Havel illustrated this with a story from a state dinner attended by fifty heads of state. He noticed that one table was labeled not by country but as 'permanent members of the UN Security Council and the G7.' 'I could not help observing that one table had been singled out as being special and particularly important. It was a table for the big powers.' 'Somewhat perversely,' he imagined 'the people sitting at it were, along with their Russian caviar, dividing the rest of us up among themselves, without asking our opinion.' The architect of that seating arrangement, Havel said, 'was not guided by a sense of responsibility for the world, but by the banal pride of the powerful.' Speaking at Harvard — in the most powerful country in the world — Havel challenged Americans to understand that their unprecedented influence demanded unprecedented humility, not hubris.