DEFENDING OUR LEGACY
On Heritage Day we should remember that we are all beneficiaries of legacies left to us by previous generations.
Some of us may have been fortunate enough to have inherited material possessions from our parents or grand-parents. However, their most important legacy may not have been the money they left us but the values that they instilled in us; the examples that they set and the memories that they left us of lives well lived.
All of us are beneficiaries of the rich legacies of knowledge, art and religion that we have derived from our cultures. In this we all share in incalculable wealth: we can access the plays of Shakespeare, the music of Mozart and the art of the impressionists. This, too, is part of our legacy - and it is freely available to virtually anyone who wishes to access it.
One of mankind's most important and fragile legacies is our natural environment. Just think of the turquoise seas, verdant forests, and rolling grasslands that we inherited from the past. Think of vast shoals of silver fish; the teeming herds on the African plains; and the millions of species of plants and animals that were our legacy from three and a half billion years of evolution. Unfortunately, we are thoughtlessly plundering the resources of our planet and destroying our inheritance. Although we give lip service to the need for sustainable development most of us continue to live for the day with little consideration to the environmental legacy that we will pass on to our children.
One of our most valuable - but often least acknowledged - legacies is the freedom that we derive from living in a constitutional democracy. We take for granted that we can freely make decisions regarding our lives and the lives of our families and that we are protected from arbitrary action by the state. We seldom consider that we enjoy fundamental rights to human dignity and equality and that we cannot be deprived arbitrarily of our property; that we have freedom of expression and freedom to practise - or not to practise - the religion or our choice.