Wisdom

 

                                         Rodin's The Thinker

Wisdom is not what it’s cracked up to be, especially in times of change. According to my hero, Eric Hoffer (see my post of Aug. 27, 2024), “In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”

It’s not that wisdom isn’t important. It is the way we understand the world around us, but you have to be careful whom to believe. There are a lot of smart, educated, ‘wise’ people in the world, and whatever your opinion, you can find some of them who agree with you, and can make your case much better than you. Groups of people with similar views banding together and getting their “news” from the same sources is especially common in this age of polarization.

 I’m just as guilty as the next person. I have my favorites: Rachel Maddow, Larry Summers, Josh Brown, and my wise cousin Steve.  It makes me feel smart when I can find a really smart person that agrees with me. Occasionally I accidentally hear or read something by a smart person that totally disagrees with me. My immediate response is to try and pick holes in his/her argument, or assume that he’s making stuff up, but that doesn’t always work. What’s an arrogant egotist to do?

I think too often we come to conclusions first and later think of reasons to justify them.  Finding a smart person who agrees with you is just icing on the cake. It should be the other way around. Gathering information should come first, and then the conclusion.

It starts early in life. We start out with a set of beliefs given to us by our parents, by our culture, and then, as we grow older we learn to rationalize those beliefs, and we find smart people who support them. This process explains most of our traditions. It explains why most Americans are Christian, and most Arabs are Muslim. It explains why most Americans are capitalists and most Europeans are socialists.

It seems to me that there is a lot of criticism of capitalism these days. We’re taught in school that capitalism rewards those who work hard, and it enables us to find the most efficient way to do things. It’s supposed to go together with democracy: life, liberty and “The pursuit of happiness,” but just during my lifetime, communist China – Russia, not so much – has gotten about as good at capitalism as we are, without granting the other two rights stated in our Declaration of Independence.

The trouble with capitalism is that it fosters competition and a “winner takes all” culture. What’s wrong with competition, you say? Well, it leads to resentment and hostility, preventing cooperation between the people who work together. It rewards greed and punishes altruism. When there’s competition, there has to be a winner, and in a corporation the winners rise to the top, make all the decisions and more money, whereas studies have shown that a team approach leads to more innovation and diversity.

On a society level you end up with a small group of people who control the country, and become immensely wealthy, while the needs of the rest are disregarded. That is why in America, medical science is arguably the most advanced in the world, while the level of health care overall is among the worst.

In America we glorify capitalism and attribute to it our success as a country. Why? Because that’s what we were taught. It’s part of our culture. We accept it without question.     

Back to wisdom.

This way of backward thinking, where we make conclusions and then rationalize them, works on a personal level too. A sad but true expression is “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” I have made some terrible decisions in my life which seemed to make sense at the time, but in looking back, I performed the same kind of backward logic of making a decision and then justifying it. Rationalization is a dangerous mistake.

The other problem with backward thinking is the future. As Yogi Berra once said: “making predictions is hard, especially about the future.” No one, no matter how smart, can predict the future, but we have to try. We have to make plans, decisions. Knowledge helps. As one of my professors said, “You can either learn from the mistakes of others or you can make them all yourselves,” but unexpected events, and new discoveries can change the course of events. Think of artificial intelligence. Changes need to be integrated into our view of the world, our expectations for the future.

I’ve been lucky in life to know some truly wise people who have questioned some of my poorly thought out conclusions. First was my dad. I talked with him a lot, and he always patiently listened to my ideas. Once I decided that all behavior was selfish. Whether you decide to help someone or steal something, you do it because you think it will make you feel better. Helping will give you satisfaction, and hocking stolen goods will make you richer. His response was, “If you’re playing basketball (he was an outstanding athlete in high school and college) and you steal the ball, then run down the court and pass the ball to one of your teammates to make the score, you can’t convince me that’s selfish.” From that I learned not to make conclusions by manipulating semantics. And he taught me much more.

Then there was my lifelong friend, Harlan. Once I got interested in Albert Schweitzer. He was a doctor, philosopher, musician and a missionary in Africa. He was also recognized as a biblical scholar, and a psychologist. I was telling Harlan how much I admired Schweitzer, when he reminded me that he had a patronizing attitude toward the Africans. Harlan knew a little bit about everything. He was gentle but ruthless in his logic. He taught me to look at things from a broader perspective.

Then there is my wise cousin Steve. We’ve been discussing things since childhood. Now we’re getting older, declining mentally and physically. We deal with it each in our own way. He organizes genealogy and photos for his kids and grandkids on Excel. He must be one of the world’s authorities on Excel. I manage our investments and play the violin. I’ve learned many things from Steve, whether it’s earning your oxygen (see blog post of 11/23/23),  or being ambivalent (see post of 11/8/23), or the scientific method (see post of 6/10/24), to which he attributes most advances in science. We can’t get together anymore, but we talk by phone for about two hours every other week. Last week I was telling him how disappointed I was that my wife Sarah and I couldn’t travel anymore. He seemed concerned that I was getting depressed, and started reeling off all the things that we can still do. He finished by telling me to remember Pollyanna, who always found something good in everything and everyone. Steve watches the movie “Pollyanna” over and over. What can be more useful than always looking on the bright side?

I’ve been truly blessed.