This is not a matter of virtue. Here's one example of the utter wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. And who are all these people in my way? Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy’s interpretation is true and the other guy’s is false or bad. You get to decide what to worship. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. “Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. Plus, there’s the whole matter of arrogance. Each week, I share 3 short ideas from me, 2 quotes from others, and 1 question think about. 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. There is a person who toils alone for years in relative obscurity before finally cracking the code to become a hero. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I’m talking about. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. You haven’t had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. You can get more actionable ideas in my popular email newsletter. The only choice we get is what to worship. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real-you get the idea. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. To be just a little less arrogant. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. And it commences: now. As I’m sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotised by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket’s checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do. The speech was originally published on the Kenyon College website. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I’m supposed to talk about your liberal arts education’s meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. The speech was made into a thin book titled This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. Worship power-you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. But it will be.

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