“Whither Wisdom?” Sydney Williams
When sixteen, with a new license in my wallet, I took my father for a drive. He cautioned me about driving too fast. I replied, “My reflexes are faster than yours.” “Yes,” he responded, “but you lack judgment.” His words were wise, while mine, which may have retained a scintilla of truth, were foolish.
Having good judgement means having the ability to see things from all sides, the ability to make a choice based on logic, experience, reason, and good sense. Good judgement is related to wisdom, which can be defined as having insight, understanding, perception, and common sense. Mimicking Einstein’s words in the rubric above, the four sources of wisdom, according to the Book of Proverbs, are: observation and experience, instruction based on experience, learning from mistakes, and revelation. The latter refers to the fact that the Bible teaches us that God is the ultimate source of wisdom.
But today wisdom has yielded to wokeness, which is defined as the state of being aware of social problems: racism, inequality, sustainability, and injustice. Everyone agrees that racism and injustice should be combatted wherever found. We all agree that equality before the law is critical to a democracy, and that equal opportunities should be offered to all. But we are not equal in abilities or aspiration, so outcomes will never be equal. In his new book, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategies, Henry Kissinger wrote of “the natural inequalities of endowments,” which should be harnessed “for the public good.” Individually, we should play to our strengths, be they academic, athletic, mechanical, or artistic. We should strive to do what we are best at: teaching, building homes, playing the Cello, investing, or plumbing. It is what makes a strong community. And while we should agree that care for the environment is a sacred trust, it would be foolish to let the quest for sustainability destroy our capitalist system, which has raised living standards, reduced poverty, and made life more bearable for the world’s poorest. We can and should do both.
In our desire for social justice, is it wise to eliminate merit as a requirement for admission to selective, public schools. In their zeal to call out inequality in economic outcomes, the woke fail to acknowledge that work provides dignity. In a Wall Street Journal review of The Myth of American Inequality by Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund, and John Early, Charles Calomiris noted that in the bottom quintile of income earners only 36% of the people work, versus 92% of those in the middle quintile. While some of the poor cannot work, is not there a lesson in those statistics? And what about climate warriors? Approximately 79% of energy consumed in the U.S. comes from fossil fuels – coal, gas, and oil. While that percentage has declined, is it wise to sacrifice this energy source in a bid to get to “net zero” emissions by a set date, like 2050? – a goal called for by the President, but which the Electric Power Research Institute says is unrealistic.
On international tests, our public schools (K-12) perform poorly, especially when one considers the amount of money spent annually on a per student basis – the fifth highest of all countries, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Yet the results are subpar. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducts tests every three years for fifteen-year-olds. The most recent one from 2018, and released in December 2019, showed the United States 13 in reading, 18 in science, and 38 in math. (PISA tests for 2021 were postponed until 2022.) With such poor results, is it wise to offer a course on transgender studies when that time could be spent more productively, for example even reading Aesop’s Fables, each with its moral lesson? After all, Aesop was a former African slave who lived on the Greek Island of Samos 2,600 years ago, and the lessons his stories teach are timeless. Has social media made youth wiser, or has it made them more fragile, raising levels of anxiety? Is it wise for them to spend hours on Instagram or Tik Tok, subjecting themselves to taunts? They should be accountable, accept responsibility for their words and actions, not hide behind anonymous devices. They should rid themselves from making half-assed excuses for failure, like claiming victimhood. As well, the unwise suppression of speech by universities and media outlets – decisions justified with claims of hate, disinformation, and a failure to “follow the science.”
Is it wise for a government with $31 trillion in national debt and almost a hundred trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security – about $400,000 for every man, woman, and child – to continue to add to its debt? Will not those obligations, combined with tighter regulations and higher taxes, cause interest rates to rise and negatively impact future economic growth? Did not the Federal Reserve decision to keep Fed Funds below two percent for fifty-one of the last fifty-six quarters discourage savings and encourage asset speculation?
An absence of wisdom defines our nation. Has it been wise to leave our southern border essentially open? Was it wise to weaponize the FBI and the Justice Department to combat political enemies? Has it been wise for media – both traditional and social – to suppress news that does not comply with political ideologies, like the Hunter Biden Laptop story? Is it wise to test people for Covid who enter the U.S. from China, but not test those, including ones from China, who illegally cross into the U.S. from Mexico?
Political wisdom is rare, for most politicians are focused on the next election. But our schools, universities, and news outlets should be founts of practical wisdom, for their concern should be the molding of people to think freely and independently, not to create puppets spewing back ideologies. Our nation depends on an educated and informed citizen. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers Sam Gamgee speaks to Frodo Baggins: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no telling where you might be swept off to.” Every day we step out our doors, and when foolishness leads the world becomes dangerous. We must ensure that we are intellectually and emotionally prepared, so that our democratic republic survives attacks, from both without and within.
We live in a time of extraordinary technological change, especially in the fields of communication and social media, giving us little time to reflect and absorb. Thirty-five years ago, in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature, Professor Asimov was quoted: “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society can gather wisdom.” Today the world is changing even faster than it was in 1988. However, over two hundred years ago, in Literary Remains, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote, “Common sense, in an uncommon degree, is what the world calls wisdom.” Wise words. So, we don’t have to be Solomons, Aristotles, or Coleridges. We should be both curious and cautious; we should read and question; we should reason, and we should take time away from our devices to quietly think.
Where has wisdom gone? Into the vapors of political correctness? Perhaps. The common-sensical wisdom which I mourn is more natural than its contrived woke replacement. My wish for 2023 is to see its return – something to consider as 2023 unfolds.
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