{"id":540,"date":"2009-08-19T10:56:48","date_gmt":"2009-08-19T14:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/?p=540"},"modified":"2009-08-19T10:56:48","modified_gmt":"2009-08-19T14:56:48","slug":"whats-most-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/2009-08-19\/whats-most-important\/","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s Most Important?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>David Brooks&#8217; <cite><a href=\"http:\/\/theconversation.blogs.nytimes.com\/2009\/06\/10\/advice-for-high-school-graduates\/?partner=rss&#038;emc=rss\">Advice for High School Graduates<\/a><\/cite>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThe most important decision any of us make is who we marry. Yet there are no courses on how to choose a spouse. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no graduate department in spouse selection studies. Institutions of higher learning devote more resources to semiotics than love.<\/p>\n<p>The most important talent any person can possess is the ability to make and keep friends. And yet here too there is no curriculum for this.<\/p>\n<p>The most important skill a person can possess is the ability to control one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s impulses. Here too, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re pretty much on our own.<\/p>\n<p>These are all things with a provable relationship to human happiness. Instead, society is busy preparing us for all the decisions that have a marginal effect on human happiness. There are guidance offices to help people in the monumental task of selecting a college. There are business schools offering lavish career placement services. There is a vast media apparatus offering minute advice on how to furnish your home or expand your deck.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never heard it put so succinctly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Brooks&#8217; Advice for High School Graduates: The most important decision any of us make is who we marry. Yet there are no courses on how to choose a spouse. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no graduate department in spouse selection studies. Institutions of higher learning devote more resources to semiotics than love. The most important talent any person [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-untagged"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":543,"href":"http:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions\/543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}