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Chuck Eesley, Duke University and a leader in the SELFKNOWLEDGE SYMPOSIUM. First of all, I want to thank the Institute of College Values for putting on this conference and inviting us here. As a student, it’s really inspiring to see everyone here taking the initiative to find out what students think about these issues. Professor Cheryl Keen who’s working with us on the Inward Bound Conference came to North Carolina recently and some Self Knowledge Symposium students had a chance to meet with her. She excused herself for being a little tired because she had been up until midnight the night before talking with a group of students. When I heard this I was so impressed because it’s passionate professors like her and conferences like this one that move us closer to what we want out of our education. After being an undergraduate at Duke University for nearly four years now, the thing that concerns me most is the amount of apathy and disillusionment I see around me, even at a school like Duke. What I would hate to see our college become is places where students are just mechanically following the herd and jumping through all of the required hoops, only high enough so that they can land the right job. College should be a place where everyone is passionately questioning absolutely everything about life. That’s why I feel so incredibly lucky to have found a student group on our campus called the Self Knowledge Symposium. We are a part of a rare group of dynamic programs that allow students to get together and passionately talk about and try to figure out for themselves the questions that really matter to them. The way I see it we need more avenues, like these in developing our own personal, moral, and spiritual values and the commitment to live by them, even when it is hard. Career motivations, questions about the best way to help society? Who am I, how shall I live, finding overall sincerity and authenticity within, these are all things that are so incredibly important to be talking about at this stage in our lives. In addition to religious groups I feel we fulfill a vital role on campus of providing a forum for students who are asking important, spiritual questions, but who don’t necessarily affiliate with traditional religion. At Mt. Holyoke they call themselves the post-denominational group, at another college in Massachusetts, they call themselves the seekers, we call ourselves the Self Knowledge Symposium. Taking a cue from the wisdom of the ages to “know thyself." No college student wants to be told what to believe or how to live. What we need is more guidance and encouragement to help us figure out life’s most important questions for ourselves . . . and to not just be talking about it but consistently acting on it as well. People get such tunnel vision from their own goals, and their busy, hectic lives of adding to a resume, racking up accomplishments, getting ahead that no one has time to really step back and try to see the forest instead of just the trees. Don’t get me wrong, goals and accomplishments are important, but when colleges and society are not placing emphasis on proper reflection, living consciously, living deliberately, developing values, good hard, dynamic thinking about life and building character, then we’ve got it all backwards. Very few people around campus that I know of are trying to see the bigger picture, the larger time frame. The way I see it, the process of gaining wisdom about life isn’t all that different from the process of becoming a good leader. In a company, to be a truly great leader, you have to be able to see the big picture. Take the analogy of a software company. The person who makes the least money is the programmer who only knows his little particular detail of the code. The next person up, her boss, knows how all that code fits in with the program, and their boss, who manages several others, knows how that program fits in with the operating system, all the way up to the CEO who know why this software package is important for the future of the company and what the strategy is for the internet, and how that relates to the stock holders. They have a bigger picture, they never stop asking, why is this important? At the Self Knowledge Symposium we’re trying to do the same thing. We’re trying to step back from all the details of economics, physics, psychology, details which obviously are important to know but even more importantly we want to talk about life itself, our lives, from the largest possible perspective, and only that is what gives the motivation and passion to care about developing character and living by your own principles, ethics, and values. While it is certainly important for professors to encourage this in their students, the main reason the SKS model works is because it’s only through assembling a passionate group of students and giving them the capacity to reach other students and turn them onto it that a community of conscious minded, moral students is formed. Our founder and Chairman of the Board, and my personal mentor August Turak once said to a student, “once you’ve tasted the value of true wisdom about life and about yourself, you know there’s nothing more important." When students are spreading that to other students through their own passion, it spreads like wildfire and real change occurs. I feel like that is what needs to happen in colleges around the world. I’d like to thank everyone here who is working with students to make this happen. Thank you, thanks very much for your time. |
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