I took my first step away from that moronic belief when I noticed that I found the concept of free will to be highly incoherent and implausible, yet lived as if I were a mostly free agent in my “decisions” and “choices.” I’m no philosopher, but evidently, one could think one thing and do another.
It was Princeton, though, that really taught me to keep distance between my life and my intellect. Of course, no one actually teaches you such things. It’s like freshmen learning on the Street how much of their “dancing” can consist of feeling up their arbitrary dance partners: You’re supposed to just pick it up somehow.
Many of you who have taken a class with professor Peter Singer know exactly what I’m talking about. You listen to him, and you agree with pretty much everything he says. You might occasionally “disagree” with his conclusions, but only for emotional reasons at best. Regardless, most probably you hardly change your ways: You still eat your meat, drink your bottled water and regard utilitarianism as merely an intellectual exercise.
It’s unclear to me why we are so exceptionally good at this art of maintaining a disconnect between our intellectual and practical lives. I suppose Princeton does its best to isolate us from the real world. Our living circumstances are removed from reality, so our intellectual decisions are removed from our practical decisions.
Perhaps we are archetypally postmodern, disillusioned by the promises of modernity, radically skeptical of ethics and epistemology, rejecting the entirety of metaphysics and, hence, philosophically materialistic, struggling under our existential burden, scrambling for something to value in this disenchanted world, sucking for air in its vacuum of meaning, insecure, confused, purposelessly wandering machines governed by pluralistic ignorance, too cynical to live by abstract ideals and theoretical reflections.
No, that’s too melodramatic. Instead, recent psychological research of our decision-making processes suggests another explanation. Apparently we have two systems for decision making: a rational one and an intuitive one. The rational system seems to wield far less influence over the intuitive system than we once supposed. So we study using the former and live using the latter, and modernity’s characterization of humans as the rational creature was only a self-glorifying overestimation — the disconnect has always been there.
So we celebrate diversity while bickering, condemn superficial judgments while rushing and advocate for intellectual liberty while prosecuting others for their ideas. It’s all because we’re too smart to be idealists. We recognize and manifest through our actions the inherent gulf between theory and practice.
Members of the Class of 2010 were asked on their applications what Princeton’s informal motto, “In the Nation’s Service and the Service of All Nations,” meant to them. I wonder how many of us answered, “Becoming an investment banker or a consultant.” Rather, given its academic context and our evidently incredible capacities to intellectually explore and engage with various ideas, I’m sure we let soar our imaginations and surprised the Office of Admission with creative interpretations.
But then Princeton happened. We felt the palpable expectation of a liberal, tasteful detachment between words and actions. And only a few years later, we’re lining up for interviews in finance and consulting.
I mean, there is a reason it’s only an informal motto, right? The formal motto, of which a surprising number of Princetonians are unaware, is “Dei sub numine viget” — “Under God’s power she flourishes.” Under whatever, “she” sure is flourishing, so it’s not like we’re a heap of hypocrites or anything. It’s completely fine that we bastardize our professed intellectual passions and sign up for the jobs that will pay for our luxuries.
Ah, those silly old days when we considered it honorable to live as one thought and were sure that we’d actually live in the nation’s service and the service of all nations; how naive we were to be inspired by such thoughts...
Eric Kang is a physics major from Christchurch, New Zealand. He can be reached at eakang@princeton.edu.
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