In one of my classes this semester entitled “Conspiracy” my professor taught me a couple of valuable lessons. First off my professor was in his early 70’s, a graduate of MIT and Harvard Medical School, and quite simply the most knowledgeable person on the planet (might be a stretch). Throughout the semester he emphasized the importance of thinking clearly. Thinking clearly, he repeated ad nauseam, was not something we must do when we feel like it, but something we must force ourselves to do all of the time.

On the first day of class he handed out the syllabus and on the last page was the itinerary for our last class period.  It read: The Secret to Happiness.

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1. Will Robots Inherit the Earth?

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   to schoolofthought … saved by 10 other people … on may 01

2. Will we comprehend supra-human emergence?

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3. David Foster Wallace - Commencement Speech at Kenyon University

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4. Jacques Derrida - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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5. Dan Gilbert on TED Talks

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I stumbled upon David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement speech which he gave at Kenyon University and found it to have some great advice. Interestingly enough this speech was given on my 21st birthday, wish I had read it back then.

Here is a snippet:

“If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.”

Read the whole thing here. It will probably make your day.