Inside My Head - Akira the Don, David Foster Wallace

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

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