Learning how to think means learning how to have some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enought to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. If you cannot do this as an adult, you will be totally hosed.
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And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. 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.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
David Foster Wallace, Kenyan College Commencement Speech, 2005.
UPDATE: The DFW trust has taken down the excellent video from The Glossary, so I’ve updated it with just a straight recording of the speech from youtube. Thanks Trustees!
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