Ten ideas West delivered:
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10. "Deep education is about learning how to die." Montaigne
9. Your worldview rests on pudding.
8. Truth is to allow suffering to speak.
7. Whenever we as a nation face catastrophe, we look to the "Blues People" to lead us out of the darkness.
6. Americans love intelligence, but they hate intellect. They love knowledge as a manipulative facility and hate to question its foundations.
5. People have different lanes, different noble vocations . . . stay in your lane and drive along with other great minds.
4. Hope is good, optimism is not. Optimism is cheap. Hope involves motion, movement, and momentum.
3. Have a vision, not just a stare.
2. The flag is promiscuous: it'll lay down for anyone, from the Klan to Michelle Obama.
1. We're experts at cutting up our love.
Mature love? We can't even hardly find it in our music.
West also talked about something called the "go-cart of judgement" described in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, which is a hilarious image worthy of it's own set of illustrations. When I googled that phrase I learned an awesome new word: gangelwagen. The explanations I found described the go-cart as "part of the machinery in a culture of fear."
I was reminded of Nancy's paintings
and a little of Calvin and Hobbes.
Like West said, "All of us have forms of ignorance and limits to our exposure."
