Untitled document Moreau Capstone Integration April 29, 2022 Prof. Chan Pursuing A Life Well Lived My mission statement reads: I am put on this earth by God, and my purpose is to know, love, and serve Him. I can best know Him by being a lifelong learner, hungry for knowledge about all aspects of His creation and therefore of Him as well. I can best love Him by loving those around me, for He has told us that “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” I can best serve him by serving others and by using my many unique talents for the betterment of my friends, family, community, and the world as a whole. Above all, I must not ever turn my back on Him. To best know Him, I ought to always approach each person with whom I interact as someone from whom I can learn, regardless of differences in race, sex, class, age, or education level. I ought to approach each problem that life presents as another challenge that I am called to learn from and grow from, not as merely an obstacle to be obliterated. To best love Him, I ought to always strive to see the good in others, even those with whom I disagree and those who are actively working against me. Despite the differences between us, including those in which they might actually be objectively wrong or advancing evil, I ought to see them as fellow children of God. To best serve Him, I ought to make sure that my considerable talents are put to use for the common good rather than the maximization of my wealth. I must never give in to the twin evils of pride and false humility when I am recognized for my achievements, but instead use the encouragement to rededicate myself to my mission. Above all, whatever my path in life, I must never waiver from commitment to God. (Moreau FYE Week 13, ). I believe that the above mission statement is a good guide for life. To be honest, I think the prompt is a little un-thought-out; a mission statement that animates only the next three years of your life isn’t a very good one. If life is my mission, I certainly hope that it will last longer than the next three years. Do the people who put together Moreau know something I don’t? Even further, the second semester is about a “life well-lived,” and there is more to life than the college setting. However, given that this essay is graded with a rubric and I would like to receive a good grade, the path forward seems clear. It’s fairly obvious how the “learning” part of my mission statement will animate the next three years of my life. I am at one of the best universities in the country, with some amazing resources at my disposal. I will strive to use every single one of them. One Moreau unit which spoke most directly on learning was Week 11, which concerned growing in wisdom. In every subject other than math, there are two sides to every debate or topic. If I want to learn, I must learn both sides. I need to avoid echo chambers. It can be rather hard to do that, especially in our current culture. It seems like you can’t actually avoid echo chambers anymore; rather, you have to be in multiple conflicting echo chambers in order to try to get a glimpse of the truth (Moreau FYE Week 11, Dr. Paul Blasko). I’m writing this one day after a clip of Ari Melber complaining on MSNBC about Elon Musk buying Twitter went viral. In the clip, he says You own all of Twitter or Facebook or what have you. You don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t even have to be transparent. You could secretly ban one party’s candidate or all of their candidates. All of its nominees. Or you could secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else and the rest of us might not even find out about it til after the election (link). This clip so clearly demonstrates the need to avoid echo chambers. I’m sure that Melber is well-educated. He probably is smarter than average, and probably considers himself fair and generally impartial. But everything he just said is what conservatives have been complaining about for years. Despite being smart, he either hasn’t heard those complaints because of his echo chamber or hasn’t taken them seriously because he thinks himself better than those making them. Either way, the echo chamber is the problem. Notre Dame is perhaps the best place to go to avoid echo chambers. It is conservative for a school of its caliber, but liberal for the country as a whole. There are College Democrats and College Republicans, but also College Libertarians. Campus Ministry is theologically “progressive” while there are many student clubs like Children of Mary which are theologically “traditional.” Organizations like PRISM or articles like Growing Up Gay and Catholic (Moreau Week 10) advance a notion of Catholicism which is rejected by other organizations on campus. It would be especially hard at Notre Dame to graduate without ever hearing opposing viewpoints. In addition to learning how to avoid echo chambers, I’ve learned some critical tools for evaluating my