outside the box – David Vaszko's Blog

It is an honor for me to speak to you this afternoon at your commencement ceremony. Not everyone is lucky enough to attend college. Not everyone has the good fortune to graduate from such a venerable and prestigious university.

At the same time, many people pooh pooh a college education. Maybe they do because they are envious. Maybe they do because they are lazy. Maybe because they lack imagination and can’t see the value in going to college, except to get a job.

One of the failings of our society is that we have made money the only thing that determines a person’s worth. This belief has influenced universities and colleges, both how they perceive themselves and how they are perceived.

The public no longer looks to universities as keepers of the truth of Western Culture. Universities no longer see their role to be educating students in Western history and philosophy. Large segments of the uneducated public no longer lust for Homer, the Greek tragedies, Plato, Shakespeare.

One critic of our academic culture, the late Alan Bloom, wrote that the public does not take the mission of a university seriously anymore because universities no longer teach Truth, nor are proud of the ideas and ideals that have influenced Western Culture and America. Rather he said, universities have caved in to pressure to teach that Truth is relative, that someone who reads mostly modern works has an equally valid claim to be educated than someone who is conversant about our tradition of literature, philosophy and political writings.

So, professor Bloom writes, someone who lusts for Truth, who aches to understand The Bible and Plato, has nowhere to go because our universities do not take the great books, with all their potential for emotion and thought, seriously.

My point is that there is something called Truth. If we do not believe in the truths of our tradition, we seriously lack imagination and we magnificently manifest cowardice. We are willing to crumble to the competition from Islam, Feminism, Multiculturalism, Homocentricism, and still unfortunately, Communism.

It isn’t that Islam, Feminism and Communism should not be studied. They should. So should histories of different regions and countries. But the assumption should be that Western morals are the best, that other philosophies can best be used to see where we are weak, not to replace our tradition.

It is true that the cannon is still taught. But it is not taught as the Truth. Multiculturalists and feminists would ban the great books of the West if they could.

For now they can’t. But they are working on it.

There is more to this than just objective truth. To be a great individual, you have to be true to what is in you. The point of Socrates and Jesus is that they were true to what was beautiful in them, no matter what the price.

The Western tradition has always balanced the subjective and objective truth. There is not this balance in our opposing religions, philosophies and isms. They are not seeking a better world for everyone, only their own group. They do not encourage members of their group to think outside of the box.

Universities have thought outside the box for too long. It is time to return to it, to encourage students to read The Bible every day until they finish, to read Phaedrus every couple of years until they understand it and can talk about love and true speech, to read The Tempest until the closing scence makes them unable to read anything else for days.

I mentioned talking about what was read. One of the weaknesses of the Western academic tradition is that professors were not required, and did not seek, unlike the East, to explain their knowledge to ordinary people in everyday words.

Multiculturalists seek to get their word out. They are aggressive and unashamed, though their ideas cannot hold a candle to the Western tradition.

Not only that, they have no fear. But their courage does not come from Truth or love or love of the Truth. It comes from hate, resentment, momentum and being part of a group that is fashionable.

Those of you here today are the most educated people in America. I want you to be proud of it. I especially want those of you who majored in one of the Western humanities to bring your fire, vision and gratitude into the world.

Tell people that the greatness of Western culture lies in the belief that you can find the God in you, either by being generous like Jesus or by not being greedy like Socrates, by living for love of the poor or love of simplicity, not a hatred of rich people.

You graduates are in a dilemma. You will be called elitists. But if you give up your positions and your wealth, and if you are not proud of your education, you will be laughed at.

My advice is to be proud of your education and your career. But do not flaunt your wealth. Be humble and assertive.

Tell the publilc that Socrates and Jesus were spiritually free. Jesus attained his freedom because of a great tradition. Socrates attained his because of a relatively new form of government. There was room in each of those situations to be free, but even then you had to be careful.

Jesus and Socrates were not careful. They knew they had become beautiful. They did not want to compromise their beauty to be accepted into ugliness.

Our society does its best to cultivate ugliness, whether it’s my fellow politicians, the advertising industry, multiculturalism or feminism, or the glorification of homosexuality, bisexuality and transgenderhood.

These are lonely times. You must choose between how you are lonely. Do you want to be lonely because you see the light and are overwhelmed by your struggle to be true and beautiful? Or do you want to be lonely because you chose darkness and the false power of espousing ugliness?

My graduates, it has truly been an honor to speak today. I love America. I love our Western tradition.

I hope I inspire you to be daring. Courageous good will is the only thing that can save America and the West from all our internal enemies.

Thank you.

Dear Jim,

Last weekend was warm. This weekend is cool and windy. I like it. It rained all day yesterday. I liked that too.

I’m sitting in the wind drinking a decaf Americano. I used the last few cents on the last of the gift cards that Sis II gave me for Christmas. I thought I would have used them up by now, but it was too cold to be outside as much as I would have liked to.

It’s been a rough few days. All those days off last week spoiled me. I really didn’t want to go back to work and I didn’t get into it once I was back like I usually do.

I keep thinking of what to do to feel less stressed out at work and what to do to make more money, but I’m stumped. Maybe I should think outside the box like the business books and self-help books say, but I’ve been thinking outside the box all my life. It makes me ill knowing business, which demands conformity, steals and cheapens what I have been doing my whole life.

The problem with encouraging people to think outside the box when they are at work is that if you really think outside the box and say ”Let’s slow down. Let’s make fewer changes so we aren’t as stressed,” your suggestions won’t be accepted. At best people will be amused by you. At worst they’d preach to you that if everyone was like you, nothing would get done.

Thinking outside the box is a clever way to make the staff more committed to producing, worrying, and making work a larger part of one’s life than it should be. It makes the company look better than if it says we want people with a lot of drive. Instead of leaving the stress to the executives and the people who sell on commission, the company passes it on to everybody and tries to disguise the stress by calling the staff a team or the company a family.

Remember when being part of a team meant being part of a sports team? You gloried in your youth doing something you were passionate about. You may have hated your parents, but you would never ever dream of referring to the company you worked for as a family.

When we were young pro football players, rock stars, and movie stars had careers. Now people making $40,000 a year at some horrible job are asked if they enjoy their career. ”How do you get along with your colleagues?” I always thought that only highly skilled people like attorneys referred to each other as colleagues.

What’s great about us is we’ve always thought outside the box. You did it with finesse. It took me until I was fifty to have finesse. In this age of stifling conformity, I will have to use finesse to keep thinking outside the box and refuse to back down.

Not so much to say this time.

Love,

Dave

Tag: outside the box

The President Speaks: Commencement address

Saturday, April 7