The Hammock Papers: Uncomfortable.

08 July 2023

Uncomfortable.

The Rev. Dr. Cornel West and Dr. Robert George discuss the purpose of a liberal education ...

While college should prepare graduates for careers, the more important purpose is to provide students with an opportunity lead the examined life and be open to new ideas. To lead truly a human life in highest sense, means to be uncomfortable.

Understand the value of truth for its own sake. That is the vaccine to prevent you from falling so deeply in love with our own opinions. That is the recipe for avoiding dogmatism. Be engaged, but don’t be dogmatic. Demand that ... university challenge you.

A variety of voices need to be heard ... academic freedom belongs to people on the left and the right – everybody, and everybody equally. Challenge is central to education.

Dr. Robert George

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MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL