Learning to Think
From MidJourney
Click on the image above to play the video (flip your phone to widescreen if you want image to be bigger)
Learning to Think
This week, I am going to be short. Mainly, so that you might have the chance to listen to the commencement speech below. It makes my point for this week better than I ever can!
Most people agree that education is the answer to a lot of our problems. But what is education? Who decides what to teach? How must education and teaching change with our new weapons of mass distraction (i.e. information technologies, including AI)?
These are incredibly important questions that require a much richer conversation than the one we are having—or, perhaps more sadly, are not having at all.
Institutions that provide liberal arts education often tout that the objective is to teach students to think. But most education falls short of that stated intention. Doesn't it?
As you will hear from David Foster Wallace's remarkable commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005, we need to dig a bit deeper.
It’s not really learning how to think that is the issue, though thinking critically is an important skill. But in a world of distraction, inundation, and short-termism, I think it’s choosing what to think that matters more. It would benefit us all to harness the discipline and intention to focus our own thoughts on matters that give us energy and bring us joy. And, perhaps even more importantly, learn how to master and distract the many thoughts we all have that are unproductive, negative, judging, and yes—even evil! Learning how to disregard these intrusive and baseless thoughts (we all have them!) is such an important task for our well-being.
I have written before about the enormous importance of learning how to invest our energies only in things we can control. We waste so much worry and energy over matters we absolutely have no control over. And it all starts in our thoughts. My friend Bill Spear often reminded me, “Mats, there is nothing going on out there!”—implying that whatever was going on is only happening inside here (my brain). It’s easy, yet ultimately futile, to solve for problems that do not yet exist!
We experience the world only through our own lenses, which are shaped by our inner world. Learning to think, in my mind, is very much a lifelong pursuit of accepting the fact that the outside world is not the same as my inside world. Whenever I experience friction and disharmony, I should learn how to breathe, to open up my mind to new possibilities, and not worry about things I cannot control. Just embrace what is. And also try to enjoy it.
This is so incredibly easy to write down. But so painfully difficult to do. At least, every minute of the day. But that is what lifelong learning should help us do. At least, I think so. And that is what I take from David’s incredible commencement talk that often returns to me in various forms.
I hope you listen to it. You can listen to it here or read the transcript here. I hope we can inspire each other to think better together. The process of writing these newsletters every week is a helpful way for me to calibrate my own thoughts with many other thoughts different than mine. I hope some of you feel the same.
Happy Thinking!
