Compulsory schooling, whose purpose is to outlaw ignorance, seems instead to have certified it on a grand scale. More to be pitied than those who have fallen through the educational crack are those who have been intellectually lobotomized in the name of learning. Marking time in lives of stultifying mediocrity, with no strong interests in much of anything, they put up with jobs they hate and pretend to enjoy the mindless entertainment they pursue to compensate. On nearing the end of their lives, those who have viewed their existence as barely tolerable drudgery begin to panic at the realization that they have never learned to truly think for themselves nor felt the exhilaration of intellectual engagement. Would that all human beings could experience throughout their lives the plain, ordinary wonder of existence that comes through active curiosity.
Entertainment today is a cheap substitute for the thrill of intellectual pursuit.
This is anything but an ivory tower. If you are poor and lack fine clothing, you still can try on elegant garments in a department store. Similarly, if you can t afford a nice car, you still can sit in one at a dealer s showroom. But, no matter what your situation if you have a thirst for knowledge, you can enter the great conversation of humankind. You can try on the ideas of the greatest thinkers who have ever lived, take them home, and keep them with you forever.