What does wisdom look like? Who has it? How do they acquire it. How do they apply it?
As it happens, the way we think about wisdom is often confusing and fails to distinguish it from other forms of intelligence by which we navigate the environment and manage our relationships. We confuse wisdom with expertise, accomplishment in a particular field, cleverness, and a command of factual information.
This refusal to discriminate is almost inevitable because, as Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi observes, in an industrialized, technocratic society such as ours so-called “experts” have largely supplanted wisdom teachers as thought-leaders. It is financial planners, family therapists, podcasters, career coaches and even non-human AI that we now look to for advice and counsel, not some uncertified sage.
We also tend to think that being exceptionally well-informed – or having the ability to create the illusion of omniscience – qualifies as wisdom. To be sure, there are those polymaths who seem to have a convincing answer for just about everything. We used to call such people “know-it-alls” but lately that phrase has been supplanted by “the smartest guy in the room”. “Jeopardy champions come to mind, people who are clearly very well informed, but is that the same as being wise?
Not according to Nicholas Carr, an unimpressed IT specialist. “We are becoming pancake people,” he complains, “with wide access to information but no intellectual depth…. My own feeling is that I’d rather have less information and more thoughtfulness.”
Wisdom is often associated with longevity. If a person has been alive long enough a mind emerges that can calmly and clearly make sense of the human condition. Well-worn individuals are often said to be “worldly-wise,” and worth seeking out when faced with important life decisions.
But while a certain backlog of experience is probably helpful in the acquisition of “wisdom” it isn’t failproof. Shakespeare’s treatment of the character Polonius in the play Hamlet suggests as much. Chief advisor to King Claudius, this garrulous old man is portrayed as a parody of wisdom. Self-important, full of platitudes and shallow opinions, poor Polonius evokes laughter rather than respect.
That age and wisdom don’t always coincide is also underscored in the Biblical book First Kings, which focuses on Solomon’s legendary reign. What’s intriguing about Solomon is that he reflects wisdom during his early years on the throne. You may remember this famous story:
Two young women approach the king, each claiming to be the mother of a newborn infant. Solomon considers their petitions, then declares that since they both seem to have legitimate claims, the baby should be cut in two and divided equally between them. His solution was a ruse; it was how Solomon was able to flush out the real mother’s identity. She was the one who would rather lose custody of her child than have him dismembered.
As a younger man, Solomon possessed real insight into matters of the heart. In his dotage, and surrounded by four hundred concubines, he sank into excess and debauchery and his rule ended ignominiously.
So, if age and expertise aren’t reliable indicators of wisdom, how do we recognize it and what place might it have in a technologically advanced, consumer-oriented, hyper-individualistic civilization such as ours?
Before addressing this question, it might be helpful to see just how far we have wandered from the way of wisdom. T.S. Eliot spoke to this issue more than three-quarters of a century ago when he wrote this couplet:
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Let’s take the second question first: Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
I recently completed Walter Isaacson’s 2017 biography of Leonardo da Vinci in which the astounding ways in which this “Renaissance Man” created timeless beauty and undertook original research are detailed. Da Vinci is best remembered today as a meticulous painter, but he was also an engineer, an anatomist, a pioneer in the field of optics and a cosmologist, among other things. Francis the First, King of France in the early 16th century was no slouch himself. He spoke five languages and was, Isaacson writes, “a voracious seeker of knowledge.” Nevertheless, he was mightily impressed with Leonardo and invited the now-elderly genius to serve him at the royal court. After da Vinci’s passing, Francis offered this compliment:
I could never believe there was another man born in this world who knew as much as Leonardo, and not only sculpture, painting and architecture…he was a truly great philosopher.
Leonardo had little in the way of formal education, so how did he acquire such broad and deep knowledge? Printed books were still relatively scarce – the printing press having been invented only twelve years before da Vinci was born – and they were expensive. His personal collection consisted of one-hundred volumes. By contrast, my own study is lined with bookshelves containing nearly 2000 volumes on a host of topics.
Thanks to books, I have at my fingertips a wealth of “information” but I’m not sure that has always translated into “knowledge”; not even close to what Leonardo possessed. And then there’s Wikipedia! If anything, today we are wallowing in a swamp of information, which is proving to be something of a problem.
