There are essentially two schools of thought on how life is best lived. There are those who believe that the important thing in life is to have a steady, well-paying source of income, to have a nice home and family, to be liked by one's peers and neighbors and to live to old age in good health.
I never cease to be amazed by the naivete that so many students on this campus display when it comes to the topic of money.
In a just world, there would be no inequalit-es of wealth and income, no winners and losers. No man would wallow in luxury while his neighbor lacked a roof over his head, and secure jobs at good wages would be available for all who wanted them.
It has been amusing to read the responses to Kenji Hosokawa's article on September 24, in which he was charitable enough to venture to the freshmen a few words of advice about how to manage their four years here.
It has recently been my opportunity to have undergone a truly sublime experience, an experience so fateful in its implications and so richly productive that I feel myself duty bound to communicate, or at least try to communicate, something of the flavor of this experience to my fellow students; I encountered the genius of Thomas Mann's fiction. I imagine that there are a good many individuals out there, not all of whom are irredeemable bottom-feeders, who might be a bit nonplused as to why they should find my enthusiasm for Thomas Mann's writing of any relevance to themselves.
I am well aware that most readers of The Dartmouth are not accustomed to seeing philosophical musings in their favorite daily, and for this breach of custom I apologize profusely in advance.
In the past week, not a few gallons of ink have been spilled expressing outrage at David Berenson's Bear Bones cartoon strip, and the resulting controversy has proved, to say the least, interesting -- interesting, but at the same time, thoroughly disturbing. The roots of the controversy can be traced to a letter in last Monday's Vox Clamantis by Frank Aum '97, in which he accused Berenson of perpetrating negative stereotypes about Asians in his cartoons.
I wish to speak today about the virtues of solitude. It is a state of being that is beneficial to the state of the imagination and makes self discovery possible.
It has recently come to my attention that some students at Dartmouth feel that my columns have not been of benefit to the public.
The time is nigh for a new elitism. The elitism I speak of is not of the political or social variety, but an elitism of the mind.