just referred to,

[00:03:39] a combination of our own indifference

[00:03:42] and the Kafkaesque labyrinth of those

[00:03:45] you encounter as people vanish down the corridors of bureaucracy.

[00:03:48] So for better or worse that was my education.

[00:03:54] I came away with a clear sense of the difference

[00:03:58] music could make in my own life,

[00:04:00] in other people's lives if I did my job right.

[00:04:03] Which if you're a singer in a rock band means

[00:04:06] avoiding the obvious pitfalls like, say, a mullet hairdo.

[00:04:11] If anyone here doesn't know what a mullet

[00:04:14] is by the way your education's certainly not complete,

[00:04:18] I'd ask for your money back. For a lead singer like me,

[00:04:22] a mullet is, I would suggest, arguably more dangerous

[00:04:25] than a drug problem. Yes, I had a mullet in the 80s.

[00:04:30] Now this is the point where the members of the faculty

[00:04:34] start smiling uncomfortably and thinking maybe

[00:04:37] they should have offered me the honorary bachelors

[00:04:39] degree instead of the full blown doctorate -

[00:04:42] he should have been the bachelor's one,

[00:04:45] he's talking about mullets and stuff.

[00:04:47] If they're asking what on earth I'm doing here,

[00:04:50] I think it's a fair question. What am I doing here?

[00:04:54] More to the point - what are you doing here?

[00:04:57] Because if you don't mind me saying so

[00:05:00] this is a strange ending to an Ivy League education.

[00:05:04] Four years in these historic halls thinking great thoughts

[00:05:08] and now you're sitting in a stadium better

[00:05:11] suited for football listening to an Irish rock star

[00:05:13] give a speech that is so far mostly about himself.

[00:05:16] What are you doing here?

[00:05:18] Actually I saw something in the paper last week

[00:05:22] about Kermit the Frog giving a commencement address somewhere.

[00:05:26] One of the students was complaining,

[00:05:29] "I worked my ass off for four years to be addressed by a sock?"

[00:05:33] You have worked your ass off for this.

[00:05:36] For four years you've been buying, trading, and selling,

[00:05:40] everything you've got in this marketplace of ideas.

[00:05:43] The intellectual hustle.

[00:05:45] Your pockets are full, even if your parents' are empty,

[00:05:48] and now you've got to figure out what to spend it on.

[00:05:52] Well, the going rate for change is not cheap.

[00:05:57] Big ideas are expensive.

[00:05:59] The University has had its share of big ideas.

[00:06:02] Benjamin Franklin had a few,

[00:06:05] so did Justice Brennen and in my opinion so does Judith Rodin.

[00:06:10] What a gorgeous girl. They all knew

[00:06:15] that if you're gonna be good at your word,

[00:06:17] if you're gonna live up to your ideals and your education,

[00:06:19] it's gonna cost you.

[00:06:20] So my question I suppose is: What's the big idea?

[00:06:26] What's your big idea? What are you willing to

[00:06:31] spend your moral capital, your intellectual capital,

[00:06:34] your cash, your sweat equity in pursuing

[00:06:38] outside of the walls of the University of Pennsylvania?

[00:06:41] There's a truly great Irish poet his name is Brendan Kennelly,

[00:06:47] and he has this epic poem called The Book of Judas,

[00:06:51] and there's a line in that poem that never leaves my mind,

[00:06:54] it says: "If you want to serve the age, betray it."

[00:06:58] What does that mean to betray the age?

[00:07:02] Well to me betraying the age means exposing its conceits,

[00:07:09] it's foibles; it's phony moral certitudes.

[00:07:12] It means telling the secrets of the age

[00:07:15] and facing harsher truths.

[00:07:17] Every age has its massive moral blind spots.

[00:07:21] We might not see them, but our children will.

[00:07:25] Slavery was one of them and the people

[00:07:29] who best served that age were the ones

[00:07:32] who called it as it was--which was ungodly and inhuman.

[00:07:35] Benjamin Franklin called it what it was

[00:07:38] when he became president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.

[00:07:41] Segregation. There was another one.

[00:07:46] America sees this now but it took a civil rights movement

[00:07:50] to betray their age. And 50 years ago

[00:07:54] the U.S. Supreme Court betrayed the age May 17, 1954,

[00:08:00] Brown vs. Board of Education came down

[00:08:04] and put the lie to the idea that separate

[00:08:06] can ever really be equal.

[00:08:07] Fast forward 50 years. What are the ideas right

[00:08:13] now worth betraying? What are the lies we tell ourselves now?