In his book The New Dark Age the British computer scientist James Bridle argues that “big data” is actually making us dumber. He quotes from William Binney, who worked for the National Security Agency. During his tenure the Agency gathered reams of data, ninety-nine percent of which Binney described as “useless.” All that input just served to gum up the works and hamper agents’ ability to make sound decisions.
Think about the dilemma of today’s average consumer. Is it any easier these days to sort through all the information at our disposal to make the best choices in the marketplace? Some days it feels like a Sisyphean undertaking. “Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
On to the second question: “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?”
An interesting article entitled “Five Pearls of Wisdom from a Legend in Finance Writing” appeared recently in The New York Times. These “pearls” were produced by Jonathan Clements, whose columns appeared in The Wall Street Journal for a number of years.
I didn’t find much in his insights to quibble about – useful hints about saving, investing, tax loopholes and stock market behavior. What bothered me was that the word “wisdom was applied to a laundry list of money-management strategies. I do not doubt that Mr. Clements was highly qualified in the world of finance, but let’s not conflate that with wisdom. So…what might history tell us about this elusive concept?
Looking backward, we find a number of intriguing possibilities. Remember the Three Wise Men from the Nativity story in Matthew’s Gospel? Who, exactly were they? They would likely have been Persian Magi whose vocation was the mapping of the heavens for purposes of divining the future and explaining anomalies like the Christmas Star. They were both ancient astronomers and astrologers who served as advisors to the royal court. Their counsel was highly prized and credited as wisdom.
There have also been mystical figures alternately called shamans, lamas, gurus and contemplatives. Folks like these seek to discover through concentrated meditation or ecstatic trances eternal verities hidden to others. As wisdom teachers they served as guides to the uninitiated, identifying pitfalls, gauging the student’s progress, evaluating their insights, and providing motivation by example.
But there is a less esoteric branch of the wisdom tradition that is most relevant to today’s inquiry. It includes some of history’s most notable sages – people like Confucius, Lao Tse, the Buddha, Marcus Aurelius, Hildegard of Bingen, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Their perennial appeal has had more to do with the down-to-earth lessons for life they imparted than with some startling revelation.
Such figures are still revered because of their insights into the human psyche and what we humans need in order to flourish mentally and emotionally. They addressed in accessible language the frustrations, fears, longings and hopes that are humanity’s common lot, and that really doesn’t change. This makes their wisdom as pertinent today as it was two hundred or even two thousand years ago. What, then, are some common themes in their teaching?
Writing in the September issue of Harper’s Magazine, Meghan O’Gieblyn references a survey of prominent psychologists and social scientists who were asked about the nature of true wisdom. Mentioned most often were empathy, holistic thinking, and intellectual humility.
The empathy factor is closely connected to the experience of suffering. It’s hard to respond caringly and perceptively to another’s person’s misfortune if you haven’t endured it yourself. This insight can be traced back to the 5th century B.C. Greek play Agamemnon by Aeschylus. Near the end of the drama, the Greek Chorus – spectators to the action who function as truth-tellers - tells the audience that human beings, “learn through suffering: Pathei Mathos in the original Greek. “It’s a law of human nature,” the chorus proclaims, “that men acquire wisdom whether they want it or not, in the trenches of adversity.”
To be sure, adversity can also make a person bitter, or convince them they are a hapless victim (a certain man in the Oval Office comes to kind). Nevertheless, the wise person is one who has discerned through patient reflection that there is a redemptive aspect to suffering and that is the awakening of empathy. This is the unbesought gift suffering bears, together with the insight that “We are all interconnected in an expansive net of mutuality.”
Holistic thinking – the ability to connect the dots between seemingly disparate phenomenon – is a second term in the wisdom equation. In this respect, no one was wiser than Leonardo da Vinci. Although others among his peers were better read, Leonardo’s powers of observation were unequaled. He discovered relationships and associations that no one else had even dreamed of.
