I – On Wisdom

There is a lot of wisdom in the words of dead philosophers.  But since they are dead, how can they possibly know what we are facing today ?  How can they help us find the solutions to our problems?  We assume that our current era is just so extraordinary – too complex and deeply interconnected – that dead thinkers can’t possibly have anything relevant to say about our current predicaments.   So we dismiss their life work, their thought experiments and observations, their carefully argued conclusions.   In the meantime, we remain lost and confused, nagged by the feeling that we are ‘missing something’…

The ancients, the newly dead as well as the long gone, didn’t have all of our technologies and sciences to find the solutions of questions.  Some questions indeed require science to be solved, like physics and biology.  Our understanding of the natural world – while still far from perfect – nonetheless exceeds their wildest dreams.  And since most philosophers have historically been involved in both natural and philosophical disciplines, we chuckles at how they misunderstood genetics and we use their errors to justify dismissing the rest of their treatises.

From our technological and scientific knowledge, we are learning more and more how to control our environment.  We are doing so experimentally, meaning that we don’t really know the possible consequences and ramifications of our choices.  We could be causing our own doom with the development of “MAD” nuclear energy – for example.  But we proceed with our technology and science – often at breakneck speed – mostly because it works in our favor to do so.  We deploy our techniques to make humans thrive and reign over all other species and matters on Earth.  After all, it is via our technology that humanity has become almighty: able to change the acidity of lakes, the composition of the atmosphere, capable of altering the sequence of DNA, and doing countless other miracles that couldn’t even be contemplated by our dead philosophers.

We actually know so much that, in our arrogance, we think that we can know everything.  We have incredible faith in our technical prowess; so much so that we believe that we will be able to solve our emerging and future problems with more advanced science and technology.  If only we were to discover the right tools, invent the right machines, make that next breakthrough.  We believe that science can solve everything.  After all, living people – and to an even greater extent, future people – ought certainly be smarter than dead people.

Written like that, the statement seems both natural and incongruous.  Of course, each new generation stands on the shoulders of giants.  But if we were to discard the contributions of our dead friends, what would keep us from falling?  Are we imitating Icarus here, putting all our faith in our technology as we sore to great heights?

I have studied my fair share of the past: nothing in the evolution of human thoughts and societies guarantee a linear relationship of increased wisdom over time.  Actually, history tends to suggest a more cyclical path to human civilization, with a constant rise and fall in the centers of knowledge.  The Greeks rose and fell, so did the Romans.  After Alexandria and Athens, Baghdad was celebrated as a center of intellectual achievements, attracting scholars from all over the known world.  Today, they flock to Silicon Valley.  And as you might imagine, our contemporary methods and subjects of inquiries differ vastly than our ancestors’.

From history, we know that pockets of wisdom have existed across time and space.  They emerge especially when societies are in ascendancy, as economic surpluses allow some men (at least, historically speaking, men – today let’s say people) to spare time to think (and not merely labor to survive).  One such time of greatness, an era whose influence on Western civilization can’t hardly be denied, is the combined century of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.  By the third generation of brilliant student/teacher succession, we can only imagine the depth and breath of their speculation and pondering.

We can only imagine because, frankly, who reads Aristotle these days.  Some of his work has been destroyed and lost forever.  The remaining is in a dead language requiring careful translation.  Once in actual English, the primary texts are still opaque: written at a time and within a culture that is so foreign to us that we can’t hardly relate.  And most of his texts were written for colleagues and other philosophers already versed in the language of debates.

Meanwhile, we – the moderns – have seemingly lost the ability to collectively ponder and debate.  First of all, we are deeply uncomfortable with ideas and opinions that cannot be proved by data and facts.  When we face questions for which science and technology cannot provide answers, we feel so lost that we instinctively choose the facts that fits our point of view, our prejudices and our traditions without employing our full rationality.  With our opinion firmly held, we just attempt to shout out or impose it onto others…  And if it doesn’t work, we shout louder, claim that our position is the moral high ground, and simply denounce the skeptics and unbelievers as lost souls.  This feels pretty medieval to me.  Inquisition?  Anyone?

Our inability today to publicly debate proves – at least in part – that wisdom is cyclical, that it emerges and retreats, not only with the lives of man and woman who make their life work to study wisdom, but also with the extend that society is interested in applying their work to public decision-making.

Please notice that I am focusing on wisdom: a form of integrative and reflective intelligence marked by “…the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight.” (Quote from Wikipedia – our most trusted source of collective knowledge).

Wisdom combines practical intelligence, good judgment, intuition and awareness of oneself, others and the world at large to make the correct (ie: optimal and most beneficial) decisions; not just for us, but for all involved, present and future.  Amongst other things, it requires considering the likely impacts of our choices on others; hence it is often associated with empathy, compassion, ethics and benevolence.  Given this definition, wisdom is the practice of morality (ie: seeking to do what is right) in all aspect of ones’ existence, both big and small.

In our era, it is widely assumed that a wise person is “…one who knows how to live well”.  A wise man or woman is one that achieved and cultivates the Holy Grail of the “Good Life”.  The most prized reward of being wise is a general feeling of happiness, more akin to fulfillment than that reached from pleasures alone.  It is fueled by a deep sense of living an authentic life, one with a purpose; one where the joy of leading a meaningful life is interwoven with the realization of one’s individual potential within a social context.  A wise person also tends to enjoy a broad satisfaction with one’s relationships with others and one’s place in the world; not because they were endowed with good relationships to begin with, but because they cultivate goodness in everything they do, including within their relationships.

Wisdom is not easy to achieve, but it is certainly sought after by most secular and all major religious traditions.  It is the omega of our human evolution, combining intellectual and emotional intelligence.  It is the nirvana of our soul, one that we can actually be alive to enjoy…

So; with all our data, all our facts (both actual and alternative), all our historical records, all our studies of sciences, philosophies and comparative religions; why isn’t the pursuit of wisdom our most cherished objective?  If there is only one thing that we should learn from dead philosophers; it is that Wisdom is the only goal worth pursuing.