[00:08:17] What are the blind spots of our age?

[00:08:20] What's worth spending your post-Penn lives

[00:08:25] trying to do or undo? It might be something simple.

[00:08:28] It might be something as simple

[00:08:31] as our deep down refusal to believe

[00:08:33] that every human life has equal worth.

[00:08:35] Could that be it? Could that be it?

[00:08:38] Each of you will probably have your own answer,

[00:08:42] but for me that is it.

[00:08:43] And for me the proving ground has been Africa.

[00:08:46] Africa makes a mockery of what we say,

[00:08:51] at least what I say, about equality

[00:08:54] and questions our pieties and our commitments

[00:08:57] because there's no way to look at

[00:09:00] what's happening over there

[00:09:02] and it's effect on all of us and conclude

[00:09:04] that we actually consider Africans

[00:09:07] as our equals before God.

[00:09:07] There is no chance.

[00:09:09] An amazing event happened here

[00:09:12] in Philadelphia in 1985 - Live Aid -

[00:09:16] that whole We Are the World phenomenon

[00:09:19] the concert that happened here.

[00:09:21] Well after that concert I went to

[00:09:23] Ethiopia with my wife, Ali.

[00:09:26] We were there for a month

[00:09:28] and an extraordinary thing happened to me.

[00:09:30] We used to wake up in the morning

[00:09:33] and the mist would be lifting we'd see

[00:09:36] thousands and thousands of people

[00:09:37] who'd been walking all night to

[00:09:39] our food station were we were working.

[00:09:41] One man - I was standing outside talking to the translator -

[00:09:45] had this beautiful boy

[00:09:47] and he was saying to me in Amharic,

[00:09:50] I think it was, I said I can't understand

[00:09:52] what he's saying, and this nurse

[00:09:54] who spoke English and Amharic said to me,

[00:09:57] he's saying will you take his son.

[00:09:59] He's saying please take his son,

[00:10:02] he would be a great son for you.

[00:10:04] I was looking puzzled and he said,

[00:10:08] "You must take my son because

[00:10:10] if you don't take my son, my son will surely die.

[00:10:13] If you take him he will go back to

[00:10:16] Ireland and get an education."

[00:10:18] Probably like the ones we're talking about today.

[00:10:20] I had to say no, that was the rules there

[00:10:25] and I walked away from that man,

[00:10:27] I've never really walked away from it.

[00:10:30] But I think about that boy and

[00:10:32] that man and that's when I started this journey

[00:10:35] that's brought me here into this stadium.

[00:10:37] Because at that moment I became the worst scourge

[00:10:41] on God's green earth, a rock star with a cause.

[00:10:45] Christ! Except it isn't the cause.

[00:10:49] Seven thousand Africans dying every day of preventable,

[00:10:52] treatable disease like AIDS?

[00:10:54] That's not a cause, that's an emergency.

[00:10:57] And when the disease gets out of control

[00:11:00] because most of the population live on

[00:11:02] less than one dollar a day?

[00:11:04] That's not a cause, that's an emergency.

[00:11:07] And when resentment builds because of

[00:11:11] unfair trade rules and the burden of unfair debt,

[00:11:13] that are debts by the way that keep Africans poor?

[00:11:17] That's not a cause, that's an emergency.

[00:11:20] So, we Are the World, Live Aid, start me off

[00:11:26] it was an extraordinary thing and really

[00:11:28] that event was about charity.

[00:11:30] But 20 years on I'm not that interested in charity.

[00:11:35] I'm interested in justice.

[00:11:37] There's a difference.

[00:11:39] Africa needs justice as much as it needs charity.

[00:11:42] Equality for Africa is a big idea.

[00:11:47] It's a big expensive idea.

[00:11:50] I see the Wharton graduates now getting out

[00:11:53] the math on the back of their programs,

[00:11:55] numbers are intimidating, aren't they?

[00:11:57] But not to you!

[00:11:59] But the scale of the suffering

[00:12:01] and the scope of the commitment

[00:12:03] they often numb us into a kind of indifference.

[00:12:06] Wishing for the end to AIDS and extreme poverty

[00:12:10] in Africa is like wishing

[00:12:12] that gravity didn't make things so damn heavy.

[00:12:14] We can wish it, but what the hell can we do about it?

[00:12:18] Well, more than we think.

[00:12:23] We can't fix every problem -

[00:12:24] corruption, natural calamities

[00:12:27] are part of the picture here--

[00:12:29] but the ones we can we must.

