This past week, I was driving down the road with one of my friends who recently got home from college. He and I were discussing different things about society nowadays and what we thought of it. After we had come to a small pause in our conversation, we both looked at each other and began talking about the type of conversation we were having: an intellectual conversation about ideas.

Having this conversation really put a lot of things in perspective for me. Take one moment to think to yourself, "What do I actually talk about for most of my day?" I'm sure many of you have heard a professor say to you, "'Smart people have smart conversations," but that is not what I am talking about. What I am talking about is the lack of depth in our society as a whole. I walk around every day hearing the types of things people are talking about; largely stuff that absolutely doesn't matter.

Our society has grown to love pointless noise. It has gotten to a point where less thinking is the norm, and it is often embraced with open arms. We are conditioning ourselves as a society to be dumber than we should be. For instance, people talking about pointless things such as who you are hooking up with, or what someone did last night while they were drunk. Although I am not trying to tell anyone what to talk about, I am saying that if this is all you talk about, you have some serious consideration to do.

It has become almost a norm to want to shut our brains off completely and fill them with nothing but entertainment once we have done a little bit of work. How many people do you actually know who discuss politics, world economics, philosophy, art, writing—anything that can be spun in an intellectual way—in their spare time? It has even come to the point where people get annoyed with someone who is always talking about intellectual topics in their conversation, and this is absolutely pathetic. Why persecute someone for wanting to talk about things that actually matter? Our society has become so consumed with mindless entertainment that comes directly from the TV that we have forgotten what really matters for the advancement of our society.

I challenge you to talk to someone from a foreign country and ask them about their education and society. The chances are, within two minutes you will realize they are incredibly intelligent. This is because they realize the importance of educating one's self more than just going to school and drooling for fifty minutes at a time while thinking about the pitcher of beer you are going to buy later.

I urge you to take some initiative and think more. See how many books you can read to entertain yourselves instead of binge watching TV shows. While this can be fun, I promise you a good book is twenty times better and will actually teach you some things other than who just killed your favorite character in Game of Thrones.