Wisdom

My millennial progeny and their spouses have more facts and knowledge at their finger-tips than I did when I was their age.  They are in their mid-thirties, born in the early 1980’s, raised with microwaves, color TV, central air, Walkmans and iPods, cell phones, desktop personal computers, etc.  When I was 35 if I wanted to gain new knowledge I needed books and libraries and hours.  They can Google a topic, scan it in minutes and claim to have knowledge.  And yet with all this readily available knowledge and technology there are key components of the human existence they have yet to master.  One of those components is wisdom.  They tend to think if they have knowledge, they have wisdom, but that is not true.  In fact I would argue that this greater ease of knowledge attainment has somehow postponed the process of individual accrual of wisdom.  Wisdom is individually earned and only over time.  Few in their 30’s have lived long enough to have any, and even worse, few in their thirties recognize wisdom when they see it. 

A large part of wisdom comes from not just surviving events but learning from them.  People who have never been married, never adjusted to in-laws, or never adjusted to the same roommate for decades cannot possibly have meaningful relationship wisdom.  People who have not parented and experienced that special love that transcends all other love cannot possibly have meaningful family wisdom.  People who have not lost parents, siblings, friends, and/or children cannot possibly have meaningful wisdom regarding death.  People who have not been a part of societal chaos, riots in the street, burning cars and broken windows, of armed men surrounding unarmed civilians, of being helpless in the face of the state cannot possibly have meaningful wisdom regarding the tension between order and freedom in society.

So wisdom can grow from knowledge and from experience, but it is more than that.  It is mental hooks on which to hang things.  It is an organized mind that is mindful of the past, the current and possible futures, mindful of what has worked and what has not, mindful of what is new and what is old, mindful that the very mental hooks they use are likely very different than the mental hooks of others.  Our mental framework, our view of the world is enriched by our knowledge and our experience.  But if our view is historically narrow or historically shallow then we shall not obtain wisdom despite our yearning for the universal adoption of our own framework.  For instance, wisdom knows there is no silver bullet that will kill social ills.  Wisdom knows that for a person to claim they have such a bullet identifies that person as someone who lacks not only wisdom, but knowledge of things past.  Our world view is bounded by the limits of our knowledge and our own experience and our own acquired wisdom.  It does not take long to sense the depth of the world view of some with less knowledge, less experience and less wisdom.  Parents sense this when their children are teenagers and suddenly know everything.  Others sense this when interacting with people whose world view is attained through the lens of fear, of loathing, of selfishness, of discrimination, of greed, or lust for power.

One might have a mental hook regarding economics.  Based on knowledge, experience and the past when someone proposes to give the wealthy tax cuts and a person who has this hook and has attained wisdom will view such a proposal very differently than someone without this hook, with knowledge and without wisdom.  Likewise if a person has a mental hook regarding religious beliefs they will be able to quickly detect fundamentalism from knowledge, beliefs grounded in reason and beliefs grounded in imagery.  The more hooks a person has the more they are able to deal with the abundance of information flowing each day.  The more wisdom they will have because they have hooks that can pick up new bits of knowledge and discard old tried and failed knowledge.

But there has become a much darker side to the lack of wisdom in our country.  The dark side is that there are some people who have no respect for wisdom.  Worse, they have no respect for knowledge.  They only respect attitude and opinion and only those attitudes and opinions that align with their own.  In no way is this wise.  In no way is this knowledgeable.  These folks fade quickly when confronted with knowledge, and have no clue when they are confronted by wisdom.  And yet, they remain steadfast supporters of attitude and opinion in the vacuum of no facts.

For instance, our knowledge informs us that everywhere restrictions on owning firearms have been implemented the number of deaths by firearms decreases.  Knowing this, a wise person would say we have too many deaths by firearms so let us tighten the restrictions on firearms.  But there is a segment of our population who have been convinced that more restrictions on owning firearms is somehow a threat to them and their rights, even though there is no evidence of that, no examples of that.  It is pure political rhetoric promoted by the folks who sell firearms and do not want to see sales drop.  There is no wisdom in this position and these folks will eventually find themselves on the wrong side of history.

The same is true of the knowledge and wisdom surrounding global warming and the human impact on that warming.  The same is true regarding the reduction in regulations mandating proper behavior and safety measures for the private sector.  The same is true for the protection of human and civil rights.  The same is true regarding immigrants.  The same is true regarding collaboration rather than isolation, shared leadership rather than me first.  On and on.  We simply can ill afford to abandon all our accrued knowledge and the wisdom it supports or we shall be forced to survive the pain and failure that previous generations experienced. 

We learned much from slavery, from the Civil War, from World War I and II, from both Korea and Viet Nam, from women’s rights, from minority rights, from gender rights, from worker’s rights, from pollution, from petroleum scarcities, from riots across the country, from Kent State and Columbine.  We are, however, at a point where all those learnings, all the wisdom that was accrued through those tragedies are being tossed out with the bath water.  We shall emerge either more wise, more democratic, more tolerant, more progressive and more inclusive, or we shall emerge as a backward, selfish nation intent on self-destruction and totally lacking moral or wise leadership.  Our heroes should be those who stand against injustice, who stand for the value of all human life and the planet we call home; our heroes should not be lying self-serving tyrants.

I vote for knowledge first, then wisdom as it has been accrued across the ages.

So, how do we promote wisdom?