1. Wisdom and Happiness

    I believe that David Foster Wallace was a better essayist and thinker than a writer of fiction, and I like his oft-quoted Kenyon commencement address very much; in it, he suggests that controlling one’s attention is integral to happiness, to real wisdom, and to meaningful freedom:

    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 […] 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.

    That entire multi-billion dollar industries exist solely to wrest your attention from you, using whatever pretext they can -“news is important,” “this is a community of your friends,” “you are creating things right now,” “this is vital information,” “this is sex,” “this is where culture is happening”- is proof of attention’s value and its profound connection to will. Attention permits us to control our minds, direct our thoughts, and orient our wills in accordance with what we think is best.

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      1. mountaintrash posted this