In one of my favorite TED Talks of all time, Ben Dunlap, former president of Wofford College in Columbia, South Carolina, discussed what it means to be a lifelong learner. This video is found on my YouTube playlist "Being Wrong and Other Insights"
Dunlap opens with the insightful comment that cognitive diversity is at least as threatened as biodiversity on this planet today.
Dunlap defines the Hungarian spirit as being "people with a complex moral awareness, with a heritage of guilt and defeat matched by defiance and bravado."
Dunlap defines his passion as being an insatiable curiosity, an irrepressible desire to know, no matter what the subject, no matter what the cost -- it is an indistinguishable, undaunted appetite for learning and experience, no matter how risible, no matter how esoteric, no matter how seditious it might seem.
In a Hungarian spirit he concludes, "This is our task; we know it will be hard."
Perhaps this Aaron Schwartz meme sums up Dunlap's message
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