Dear Brothers and Sisters

“Expand your horizon” means “Have a broader view of the world around you.” I have talked about this very often here in ĐCN.

Your generation is way different from your parents’generation. Today the world is a village – countries and people connecting togerther in a network called global village. Everything happens to one person in the village also affects others in the village. Say, some accident happens in Coca Cola USA may affect all the Coca Cola branches around the world and the pockets of billions of consumers.

We talk about development. First, the development of your self. Second, the development of your country.

For your own development and intellect, you need to expand your horizon. You simply cannot live in a village without knowing about things that happen in the village every day, like a mentally-ill person walking around the city’s streets with no idea about what’s happening in the city. Come on, guys and gals! We can’t be that ignorant. For your own’s head, pay attention to things happening around the world. That is the requirement for a world citizen, and each of us is virtually a world citizen.

For Viet Nam’s development, each citizen has to be developed. You cannot be ignorant yourself and hope that Viet Nam will be better by herself. Viet Nam simply is the sum of all her citizens. All citizens must be developed for Viet Nam to be developed. If you stay ignorant, Viet Nam stays ignorant and backward. Love your nation by loving yourself.

Do you remember the word “dân trí – the people’s intellect”? Dân trí is the general level of the collective intellect of all citizens. Dân trí is the sum of all the knowledge of all the people. A nation with high national intellect (dân trí cao) is a developed country. A nation with low national intellect is a less developed country, or a developing country, or a least developed country, depending on each case.

You want, and you have the duty, to turn Viet Nam into a nation with high national intellect, so that you, and your children, and your grand children, and your great-grand children, and your great-great-grand children will stand tall among the people of this planet.

You don’t want Viet Nam to stay poor and average or under-average for another thousand years.

Make our generation the breakout generation – bringing Viet Nam out of the ordinary, into the spotlight of the world.

Be proud of yourself and your country. Work to gain the respect of the world. Expand your horizon – read and keep up with major events happening around the world every day. Strengthen your intellect, and strengthen your country’s intellect.

Wish us all, and our country, high intellect.

With compassion,

Hoành

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