[00:12:31] The debt burden, as I say, unfair trade,

[00:12:35] as I say, sharing our knowledge,

[00:12:39] the intellectual copyright for lifesaving drugs

[00:12:42] in a crisis, we can do that.

[00:12:44] And because we can, we must.

[00:12:47] Because we can, we must.

[00:12:51] This is the straight truth, the righteous truth.

[00:12:55] It's not a theory, it's a fact.

[00:12:58] The fact is that this generation - yours, my generation -

[00:13:03] that can look at the poverty,

[00:13:05] we're the first generation that can look at

[00:13:08] poverty and disease, look across the ocean

[00:13:10] to Africa and say with a straight face,

[00:13:13] we can be the first to end this sort of

[00:13:16] stupid extreme poverty, where in the world of plenty,

[00:13:20] a child can die for lack of food in it's belly.

[00:13:23] We can be the first generation.

[00:13:26] It might take a while,

[00:13:28] but we can be that generation

[00:13:30] that says no to stupid poverty.

[00:13:32] It's a fact, the economists confirm it.

[00:13:37] It's an expensive fact but, cheaper

[00:13:40] than say the Marshall Plan that saved Europe from fascism.

[00:13:43] And cheaper I would argue than fighting wave

[00:13:47] after wave of terrorism's new recruits.

[00:13:50] That's the economics department over there, very good.

[00:13:53] It's a fact. So why aren't we pumping our fists

[00:13:59] in the air and cheering about it?

[00:14:01] Well probably because when we admit

[00:14:04] we can do something about it,

[00:14:05] we've got to do something about it.

[00:14:08] For the first time in history we have the know how,

[00:14:11] we have the cash, we have the lifesaving drugs,

[00:14:14] but do we have the will?

[00:14:16] Yesterday, here in Philadelphia, at the Liberty Bell,

[00:14:22] I met a lot of Americans who do have the will.

[00:14:25] From arch-religious conservatives to young secular radicals,

[00:14:31] I just felt an incredible overpowering sense

[00:14:34] that this was possible.

[00:14:35] We're calling it the ONE campaign,

[00:14:38] to put an end to AIDS and extreme poverty in Africa.

[00:14:42] They believe we can do it, so do I.

[00:14:46] I really, really do believe it.

[00:14:51] I just want you to know, I think this is obvious,

[00:14:55] but I'm not really going in for the warm fuzzy feeling thing,

[00:14:58] I'm not a hippy, I do not have flowers in my hair,

[00:15:02] I come from punk rock,

[00:15:04] The Clash wore army boots not Birkenstocks.

[00:15:07] I believe America can do this!

[00:15:10] I believe that this generation can do this.

[00:15:13] In fact I want to hear an argument about why we shouldn't.

[00:15:17] I know idealism is not playing on the radio right now,

[00:15:23] you don't see it on TV, irony is on heavy rotation,

[00:15:27] the knowingness, the smirk, the tired joke.

[00:15:31] I've tried them all out but I'll tell you this,

[00:15:34] outside this campus - and even inside it -

[00:15:38] idealism is under siege beset by materialism,

[00:15:42] narcissism and all the other isms of indifference,

[00:15:47] baggism, shaggism, raggism, notism, graduationism, chismism.

[00:15:53] I don't know. Where's John Lennon when you need him.

[00:15:56] But I don't want to make you cop to idealism,

[00:16:00] not in front of your parents, or your younger siblings.

[00:16:03] But what about Americanism?

[00:16:06] Will you cop to that at least?

[00:16:08] It's not everywhere in fashion these days, Americanism.

[00:16:11] Not very big in Europe, truth be told.

[00:16:14] No less on Ivy League college campuses.

[00:16:18] But it all depends on your definition of Americanism.

[00:16:21] Me, I'm in love with this country called America.

[00:16:27] I'm a huge fan of America,

[00:16:29] I'm one of those annoying fans,

[00:16:31] you know the ones that read the CD notes

[00:16:34] and follow you into bathrooms

[00:16:35] and ask you all kinds of annoying questions

[00:16:37] about why you didn't live up to that?

[00:16:39] I'm that kind of fan.

[00:16:41] I read the Declaration of Independence

[00:16:43] and I've read the Constitution of the United States,

[00:16:46] and they are some liner notes, dude.

[00:16:49] As I said yesterday I made my pilgrimage

[00:16:53] to Independence Hall, and I love America

[00:16:56] because America is not just a country,

[00:16:58] it's an idea. You see my country, Ireland,

[00:17:02] is a great country, but it's not an idea.

