| Given the triumphant academic setting here
|
| An obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting
|
| involves actual knowledge or intellect
|
| This question gets very tricky
|
| Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education
|
| At least in my own case
|
| Is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff
|
| To get lost in abstract arguments inside my head
|
| Instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me
|
| Paying attention to what is going on
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| Inside me
|
| As I’m sure you guys know by now
|
| It is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive
|
| Instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head
|
| It may be happening right now
|
| Twenty years after my own graduation
|
| I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about
|
| Teaching you how to think
|
| Is actually shorthand for a much deeper
|
| More serious idea
|
| Learning how to think
|
| Really means learning how to exercise some control
|
| Over how and what you think
|
| It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to
|
| And to choose how you construct meaning from experience
|
| Learning how to think
|
| Learning how to think
|
| Learning how to think
|
| Learning how to think
|
| Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life
|
| You will be totally
|
| Hosed
|
| Think of the old cliché about, quote
|
| «The mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.»
|
| This
|
| Like many clichés
|
| So lame and unexciting on the surface
|
| Actually expresses a great and terrible truth
|
| It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with
|
| firearms almost always shoot themselves in
|
| The head
|
| The head
|
| They shoot the terrible master
|
| And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they
|
| pull the trigger
|
| And I submit that this is what the real
|
| No bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about
|
| How to keep from going through your comfortable
|
| Prosperous
|
| Respectable adult life
|
| Dead
|
| Unconscious
|
| A slave to your head
|
| And to your natural default setting of being uniquely
|
| Completely
|
| Imperially alone
|
| Day in and day out
|
| That may sound like hyperbole
|
| Or abstract nonsense
|
| Let’s get concrete
|
| The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what
|
| ‘Day in day out'
|
| Really means
|
| Learning how to think
|
| Learning how to think
|
| Learning how to think
|
| Learning how to think
|
| Learning how to think
|
| Learning how to think
|
| Learning how to think
|
| Learning how to think |