But holistic thinking is an ability we sacrifice as our thinking becomes more siloed. A famous Zen aphorism puts it this way: “In the expert’s mind there are few possibilities, but in the beginner’s mind there are many.” In fact, expertise can sometimes limit our ability to respond as creatively as a naïve child might to a perplexing problem. Consider this simple example.
It seems that a large truck was moving through a railway underpass when it got wedged in between the road and the girders overhead. All the efforts of experts to extricate it proved useless, and traffic was backed up for miles on both sides of the underpass.
A little girl kept trying to get the attention of the foreman, who repeatedly brushed him off. Finally, in sheer exasperation, the foreman said, “I suppose you’ve come to tell us how to do this job?”
“Yes,” said the child. “I suggest you let some air out of the tires.”
The wise person is like a child in the sense that he or she harbors fewer biases and preconceptions than the average adult and thus can come up with solutions that elude others. Many ancient wisdom figures enjoyed a special rapport with children and gained inspiration from them. It’s very possible that when “Beginner’s Mind” and acquired knowledge are brought into alignment, wisdom is the result.
And then there is “humility,” which is not at all the same as a low self-concept or negative self-image. In fact, you can’t be truly humble if you feel unworthy or inadequate.
Here are a couple of telling examples. At the apex of his career, Socrates admitted that the one thing he was convinced of was his own ignorance. It was his habit to deflect his followers’ demands for answers and instead challenge them with a series of probing questions. Socrates had a talent for guiding the conversation in such a way that underlying assumptions, beliefs and biases were exposed and exploded. This is the rhetorical technique we call, “The Socratic Method.”
The great Chinese sages also extolled intellectual humility. “Wise men don’t need to prove their point,” Lao Tse wrote, “and men who need to prove their point aren’t wise.”
Confucius was the quintessential Eastern wisdom teacher and The Analects, a compendium of his teachings, are still a staple of Chinese education. But like Socrates, Confucius didn’t flout his intelligence and freely admitted when he was stumped. “This is true knowledge,” he once told a student. “When you know a thing, to know that you know it. And when you do not know a thing, to recognize that you do not know it.” That Confucius practiced what he preached is attested by this anecdote:
While walking one day, the Sage heard two children arguing loudly. “What are you disputing?” he asked gently.
“We disagree about the sun,” one child replied. “I say that the sun is nearer to the earth in morning and farther away at noon. My friend says just the opposite: that the sun is farther away at dawn and closer at mid-day.”
Confucius’s interest was piqued, and he asked the children to explain their logic.
“I believe the sun is closer in the morning because when it rises it is huge, like a dinner plate, while at noon it is smaller, more like a saucer.” His friend disagreed, saying: “The sun has to be farther away in the morning because the earth is cool, but at mid-day it becomes hot, as if the sun were closer.”
With this, the children stopped talking and looked to Confucius for an answer. The old man stood and pondered for quite some time, then shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t know which of you is right.”
At which the children laughed merrily, “Who ever said you were such a wise guy?”
Confucius would surely agree with T.S. Eliot who once wrote: “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility. Humility is endless.”
Equanimity, peace of mind, is a final characteristic of wisdom that deserves mention. “Be not anxious about tomorrow,” Jesus counsels his disciples, a sentiment shared by Ralph Waldo Emerson. “I compared notes with one of my friends,” he wrote,
…who expects everything from the universe and is disappointed when everything is less than the best. I found that I begin at the opposite extreme, expecting nothing, and I am always full of thanks for moderate goods. If we will take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures.
The ancient Stoics prized equanimity as the optimal mental condition. The Roman writer and statesman Seneca subscribed to this philosophy, saying “He is wisest can lose nothing, remaining secure in himself and calm through all of life’s changes.” Seneca then offers us the example of Zeno, founder of the Stoic school centuries earlier. Having received the disturbing news that most of his possessions had been lost in a shipwreck, Zeno said, “Fortune bids me to be a less encumbered philosopher.”
The wise have learned that while one may not be able to control events, one’s attitude can always be altered. Indeed, one can fight relentlessly for justice while at the same time cultivating equanimity. The latter is, in fact, indispensable for the practice of non-violent resistance.
“Wisdom is of the soul,” Walt Whitman wrote. “It is not susceptible of proof. It is its own proof.”