The Challenge
PRESIDENT OF UGC, AT CONVOCATION
I HAD occasion this summer to speak to the father of a friend of mine, a pragmatic minded man in the securities business in Portland, Oregon. During one conversation we had, he came up with three words which registered in my mind at the time and have been ringing in my mind ever since. The words were "Introspection is deadly."
What exactly did the man mean by introspection? Did he mean examining one's own thoughts and feelings? Did he mean one's taking an uncomfortable look at one's human situation, of being shackled to the near overpowering tensions and malignancies of the world we live in? Did he mean one's discovery that one often sacrifices his freedom as an individual for a more comfortable role of conformity and womb existence? Did he mean one's recognition of his own finitude, a tragic recognition which occurs simultaneously with man's aspirations for immortality? Yes, he meant all these things.
To the man facing adversity, introspection comes as a matter of course. -But how about the man enjoying the pleasant luxuries of an affluent society, the practical man in Portland, Oregon? Certainly for this man, the comfortable, the safe, indeed the practical thing to do is to avoid introspection. For this man, introspection doesn't come as a matter of course.
The implication for us as students is obvious, yet quite important. Most of us, like my friend's father, will soon be partaking significantly of the luxuries of our way of life. As we all know, the diploma from Dartmouth College will open up for us new opportunities for enjoying greater wealth and material security. And at the same time, most of us will be the leaders of the respective fields we enter, men of power and influence. We will have diplomas which will symbolize that we are educated men.
It is my contention that a man is not educated unless he has probed, with great seriousness of purpose, the depths of his being. In fact, it seems to me that any man who walks up the aisle on Baker lawn to receive his diploma and who has not seriously introspected is attempting to put something over on the College. Introspection is nothing which one can learn in a classroom and therefore the College can't be held responsible for one's not introspecting; yet it is so fundamentally a part of the educational process that one cannot pretend to be an educated person without having experienced it.
For when the man who is sincerely seeking a total education introspects he not only discovers his unbreakable shackles to the world, but paradoxically along with his new awareness of his finitude and limitations comes a new awareness of possibilities for choice and the freedom to choose. It is here that one finds the key to the introspection-education relationship. Not only does the introspective man have the opportunity for appropriate action when confronted by these many new choices, but he is indeed obliged to and coerced into making decisions.
And. it is primarily the decision-making process, or lack of it, that either fulfills the educational experience of the whole man or fails to do so. A perfect example of this decision-making situation is our new honor system. What else does this code do but thrust us into a situation where we are confronted with choices? And indeed we must choose! But, to avoid this system's becoming just another institution which is adhered to superficially, each of us must first examine ourselves, probe and wrestle with what we really are, and then examine the choices involved and make a decision. "Should we cheat or should we not cheat? Is my only reason for not cheating a fear of being ostracized by my fellows? What exactly should I do with my best friend who I know is cheating?"
These are powerful questions, gentlemen. But they are really only warm-ups for what we will face later. "Should I try to dupe millions of people who are watching the quiz show I'm on, or should I not?" That's a choice Charles Van Doren never knew existed. "Is it perhaps immoral to secretly fix prices, or is it not?" Did the executives of General Electric know that there was a choice there? Let's face it, gentlemen, we'll be m similar positions in the not-too-distant future.
Introspection need not be deadly. It's deadly only to those who after introspecting either lack the fiber to maintain their sanity or, more often, to those who "harden their hearts" to the world of choice. Those, it seems, are afraid to dive into the more uncomfortable world of possibilities of choice and are content to resume a womb existence and create a womb society. Introspection need not be a shackle. Indeed it is the first step toward positive freedom, Erich Fromm's "freedom to" as opposed to "freedom from."
Gentlemen, I pose a challenge to myself and to you all. I challenge that we introspect, that we get to the bottom of our "isness"; that we probe the life around us, our friends, our fraternities, which too often become womb places where womb existence is perpetuated, our governments, our churches, our jobs, our families. Probe them all in relation to our beings. After this introspection let's not "harden our hearts" to the choices around us, but rather, armed with courage, sensitivity, appreciation, and most of all, knowledge of what we are and believe in, let's confront the world of choice and make decisions.
Truly, if we can do this, the present leaders of the world can be confident that their shoes will be filled by "educated men" in the fullest sense of the words.
