I confess, I often wondered when I was sitting out there in those seats what it would be like to be standing up here. And now I know:

I wish I were sitting back there.

At the same time, I shudder at how little I knew about the world when I was here, because I now know how dangerous that can be.

When I was offered the chance to speak here today, my one thought was: what is the most important thing that I can tell these boys? What is the one thing that will help them achieve the happiness they deserve in life? And the answer is: an understanding of the times we live in. If you leave here without understanding the nature of our times, you are like a blind man crossing the highway. And like that unfortunate fellow, eventually you will get hit by a truck. This is especially true of a Roxbury Latin graduate, because more than ever before there is a yawning chasm between the principles upon which this school is based and the principles upon which our society is operating. And needless to say, it is not R.L. that has changed its tune.

I can only imagine the world must seem a bit confusing to you right now. You've recently seen bodies floating through the street of a destroyed American city. You've seen people commit suicide by flying jumbo jets into our buildings, taking thousands of others with them. In response, you've seen us attack a country that had nothing to do with it, for reasons that are at least questionable and possibly fraudulent. Tens of thousands of more dead. You've seen four years of scandals that have spread across our entire society: business, finance, the media, sports, even schools now, where cheating has become endemic.

Perhaps you've also heard some alarming statistics. In the rankings of the industrialized nations, the United States has the largest per capita prison population, 2.1 million people. That is the equivalent of putting the entire population of Boston, Seattle, Denver, and Washington D.C. behind bars. We lead the industrialized world in obesity and homicide as well. And we have fallen to around 26th in terms of health care. At any one time there are 40 million people without health insurance.

A year or two ago I saw former President Gerald Ford on television. It was the occasion of his 90th birthday. He was talking about America. And he was recounting all the great things that he admired about this country, things that truly are great. He talked about how Americans lifted themselves out of the Great Depression. How we helped fight and win the Second World War. How we put a man on the moon. And then it hit me: everything he mentioned had occurred prior to 1970. It was as if time had stopped with an American waving a flag on the moon. He didn't even mention that he had replaced Richard Nixon a few years later, a man who resigned over a burglary.

What people of Mr. Ford's generation don't realize is how different the American experience has been for people in my generation and afterwards, to include all of you. I was born in 1964. The moon landing is actually one of my first memories. I remember seeing it on a television in the lobby of my elementary school. But looking back now I see it as a watershed event. It was the apex, the moment when the tide turned, and everything began to change. What I'd like to do now is explain why.

Before I do, note that you live in a country that has a very strong self-image. It is a self-image that has come out of those very same events that Mr. Ford so rightly admires. But to many of us those events are now ancient history, replaced by a world that is far less noble. There is a new American reality, and it is absolutely essential that we - especially you - not shy away from recognizing it. There are those who will disagree, I know. They think young men your age should be shielded from the world, as if you aren't bombarded by it every day. But while their motives are good, the end result is still deadly. You can't run from the way things are. It will find you in the end. The only alternative is to look it in the eye and attempt to understand it. Otherwise you are that blind man on the highway, and we all know how that turns out.

So let's not do that. Let's ask the question we need to ask: why has this once proud and noble nation of ours fallen so far? I think there is one primary reason, but it goes to the bone, which is why we have so far failed to address it. And it has absolutely nothing to do with politics.

American society is essentially governed by two principles, both of which you experience here at R.L. In fact, in this regard R.L. is a microcosm of the society out there. The first of these principles is Me vs. You. This is the logic of competition. You experience this everyday on the playing fields, and in the classroom as well. You are in competition with your classmates for good grades, and you are in competition with other schools in the ISL for a winning season.

It is critical to note, however, that this principle of Me vs. You can never stand alone. Competition must be limited, or else it turns deadly. If there were no limits on competition, you could trip and kick your opponent when the referee wasn't watching, and you could cheat your way through the SAT. Indeed, when you take the limits off competition, the ultimate expression of Me vs. You is violence and crime.

