[speech to graduating students at Holmes/ZRVTC, Zhengzhou, China]
Thor May PhD
June 8, 2010
see the video, "The Journey of a Passionate Skeptic " (4 minutes) at http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTgwMTYzMTY4.html [in China] or on Youtube worldwide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WpCiMv9d3Q
All of my videos are also now on a blog, Thor's Videos & Recordings, at http://thorsvideo.byeways.net/
Honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen, teachers, students, friends, 大家好 (da4jia1 hao3)!
Congratulations to the first graduates of our International Joint Venture with Holmes Institute at Zhengzhou Railway Vocational & Technical College. I’m really glad to see that you didn’t all run away ^_^. You didn’t give up. You made it!
From today we will go on many different roads. We cannot see that future. It might be hard, it might be easy. But we will not forget the friends we made at ZRVTC.
Soon, I too will have to take a different road. Already, I have come on a long journey to this place. That journey has made me what I am.
You don’t want to be like me! You want to be rich and famous, right? I’m only a poor man. But I will say a few words anyway.
My internet homepage is called “The Passionate Skeptic”
“Passionate” for me means putting my heart into whatever I do. It is the opposite of ‘ma3 ma3 hu3 hu3’ [horse horse, tiger tiger] or, as we say in English, near enough is good enough.
I like passionate people, even when they are wrong. Their lives have colour, they are not grey. They try to do things well.
It doesn’t matter if you are a president or a street sweeper, or a housewife or a student. It takes all kinds of people to make the world go around. If you are passionate, you will have my respect.
Now what is a skeptic ? A skeptic is a person who doubts, a person who doesn’t believe things.
Is it bad to doubt? Some people think it is bad to doubt. I think it is good. Believe little, question everything.
The true things will still be true. The untrue things, and the untrue people cannot hide if you question everything.
Then you will have energy. You will always have a passion to learn, to try ideas and to discover new things. You will be a passionate skeptic.
Hey, if you happen to get rich and famous too, let me know! Good luck on your journey into the world !
Thor May,
thormay@yahoo.com
Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China
June 2010
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