I was in a hurry to leave college. You’ll note, twenty years on, I was mostly unsuccessful. Given my haste, I never thought to petition an honorary society. Nor, I should add, did any invite me.

I’m sure it was an oversight. The mails can be unreliable. God knows what urgent invitations vanished in the unsophisticated spam folders of that barbaric age. I refrained from disrupting their induction ceremonies with tossed golden apples inscribed with the phrase, ‘kallisti,’ or, ‘to the fairest.’

Black magic rarely works as intended, anyhow. Hardly worth the trouble, if you ask me. Nevertheless, I’m reminded of two piquant aphorisms I’d like to share. The first is Groucho Marx’s well-known quip at organizations inviting him to join:

I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.

The other is from my master, Benjamin Franklin, whose obvious genius disposed of any need for official recognition. He described his honorary Harvard degree in a flip, subtler manner:

The College of Cambridge, of their own motion, presented me with the degree of Master of Arts…thus, without studying in any college, I came to partake of their honors.

As you have been kind enough to invite me to this solemn occasion, I would echo Franklin, without so much cheek.

So thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

It’s an honor to address a learned society whose members include Ambassador Dr. Jeane Kirkpatrick, journalist Jim Lehrer, author Stephen Whitehurst, explorer Dr. Sylvia Earle, U.S. Treasurer Francine Irving Neff, Pulitzer winner Mirta Ojito, patriot H. Ross Perot, and, of course, all of you who’ve joined their ranks through hard work and diligent study. I extend my heartiest congratulations.

May I note the importance of the beautiful rituals you’ve observed? We minimize such things to our detriment. Rituals form community by linking us to history. Doing the things those preceding us did links us to their lives in a tangible way. The gravity of ritual invites comparison between Phi Theta Kappa’s founders, in 1918, and modern inductees, almost a century on.

Phi Theta Kappa’s mission was for them, as it is for you, to:

…provide opportunity for leadership and service, for an intellectual climate…for lively fellowship for scholars and…for academic excellence.

Like us, 1918’s Phi Theta Kappans lived on the cusp of a gilded ragtime age. Their laments ring familiar. Their Victorian context was globalized. They endured fallout from ill-taken Imperial conceits. They faced the ire of restive subjects. Their middle-class was a Marxist fiction. They witnessed a nascent, tragicomic drug-war. They struggled to reintegrate a generation of shell-shocked veterans. Public health crises, such as Swine Flu, abounded. Bigoted fixations over immigration proliferated. They undertook debate on the proper role of government in the daily lives of citizens.

A Phi Theta Kappan might see to his or her mandate by marching for suffrage, (or, God forbid, temperance). She might smuggle contraband editions of Joyce’s Ulysses to her literary salon. He might debate Planck’s notions of quantum physics, with pals, over a glass of absinthe. Perhaps they’d help to mitigate pandemics. Given WWI’s horrors, she might take in a lecture on the obvious obsolescence of war.

They get a mixed review. They tried temperance and suffrage to varying degrees of success.

Despite its naughty bits, I can carry Ulysses without fear of arrest, though the certainty I will be accused of pretentiousness remains. Planck’s theories enable everything from nanotechnology to super-skyscrapers.

And war? Well. There’s that. The best (and worst) we can say is, save for difficulties homecoming veterans face, most civilians can pretend war doesn’t exist.

Another difference is the diminished degree to which many consider the life of the mind an end unto itself, imbued with responsibility to serve the greater project of improving the human condition.

Our world is in flux. Globalization transforms us. We drink daily from a firehose of data gushing with information of questionable quality and veracity. Worse, we are plagued by fear, insecurity, corruption, systemic unfairness, the specter of living unprivate lives, and general decadence of the most pernicious sort. I mean cultural rot, a preference for letter over spirit, and a general celebration of things that do not edify. A list, you say? Happily!

Bank bailouts, militarized police, the Kardashians, an economic system that builds debt, paper wealth, and the illusion of economic opportunity. Hundreds of thousands of new jobs, per quarter; well and good, as we’ll need two or three jobs each just to make it. As much as I’d like, and insane as they are, I won’t offer value judgments on the politics of the matter. Nor will I cast aspersions on those responsible for the disparity I’m about to describe, as much as they deserve it.