I think we all know that isn't right, but perhaps you haven't thought about the opposing principle that limits Me vs. You. It is, quite simply, Us. It is the unity of me and you within a higher framework. In society this can be a friendship, a marriage, a family, a school, a community, a nation, mankind, even all being. Now you can see why you are told countless times here why you should never do anything to compromise your integrity. Integrity means wholeness, the very essence of us. Without it, trust evaporates, and society breaks down to Me vs. You alone. That is a state of nature, in which every man is a wolf to his neighbor. It is a purely Darwinian society, where your very life is at risk.

So now you can see what R.L. is really modeling for you. This school is a society in which competition is restrained by higher values. These values include truth, justice, fairness, decency, morality, and a host of others, all of which reinforce the unity of this school, as a community, and prepare you for the much larger community you will enter upon leaving here.

Unfortunately, however, the world is not modeling this same behavior. In American society, the logic of Me vs. You, of competition, is the basic principle of capitalism, or what we commonly call "the market." The primary cause of the problems facing America today is that the market, and everything associated with it, has become so strong that it has broken free of the higher values that would otherwise restrain it. As a result, our entire society is collapsing from "Us" to "Me vs. You," with deadly results.

Let me give you a few examples so you know what I mean. When the logic of Me vs. You takes over, it creates what is called a winner-takes-all society. This is a society where everyone is trying to maximize their own self-interest. One of the first signs of this in America was the birth of the so-called "Me generation." Another was a widening income gap between rich and poor, a gap that has been growing since 1967. The reason is that in a winner-take-all society the people at the top no longer feel obligated to give back to the people at the bottom. Instead, they take as much as they can. And they often do so illegally. After all, there is no higher unity to prevent it. No integrity.

This is the fundamental reason for the wave of scandals that has shaken America for the past four years. In banks, in corporations, in sports, in the media, and right down to school children, cheating has saturated American society. Similarly, the idea of public service has declined, as no one in a Me Society can see beyond themselves. The idea of noblesse oblige, that those who have the most are obligated to give back, has died with it. Now you can see why we have suffered from such tragic governmental incompetence. As any CEO will tell you, the key to a great company is great people. But the government simply doesn't get the best people anymore. It used to be, for example, that our nation's intelligence services were stocked by graduates from Harvard and Yale and other top schools. That almost never happens today. One result, I think, is that we recently suffered the greatest intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor. Likewise, the best engineers once competed to work for NASA, and a chance to put a man on the moon. Today they go to Google, because they make far more money. Consequently, we can hardly put a man in orbit anymore. We have had two space shuttles explode for ostensibly the same bureaucratic reasons. It used to be that families like the Roosevelts and the Kennedys sent their kids into the military. You won't find them in Iraq. Instead it is lower class kids, conscripted by an economic draft. They join the army for tuition credits. They are like the security guards hired to defend an expensive Manhattan penthouse. Even our own government doesn't seem to take public service seriously anymore. Otherwise the head of FEMA, the agency tasked with disaster management, would have had some experience at the task. Instead his major experience seems to have been in horse breeding. And the result was the aftermath of Katrina.

Another repercussion of our Me vs. You society has been indifference to the basic needs of a civilized society. And here the best example is healthcare insurance. The intensity of American capitalism has created such a sink-or-swim environment that we are willing to let 40 million people - one in every seven Americans - sink if they get sick. As if some guy who invented the intermittent wiper blade is more valuable than someone who happens to be between jobs.

I could go into countless more details, as I have in my new book, but the personal point I want to make, and which I began this talk with, is that you, as a Roxbury Latin graduate, will have to be particularly careful when going into this Me vs. You world, simply because that is not the philosophy of this school. We all know, for example, how important public service is here, and rightly so. But how are you going to react when, upon following that star, you end up in a failing bureaucracy of some kind, while your friends are making three times as much money as you? How do you pursue what is right when you feel like you are suffering for it, when the very society you are supposedly helping does not even value the job you are performing for it? These are difficult questions, but they are best dealt with ahead of time. If not, our society can become a very confusing and even dangerous place. You can make classic mistakes, like getting angry, or disillusioned, or fighting fire with fire, that will hurt you most of all. On the other hand, if you understand what is going on in the world, you have the power to rise above these adverse reactions, and to be the person you want to be.

Which brings me back to the beginning. Before you leave here, you must understand the nature of the times you live in. You must understand American reality.