--- title: Tom Wolf Commencement Speech | TIME description: wolfspeech canonical: https://time.com/video/kzV3L1N4/ og:title: Tom Wolf Commencement Speech og:description: wolfspeech og:url: https://time.com/video/kzV3L1N4/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/kzV3L1N4/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Tom Wolf Commencement Speech twitter:description: wolfspeech twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/kzV3L1N4/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Tom Wolf Commencement Speech > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Tom Wolf Commencement Speech [Watch (HLS stream): Tom Wolf Commencement Speech](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/kzV3L1N4.m3u8) (14:03)  _Published 2016-05-23. wolfspeech_ --- Jul 27, 2023 8:08 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Watch The Most Inspiring Moments From the 2017 Commencement Speeches ](/video/fNxww1I0/) ### Watch The Most Inspiring Moments From the 2017 Commencement Speeches [Best Graduation Advice from Commencement Speeches](/video/YcMjDxtp/) ### Best Graduation Advice from Commencement Speeches [Best Graduation Advice from Commencement Speeches](/video/ILvXQw25/) ### Best Graduation Advice from Commencement Speeches --- ## Transcript [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] And I hope you don't mind that I'm dressed formally. The weather is actually not cooperating. But, anyway, iI wanna tell you how proud I am to be here with you. And, President Roseman, trustees, faculty, staff, my fellow honoree degree recipients, David and Elaine And most of all, most of all my fellow members of the Dickinson Class of 2016, give yourself a hand. [ APPLAUSE ] You have all done me a great honor by allowing me to be a member of your class and of course you've brought great honor to yourselves, to your families, to your professors. For earning this great degree from this glorious institution. But as you stand here on the verge of leaving this great place, you need to ask yourselves the big question everybody's asking, which is now what? And I know a lot of you have already decided on your next steps. You have a job, a project. Some of you are going to graduate school, which is I know is the snooze button on the alarm clock of life, let's be honest. That is great. But whatever you have decided you're going to do, you're going to have to confront, actually you're going to have to continue to confront one of the great central questions of life. It's actually one of the central dilemmas of the human condition. And that is, how are you gonna balance the demands that you're gonna face as self- regarding, self- motivated, self- actualized, individuals, with the countervailing social obligations, interests and inclinations that every human being faces. Here's the problem in a nutshell, you're individuals But you're also social beings, you were once compelled by forces you yourself unleash in your own lives, as well as the forces that flow from the society that surrounds you. You are accountable to yourselves, but you're also accountable to the social institutions, the norms and the rules that are gonna guide you, and that have guided you. And one of the most important and never ending jobs that you're going to have is to balance and actually enhance those competing pools on your life and that's what I want to talk about today. How will you or how should you strike this balance? And actually, I'm here, you're there so I'm going to be the one giving you advice, okay? History is full of people who have tried to convince us that life is actually either a purely individual journey or an equally purely social one. The self actualization crowd, the maximum individual of liberty folks would have us believe that we have no real obligation to anyone but ourselves. And no responsibility to anyone but ourselves, that we can achieve amazing things on our own. Bootstraps are often used as a metaphor. The collectivists on the other hand tempt us with equally simplistic visions of a world where humans are nothing more than mere members of a larger social group. The individual, in this view, is but a random atom in a vast immutable unchangeable universe. Unfortunately, neither extreme is true. The world of unfettered individualism, for example. The state of nature, it turns out, is less optimal for actual individual freedom than pure individualism requires. Without a robust social context, and I look at my fellow political scientist here, life can be rather stark. In Thomas Hobbes' memorable phrase, " it was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short ." To liberate themselves from such a world, rational freedom- seeking individuals Will logically consent to bind themselves to a social contract that is not to live by themselves. This was the way John Locke saw it and in his view, these freedom loving human beings will agree to give up certain theoretical freedoms in order to enjoy the individual protections a settled society can offer them. His argument is that while the state of nature is in theory absolutely, positively free of any form of constraints on anyone's freedom, it is practically full of it. For example, the free exercise of individual entrepreneurship is not likely to have property rights or not safe guarded. Free expression is not likely to exist in a place that allows random but powerful people to intimidate you. Unsafe neighborhoods are not good places to be what you wanna be and do what you wanna do. A state of nature full of wild animals, marauding bands of thugs and no public goods is not a place conducive to self actualization. In the constant search for food, clothing, and shelter in the state of nature does not leave much time for self actualization. So the idea is that the purely individualist approach to life is actually impractical. The individual does not do so well in that purely free world. On the other hand the opposite the communitarian approach doesn't work so well either. The old Soviet Union which was intended as a worker's paradise actually wasn't so great. It turned out it was pretty bad for workers, turned out it was also bad for consumers and for entrepreneurs and for anyone else who wanted a decent life In fact, the USSR wasn't all that great for its leaders, who were always looking over their shoulders, afraid that someone might be able to take their jobs or their life. Life in the Socialist paradise, it turns out, looked a lot like life in the state of nature. Intrusive, maybe, not so solitary but also poor, nasty, brutish, and very often short. The problem is that neither extreme, an asocial or a purely social context, can deliver on the promise of a fulsome and really free life. That life requires a capacity for self- growth. It also requires an environment that promotes the self- growth. The dilemma is illustrated by our own national history. It took the cooperative action of the founders of the republic to liberate the colonies from Great Britain. On the other hand, cooperative action also formally consigned generations of Americans to slavery. And it took a broadly shared attachment to the principle of individual liberty and the collective action of the Civil War to secure the liberation of those enslaved individually. It took a broad social effort to keep women in the United States from voting for the first 144 years of the republic and it required the concerted and combined effort of many Americans using the framework of the Constitution to win