What I mean to say is that where Phi Theta Kappa’s founders had the sad luxury of knowing their places among the order of the day, many of us do not. We are poorly nourished on all counts. We are afraid. Some of us engage intellectual life as a means to an end, not an end in and of itself: there are even one or two of you who think of Phi Theta Kappa, primarily, as a nice line on your resume.

We speak softly, voices quivering. We dare not speak truth boldly, in any case. We do not speak it to power, ever. You will be penalized. You will lose your job. You may be beaten by thugs. You may go to jail. You may be shot. You will lose your place in line for the American Dream.

This abrupt shift in conditions comes upon sixty years of general progress and economic well-being, leaving us suffering a queer sort of historical shell-shock. Recognition of these conditions, and the urgency of addressing them, are the responsibilities to which I charge you.

You’re not just joining an honor society, you’re joining conflicts necessary to meet the tests of our days. Which begs the question: What values did 1918’s Phi Theta Kappans hold that we ought to emulate in the struggle? How can we apply the mission in our own time, our own ends, just as we receive the flower and light the candle?

We are students, thinkers, wonderers, builders, and scholars. We can meet these challenges. That is our job. This is what we do. You have already begun. You’re smart, curious, and well-educated. Now you take next steps by putting your achievements to work.

1. Engage The World

Rage against nonsense. Double-down on curiosity. Read. Think. Think critically. Learn incessantly. Ask questions. Probe further when answers patronize, sound formulaic, or ring dismissive.

Seek opinions, claims, and beliefs from people who disagree with you, and especially from those whose thoughts you disdain. Read their writings, hear their voices, consider their arguments.

We often have the most to learn from those we fear. One of the greatest pleasures of living a life of the mind is having that mind expanded, or changed, by better information.

2. Let Purpose Guide

Thoreau said,

Go forth, and live the life you have imagined.

Will your tombstone say that you worked for Proctor & Gamble? Would you want it to? Don’t give yourself a fall-back. If you have a fall back, you will. Search within. Dig deep. Seek, as the Christian scriptures say,

…with fear and trembling.

Identify that thing you were put on this Earth to do. You know already, in your heart’s heart, what that is.

Remember what my mentor, Franklyn Jeans, admonished me after having had enough of my near-constant bitching about pay:

If you love your work, money will never matter. If you work for money, there will never be enough.

Yes, Phi Theta Kappa is a fine association to claim on your resume. Your intellectual development, and the honors appurtenant, are as important, full stop. The curation of your precious intellects is too important a mission to fall subject to mere considerations of money, employment or greed.

3. Disrupt The Corrupt

Our current environment keeps us in an ongoing state of of terror and agitation, which forces good people to submit to mistreatment from bad bosses and overreaching authorities. This prevents any progress at all for the many. It sustains comfort, privileges and prerogatives for the few, who are generally undeserving. It lasts so long as you allow it.

So speak your mind. Be fearless. Call BS when you see it, and allow your own BS to be called. Exercise all your rights — human, constitutional, and social — when you need them, or just because you can. They’re muscles: use ‘em or lose ‘em.

Once lost, it takes twice the work to get them back. Be fearless with yourself. Face the limitations preventing you from going forth and seizing that life you’ve imagined.

The fruits of fearlessness? Compassion, commitment, a bias toward truth, kindness, and tolerance. You grant yourselves these, as gifts, when you mate passion and fearlessness. These gifts benefit others, and nudge ourselves toward what Aristotle, in his Ethics, called “eudaemonia,” or flourishing, or becoming completed people — or, more plainly, our best selves.

4. Groom Successors

Aristotle’s forbearer, Socrates, said:

know thyself.

Easier said than done, no? Fellowship of the kind Phi Theta Kappa fosters allows us to cultivate the critical self-consciousness necessary for living a thoughtful life. Our peers inform us, and often, they inform us we’ve got work to do. We should thank them for it. You will recognize your younger self in others. They’ll be yearning, sometimes without knowing it, for the company of thoughtful people.

When you happen upon such wanderers, take them in. Joining over time and space, across the century spanning 1918–2014, and bridging faiths, philosophies, races, sexes, orientations, and politics, we can address the impediments that prevent our tribes, this nation, and our species, from meeting their full potentials. Guide your successors; if you can’t, refer them to those who can. But always give them your ear and heart. Association improves, ritual connects, and fellowship sustains.

I know they sustain me.

Which is why your generous offer to share my thoughts with you and your loved ones is a great privilege. I am humbled to have been invited and, with all sincerity, proud to have partaken in your honors.