Posted on 11/27/2007 11:55:30 AM PST by bs9021
Apathy U
by: Emily Mullin, November 27, 2007
“Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.”
The quote was said by one of our most famous founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson. And although it was spoken over 200 years ago, the message is still applicable today.
The world has changed slightly since the time of Thomas Jefferson, and so has the youth of America.
Young people now live in a sort of bubble, a controlled environment called college. We permeate our brains with information five days a week and our livers with alcohol the other two (well, this ratio may slightly differ from person to person). We carry out our lives one day at a time. We go to class, we study, we socialize. The weekend eventually comes and goes and we do the same monotonous routine over again. Once in a while something exciting may happen that gets people excited and reminds them that they are in fact living, breathing human beings.
I don’t want to generalize, but for the sake of this column, I simply must. College students live in an artificial reality. I know because I have witnessed it firsthand. We all get out of touch with the world sometimes. We’re in college, it’s inevitable. But the underlying problem in our generation is that young people have the misconception that things don’t affect them, that they don’t have to care about politics and current issues, and that somehow everything will fix itself. Or better yet, our aging politicians in Washington will fix it for us.
Well, I hate to tell you, kids, but it doesn’t work like that.
(Excerpt) Read more at campusreportonline.net ...
Hmmmm ... is there a citation for this?
LOL! I can just picture the Founder sitting around saying such immortal words as “I want to make a difference....”
What makes the two mutually exclusive? Yes I'm an Engineering student.
"Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.--Witold (?) Gombrowicz"
From: http://www.quotelady.com/subjects/action.html
Ref:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE0DC113CF936A35752C1A96F948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
and
http://www.statssheet.com/articles/article24415.html
True or not, the quote seems commonly considered a Jefferson quote:
examples:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff120901.html
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/do_you_want_to_know_who_you_are-don-t_ask-act/225646.html
http://thebryantadvantage.blogspot.com/2007/11/thought-for-day-do-you-want-to-know-who.html
a lot of blogs also attribute this quote to Thomas Jefferson.
Also... the New York Times article only quotes Witold Gombrowicz as saying this, not originating the quote. It would also not be unfeasible that the reporter missed Gombrowicz’ Thomas Jefferson allusion during the interview.
I concur - I think it’s more of a cause/effect relationship rather than two independent occurrences...BTW, I’m an engineering student as well, so I know exactly what you’re talking about! :)
Boobleglogging?
The perceived need for people to “find yourself” is more typical (I think) of the loser mentalities which accompanied the arrival of Nietche, Sarte and their kin in the first wave, and even sadder would be social theorists such as Benjamin Spock and the Beatles in the next.
But if there is a citation to an original source from which this Jeffersonian alleged quote may be found...
Arrg...should be “not prone to pop psychology”.
Just did a search on the quote and it appears on a dozen different pages... not that it proves anything, but the evidence seems to indicate Jefferson really said it.
Yes. It appears on a dozen pages. Sad actually that so many people would republish it as a Jefferson quote without spotting the oddity of the language. Tijeras Slim nailed it back at post #3.
It was odd, sort of like... “I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or whatever.”
I’m not arguing for a particular origin for the quote... so much as the point that the origin of the quote remains ambiguous. In other words, an article describing Gombrowicz saying the quote doesn’t necessarily make Mullin wrong.
If action is not the clearly best idea right now, at least get a personalized license plate that says how kool you are.
To paraphrase Decartes “I study engineering, therefore I drink.” Really I was asked about this by a friend of mine. She wondered why we’re always in the pub (I’m on a work placement right now). There’s a reason for it, I probably shouldn’t divulge it in a public forum...but I will anyway.
We go to the pub, because it’s a way to unwind from a stressful day. Be it at work, or at school. The pub allows us to throw ideas back and forth and actually exercise our brains as much as school does, if not more. Because we’re a bunch of (relatively) educated people sitting around a table with lowered inhibitions, we end up getting all the crap out of our heads that builds up during the day.
This coming from a guy who keeps a sketchbook open so that every day after work he can write down everything he couldn’t at work because of contractual obligations.
Parents paying for their childrens education helps this phenomenon. They can be irresponsible dumbies all they want, mommy and daddy will take care of them. I have worked with a lot of pampered youths coming out of school who have no clue.
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