[00:17:05] America is an idea, but it's an idea

[00:17:09] that brings with it some baggage,

[00:17:11] like power brings responsibility.

[00:17:13] It's an idea that brings with it equality,

[00:17:17] but equality even though it's the highest calling,

[00:17:21] is the hardest to reach. The idea that anything is possible,

[00:17:26] that's one of the reasons why I'm a fan of America.

[00:17:28] It's like hey, look there's the moon up there,

[00:17:33] lets take a walk on it, bring back a piece of it.

[00:17:36] That's the kind of America that I'm a fan of.

[00:17:38] In 1771 your founder Mr. Franklin spent three months

[00:17:44] in Ireland and Scotland to look at the relationship

[00:17:47] they had with England to see if this could be

[00:17:50] a model for America, whether America should

[00:17:52] follow their example and remain a part of the British Empire.

[00:17:56] Franklin was deeply, deeply distressed by what he saw.

[00:18:01] In Ireland he saw how England had put

[00:18:05] a stranglehold on Irish trade,

[00:18:07] how absentee English landlords exploited Irish tenant farmers

[00:18:12] and how those farmers in Franklin's words

[00:18:15] "lived in retched hovels of mud and straw,

[00:18:18] were clothed in rags and subsisted chiefly on potatoes."

[00:18:22] Not exactly the American dream....

[00:18:25] So instead of Ireland becoming a model for America,

[00:18:30] America became a model for Ireland in

[00:18:33] our own struggle for independence.

[00:18:35] When the potatoes ran out, millions of Irish men,

[00:18:39] women and children packed their bags got on a boat

[00:18:44] and showed up right here. And we're still doing it.

[00:18:47] We're not even starving anymore, loads of potatoes.

[00:18:49] In fact if there's any Irish out there,

[00:18:54] I've breaking news from Dublin, the potato famine

[00:18:57] is over you can come home now.

[00:18:59] But why are we still showing up?

[00:19:02] Because we love the idea of America.

[00:19:05] We love the crackle and the hustle,

[00:19:09] we love the spirit that gives the finger to fate,

[00:19:12] the spirit that says there's no hurdle

[00:19:15] we can't clear and no problem we can't fix.

[00:19:18] (sound of helicopter) Oh, here comes the Brits,

[00:19:21] only joking. No problem we can't fix.

[00:19:24] So what's the problem that we want to

[00:19:26] apply all this energy and intellect to?

[00:19:29] Every era has its defining struggle

[00:19:33] and the fate of Africa is one of ours.

[00:19:36] It's not the only one, but in the history books

[00:19:40] it's easily going to make the top five,

[00:19:42] what we did or what we did not do.

[00:19:46] It's a proving ground, as I said earlier,

[00:19:49] for the idea of equality.

[00:19:51] But whether it's this or something else,

[00:19:54] I hope you'll pick a fight and get in it.

[00:19:57] Get your boots dirty, get rough,

[00:20:00] steel your courage with a final drink there at Smoky Joe's,

[00:20:05] one last primal scream and go.

[00:20:07] Sing the melody line you hear in your own head,

[00:20:12] remember, you don't owe anybody any explanations,

[00:20:16] you don't owe your parents any explanations,

[00:20:18] you don't owe your professors any explanations.

[00:20:21] You know I used to think the future was solid or fixed,

[00:20:26] something you inherited like an old building

[00:20:29] that you move into when the previous generation

[00:20:31] moves out or gets chased out. But it's not.

[00:20:35] The future is not fixed, it's fluid.

[00:20:38] You can build your own building, or hut or condo,

[00:20:42] whatever, this is the metaphor part of the speech by the way.

[00:20:46] But my point is that the world is more malleable

[00:20:51] than you think and it's waiting for you

[00:20:54] to hammer it into shape.

[00:20:55] Now if I were a folksinger I'd immediately

[00:20:59] launch into If I Had a Hammer right now

[00:21:02] get you all singing and swaying.

[00:21:03] But as I say I come from punk rock,

[00:21:06] so I'd rather have the bloody hammer right here in my fist.

[00:21:10] That's what this degree of yours is,

[00:21:13] a blunt instrument. So go forth and build something with it.

[00:21:17] Remember what John Adams said about Ben Franklin,

[00:21:21] "He does not hesitate at our boldest Measures

[00:21:24] but rather seems to think us too irresolute."

[00:21:27] Well this is the time for bold measures.

[00:21:31] This is the country, and you are the generation. Thank you.