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A Letter to My Granddaughter About Dartmouth 173<br />

Habit is the enormous fly-wheel <strong>of</strong> society, its most precious<br />

conservative agent. It alone is what ... saves the children <strong>of</strong><br />

fortune from the envious uprisings <strong>of</strong> the poor .... It alone<br />

prevents the hardest and most repulsive [jobs] from being<br />

deserted. It holds the miner in his darkness. It keeps different<br />

social strata from mixing.<br />

For all your present scrappiness, Kristina, you are, like all <strong>of</strong> us, largely<br />

multiple layers <strong>of</strong> habits. Deliberately indoctrinated into you by agencies<br />

indifferent to your dignity, your personal sovereignty, and your<br />

welfare. It's up to you to hunt down relentlessly these "indwelling curiosity<br />

cut-<strong>of</strong>fs" (as Kesey called them in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's<br />

Nest), and break their grip on your life. Then you will truly be free.<br />

I want you to have a big, bold, free life, one lived with reckless<br />

courage, unquenchable compassion, and full reverence for the truth<br />

<strong>of</strong> things. The Dartmouths <strong>of</strong> the world are the enemies <strong>of</strong> truth.<br />

But whatever you decide, your Granny Janet and I will be with you in<br />

spirit and love. Good luck on the road ahead!

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