that right to vote in the 20th century. Finally it took a collective will to forbid Americans from enjoying basic rights simply because of who they loved. But it also took an institution of that same collective will, the federal judicial system, and actually a Dickinson alumnus John Jones, lets give him a round of applause [ SOUND ] to begin to free our fellow Americans from this particular barrier, to individual freedom This internal conflict between the self and the collective exist within us as well as between us in our society. We human beings are a jumble of conflicting impulses. We are both self- regarding and reciprocating animals. We are both individualistic and social beings. Psychologists, evolutionary biologists, behavioral economists, political scientists and many others observe this interior human conflict. Even Adam Smith the putative champion of unfettered individual effort, was ambivalent about what animated human beings. On the one hand, the wealth of nations, he seemed to attributed the welfare of our society and our economy to the magic of the invisible hand. It sells the product of the free interaction of autonomous human beings pursuing their own selfish interest. As he wrote in 1776, it is not from the benevolence of the butcher or the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner but from their regard to their own self interest. But as Adam Smith also observed, human beings are animated by something more than simple self interest. In the theory of moral sentiments he suggested that society is also full of human beings who constantly show a fellow feeling. Did it coexist with and soften the human selfish urges? Thus, the dilemma that we all, that you, actually, face in our daily lives. What kind of people are we? Are we self- regarding pursuers of personal advantage, or are we social animals perpetually interested in the welfare of others? Or, are we both? You'll struggle to balance these competing strands of the human dilemma throughout your lives. And as you do please resist the temptation to throw your arms in the air and retreat to wishful thinking, seductive generalizations, half- baked theories, or anecdotal cures. You're too smart for that. You're Dickinson graduates. Understand that there are simply no easy answers to how we reconcile the social and individual dimensions of our beings. In it's most recent book, The Road to Character, David Brooks, talked about this dilemma. On the hand, he suggests our nation has made some pretty impressive strives for individual liberation's since World War II. While we still have much work to do, women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, are freer to define themselves today than they were in any other time in our nation's history. On the other hand, the very institutions, the social forces, laws, and conventions that promoted and produced that liberation have been diminished. The shift to individual liberation has been accompanied by an unfortunate weakening of many of our social capabilities. The group has given way to the individual. Institutionalized social interaction has given way to bowling alone. And again, this is a problem. Self- actualization does not occur in a social vacuum. It needs a society that in so many ways encourages, sustains and protects individuals pursuing that self- actualization. So how do we reinvigorate our social capacity to encourage individual liberation? How do we make those two things work together? There are four contexts, briefly, that I want to talk about. First, your family Your community second. Third, our democracy and fourth, this place, Dickinson College. Let me start with the family. Your quest for individual meaning will greatly be influenced by the nature of family relationships You build and sustain throughout your lives. You will want therefore to build a family that will fuel your individualism with the things healthy families are uniquely equipped to provide: love, encouragement, and affirmation. Second, the social key to individual vigor is your community. You will inevitably make your personal journey within the community that surrounds you. You therefore have an obligation to contribute to the design and the health of that community. You have an obligation to help make sure that the community is one where the social norms and rules actually enable and facilitate the individual growth that you want. Individual growth cannot take place in a community that is dedicated to sterile conformity. Nor can individual growth take place in a hermetic isolation in a community. Third, you're gonna need to make sure the rules you labor under promote the individualism you seek. And that means your democracy needs you. It is indeed tempting to be indifferent and scornful toward a political system that today absolutely is worthy of actually both of those things. But a democracy can't survive either the indifference or the scorn of its citizens. This is especially true of citizens who want to protect and grow their capacity for self- actualization. And who wouldn't exercise their free will. Finally, from this day on Dickinson College will figure prominently in your lives. And they will define you, that connection with Dickinson as an individual. When you leave here today, you will leave as both the hardy individuals you have made yourselves while you were here. And as members of the Dickinson College class of 2016. From this day on, even beyond the grave, you will be known as Dickinson Alumni. So as this already elite institution becomes even more elite in the years ahead, that will [ UNKNOWN ] to your credit. That will be a social mark that directly tells the world who you are, forever. This means of course, that you will have a concrete interest in contributing To the continual improvement of this place. And I had nothing to do with the development office here. Just pointing that out. But Dickinson helped turn you into the person you are today. And so you have a responsibility to make sure that Dickinson remains the kind of place that allows those who follow you to shape their lives. The point is that you will have to navigate between the twin challenges as life as an individual and life as a member of society. And while there are conflicts between these two, they are not contradictory. They are actually supportive. In fact, you will need to figure out how to reconcile these two contexts. We need you to be strong and free, and we need a strong society that helps you be just that. So celebrate your graduation for the extraordinary achievement that it is. At the same time recognize the great work it has equipped you to perform. Use the things you learned here to enrich your lives as individuals. Pursuing your own dreams, your own life goals. But use these things too to enrich the social institutions that you will need to ensure that you will be free forever to pursue those dreams and life goals. Build strong lives and build a healthy world around you. Resist the temptation to see the world as the simple sum total of the individual quests of you and your peers Or an equally simple and equally wrong- headed view of the world as totally irrelevant to your individual quests. You are an individual, you are a member of a society, and that must be designed, that society, to support your individualism. So, pay attention to your families, pay attention to your communities, strengthen your democracy, and remember Dickinson Thank you, and congratulations. 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