What makes a man? Is it the masculine ideals of strength and fortitude? The more modern ideals of compassion and empathy? According to President John F. Kennedy’s Rice University speech, more famously known as the “We Choose to go to the Moon” speech, it is neither of these. In fact, there is not one true trait or feature that defines a man, but instead a single concept: progress.

“We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.”

JFK’s speech can often be seen as a rallying beacon for support of the “Space Race” America was in at the time, and can be fairly ruled as propaganda to shift public opinion in favor of said race. However, I feel like there is something much deeper one can take from this speech, something that speaks directly to the human condition itself. JFK often takes note of the progress the United States had made at the time, from their global strength to their technological breakthroughs… but claims that it is not enough, that there was still advancements to be made. In fact, he claimed that the “greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds”, hinting that these ideals of growth will never fully be obtained, that there will always be something to strive for. I believe that this can be used in a much larger context than he originally intended.

Society is built on advancement. Humans are dependent on growth. A keystone of human nature is to procure a better future for the next generation. Humanity shares a common ideal that no matter how far we have advanced, there will always be a brighter tomorrow. There will always be a new world, another cure, a breakthrough, a brighter horizon. The human condition demands progress, both personal and societal. Stagnation is not just an ailment that is harmful to the individual, but a disease that can corrupt even the mightiest of nations. Stagnation (which ties directly into corruption and self-indulgence) is what fractured the Romans, dismantled the old order of Feudalism, collapsed the USSR, and what is now ironically causing civil unrest in the same country that JFK praised for innovation just 50 odd years ago.

Progress is essential to a society, to a citizen, and just to a human being in general. One must learn from their mistakes and grow from their failures, but be bold enough to make more mistakes, to bask in the victory of failure. A citizen must recognize the failures and downfalls of their society, and participate in their civic duty to strive for a better tomorrow. Most importantly, a society must always reach for the stars, for even if Icarus’s wings are doomed to melt, seconds of hope and ambition mean more than centuries of stagnation every could.

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”