
‘Freedom isn’t a handout’: Chinese professor's graduation speech - jger15
https://www.inkstonenews.com/education/chinese-college-professor-qu-weiguos-full-graduation-speech/article/3015786
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PavlovsCat
Wow, and bravo. Everybody everywhere would do well to hear/read this.

> Under the impact of complicated thoughts, shameless suppression and
> temptation, defending your freedom of thought has become very difficult.

> We usually believe that learning can make you powerful, but in the process,
> our independent will or freedom of thought is often hijacked, wittingly or
> unwittingly. Everyone thinks that learning is a good thing, but if we lose
> our independent will or freedom of thought, the outcome might be even worse
> than not learning.

[..]

> This is why the concept of “freedom and the pursuit of non-material goals”
> is incredibly important, but also incredibly fragile. Not only does it allow
> us to pursue our own lives, it also prevents us from becoming tools of
> crime.

> It is humanity’s first line of defense, or we should say the last. Actually,
> it’s the sole line of defense.

This reminds me of something I love to bits:

> _But if you choose the liberty and pride and strength of the single soul,
> and the free fraternization of men, as the purpose which your life is to
> make manifest then do not sell it for tinsel. Think that your soul is strong
> and will hold its way; and slowly, through bitter struggle perhaps the
> strength will grow. And the foregoing of possessions for which others barter
> the last possibility of freedom will become easy._

> _At the end of life you may close your eyes saying: "I have not been
> dominated by the Dominant Idea of my Age; I have chosen mine own allegiance,
> and served it. I have proved by a lifetime that there is that in man which
> saves him from the absolute tyranny of Circumstance, which in the end
> conquers and remoulds Circumstance, the immortal fire of Individual Will,
> which is the salvation of the Future."_

\-- Voltairine de Cleyre

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the_resistence
Modern day Thomas Paine

