(This is the text of my speech to the KBS/BSTAI Awards a few weeks ago. It was a lot of fun and thanks to the organisers for inviting me to speak).

A contradiction happens when opposing ideas are combined.

In 1519 Hernán Cortés journeyed to what is now Mexico. He caused the fall of the Aztec empire, using guns, germs, and steel. Cortés did that for gold. The Aztecs could not understand why Cortés wanted this useless soft metal. He told them he had “a disease of the heart that could only be cured with gold”.

Jump back three centuries or so, where Christians and Muslims turned cities into ruins in service of the greater glory of their gods.  As the Christians gained the upper hand in the conflict, they issued gold coins thanking their god for his help in conquering the muslims.

At exactly the same time as they issued their Christian coins, the Christians minted square coins called Millarès, emblazoned with that beautiful flowing Arabic script, declaring there is no god but Allah. The Catholic Bishops minted and issued Millares, and god-fearing Christians used them. Elsewhere Muslim rulers calling for jihad against all infidels cheerfully received their taxes in Christian gold of any variety.

You can see the contradictions in both stories. When mortal enemies trust each other’s money, but work daily to kill each other, and when a simple ‘sickness of the heart’ brings down an entire civilisation.

You will be aware of many contradictions in your own life. Your parents, once your role models for god, struggle to programme DVD players and stab uselessly at the iPads your fingers dance over. Your society contains ideas that are often contradictory—everyone’s a winner for example, or the idea that you can have individual freedom and equality between individuals. You can’t reconcile these contradictions, and you shouldn’t really try.

Contradictions are the stuff of modern life. In fact, philosophers like Karl Marx and others thought these contradictions impelled society forward. He called it something fancier, but that’s what he meant.

You yourself are a contradiction. You’ve lived a very successful life—obviously, look at you!—having most of your choices made for you. And now, as you move into adulthood, society is asking you to choose the direction of the rest of your life. While at the same time insisting you put your hand up to use the bathroom.

So you’re being asked to behave like the all-seeing happiness maximising computer economic theory thinks you are, while living in what is for all practical purposes a benevolent dictatorship in your parent’s house.

So how should you think about your choices? The institutional structures you have around you can’t help that much beyond offering information. They aren’t set up to do the job of helping you think openly.

You need to read. You need to think about the contradictions you see around you that you are most interested in. Why is the world this way? How are have a peace people fight for? How is this lecture hard when it is composed of atoms which themselves are mostly empty space? How can you be a sentient being when your bodies are each composed of one by 10 to the 14 eukaryotic cells, not a single one of which cares whether you live or die?

The study of the human condition is called literature. When it has definable answers it’s called Science. Read widely. Read the greats. If you’re reading about Kim Kardashian or anything with a sparkly vampire in it, you’re doing it wrong. These are like burgers when the finest filet of human thought is available to you. It’s a click away.

Read beyond your school, beyond your parents, beyond yourself. Novels in particular allow you to see and experience other worlds. And when you relate these experiences to your own, you will find your choices change.

Words create worlds. Right now, your world is too small to make the best choice you can. Savour the best words in the world, to expand yours.

One final bit of advice, don’t make the mistake Cortes made in 1519. Don’t have a disease in your heart that can only be cured by gold. Life is too short.

And your lives are going to be amazing. I envy you.