‘Freedom isn’t a handout’: Chinese professor's graduation speech

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

Modern day Thomas Paine