Akira The Don, David Foster Wallace - Inside My Head lyrics

Given the triumphant academic setting here
An obvious question is how much of this work
Of adjusting our default setting involves
Actual knowledge or intellect
This question gets very tricky
Probably the most dangerous thing
About an academic education
At least in my own case
Is that it enables my
Tendency to over-intellectualize stuff

To get lost in abstract
Arguments inside my head
Instead of simply paying attention to what is
Going on right in front of me
Paying attention to what is going on
Inside me

As I’m sure you guys know by now
It is extremely difficult to
Stay alert and attentive
Instead of getting hypnotized by the constant
Monologue inside your own head
It may be happening right now

Twenty years after my own graduation
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

Learning how to think learning how to think
Learning how to think learning how to think

Because if you cannot exercise this kind
Of choice in adult life you will be totally
Hosed think of the old cliché about, quote
"The mind being an excellent servant
But a terrible master"

This like many clichés
So lame and unexciting on the surface
Actually expresses a great and terrible truth
It is not the least bit
Coincidental that adults who
Commit suicide with firearms almost
Always shoot themselves in the head
The head they shoot the terrible master
And the truth is that most
Of these suicides are
Actually dead long before they
Pull the trigger

And I submit that this is what the real
No bullshit value of your liberal arts
Education is supposed to be about
How to keep from going
Through your comfortable prosperous
Respectable adult life dead
Unconscious a slave to your head
And to your natural default
Setting of being uniquely completely
Imperially alone day in and day out
That may sound like hyperbole
Or abstract nonsense let’s get concrete
The plain fact is that you graduating seniors
Do not yet have any clue what
‘Day in day out’ really means

Learning how to think learning how to think
Learning how to think learning how to think

Learning how to think learning how to think
Learning how to think learning how to think