life and my actions. Exhortations for “mindfulness” or meditation, like Pico Iyer's (Moreau FYE Week 1) or The Right Way to Be Introspective (Moreau FYE Week 6), have (inadvertently) spurred on a new approach to prayer in my life. While I used to usually just sit in a chapel silently, I now go on a walk around the lakes talking aloud. It makes it a lot easier to stop your thoughts from drifting, as well as being a good opportunity to smoke. I’ve learned about figures I can look up to, like Fr. Ted Hesburgh. While the movie about him we watched for https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/msnbc-host-trashed-for-warning-elon-musk-could-use-twitter-to-ban-political-candidates-e2-80-98you-absolute-clown-e2-80-99/ar-AAWC9Vz https://grottonetwork.com/keep-the-faith/community/reflective-narrative-about-being-gay-and-catholic/ https://ideas.ted.com/why-we-need-a-secular-sabbath/ https://ideas.ted.com/the-right-way-to-be-introspective-yes-theres-a-wrong-way/ Moreau, Hesburgh, doesn’t mention any of his more regrettable actions, the idealized Hesburgh they hold up serves as a good model for my life. Although I expect it to look very different from Fr. Ted’s, I hope that I can demonstrate the same dedication to the downtrodden that he is known for. I can best love God by loving others, and Notre Dame also makes that easier. While it is easy to love some people, I often find it hard to love others. I bring this up in Confession often. Today as I was leaving North Dining Hall I saw some chalk writing advancing opinions that I would characterize as climate hysteria, written for the purpose of either venting or peacocking and demonstrating that the author had the correct views. Either way, I felt a twinge of annoyance and disdain for the author. I realized as I was walking away that this was yet another opportunity to love people. Perhaps the person who wrote those outside of North (and all over campus) simply cares very deeply about that issue to the point of having blinders on. Perhaps they’ve fallen prey to an echo chamber. Perhaps I have. Either way, I can love them, and in this case loving them means simply walking away not thinking about it. That’s a fairly easy thing to do. I can continue to do that for the next three years, and indeed for the rest of my life. I have also learned much more on how best to serve others while at Notre Dame, and I foresee learning much more about it in the next three years. The first way that I can serve others is through my career. The Three Key Questions document (Moreau FYE Week 4) has helped me see what career I want to pursue, which will likely be something at the intersection of mathematics and finance, or, as a fallback, the benevolent despot of a banana republic. The conversation that I had with my friend J.A. Hatch also helped me see what sorts of changes I need to make in my life to ensure that I retain my moral compass in an industry so famously immoral. Pope Francis, in his TED address, urged faithful Catholics that building the future https://notredame.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=10159379-7eca-4549-8581-ab9500c9ecd9 https://cdn.inst-fs-iad-prod.inscloudgate.net/78837e86-dc2e-4c63-846e-a469fb69b41f/%22Three%20Key%20Questions%22%20(adapted%20from%20Fr.%20Michael%20Himes)?token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzUxMiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCIsImtpZCI6ImNkbiJ9.eyJyZXNvdXJjZSI6Ii83ODgzN2U4Ni1kYzJlLTRjNjMtODQ2ZS1hNDY5ZmI2OWI0MWYvJTIyVGhyZWUlMjBLZXklMjBRdWVzdGlvbnMlMjIlMjAoYWRhcHRlZCUyMGZyb20lMjBGci4lMjBNaWNoYWVsJTIwSGltZXMpIiwidGVuYW50IjoiY2FudmFzIiwidXNlcl9pZCI6IjE0MDcyMDAwMDAwMDAzNDY2MiIsImlhdCI6MTY1MTE3ODE2OCwiZXhwIjoxNjUxMjY0NTY4fQ.E6u_gzAFqja8W89DpdWhEPLf-a3xOkDnBQh-WGgga_85ABKAk7XQQsGm7AFPYH0petiJCFmkZczCXIa9DJ76Og&download=1&content_type=application%2Fpdf requires the participation of everyone (Pope Francis, Moreau FYE Week 7). I take that to mean that it also requires the talents of everyone. Therefore, even a finance career can help better all of mankind as long as I retain that moral compass. As I progress through the university, I will be guided by my vision of building a better world to best serve others. In conclusion, my mission animates me in life, and specifically in these next three years. I want to fight back against evil wherever I see it, whether it takes the form of the abhorrent racism that Dean Cole experience (Moreau FYE Week 12) or the form of somethings smaller, like pineapple on pizza. I want to learn everything I can about, well, everything. I want to love every person I see, as challenging as it might be. I want to do all of these things because it is what God wants and demands, and there is no place better to learn to do it than Notre Dame. https://www.ted.com/talks/his_holiness_pope_francis_why_the_only_future_worth_building_includes_everyone/transcript https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/40288/modules/items/146094