“Graduates, I’d like to let you in on a little secret. If you had attended half as many graduation ceremonies as I have, you would not be excited for the speech I’m about to give.
There’s no kind of speech in all the world so full of cliches and platitudes as a commencement address. Some of the worst speeches I’ve ever heard were commencement addresses. What made them so bad wasn’t just the cliches and platitudes, but the lies.
Granted, it’s a very particular kind of lie you’re apt to find in a commencement address, but it’s a lie nonetheless.
What kind of lie? Flattery.
There’s just something about the commencement address—the setting, the occasion, the audience, the time of year—that tempts adults to say things to young people that sound really good but just aren’t true.”
-from the 2023 Mirus Academy Commencement Address, which I gave last weekend
You can find out more about Mirus Academy here.
There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. 