How do I find wisdom in life? What do I do with that little pearl I just discovered? Is it my secret … should I share it … should I sell it? Are those life lessons about learning from your mistakes the only courses available? Are batteries included with my new found wisdom? Or will Artificial Intelligence fill the dots for me ? Do those self-help books where they use coarse language, to develop an affinity with the reader, make you any more intelligent and wise?
Wikipedia definition has “wisdom, sapience, or sagacity is our ability to contemplate and act productively using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, and insight”. I thought it was quite a good definition. On discovery of the word “sapience”, it will now be added to my vocabulary to show how wise I am … about being wise. Wikipedia was also Google’s first suggested definition, which it nearly always is, so that doesn’t make me all that wise after all. Clearly, I have learnt very little, I would have been more wise and productive to look up Wikipedia straight away. Secondly, it is a little embarrassing that as a supposedly intelligent person, I needed to look it up. Which then beggars the question … are we all as wise as we think we are (other than me as I have come to realise, clearly am not) ? Or, are there only a select few of us part of some exclusive underground cult, who fill all the books of quotes, and author self-help books. These esteemed intellects have earned the privilege to use a more superior tone with the rest of us!
In history, Socrates is someone we would all universally identify as wise (including our esteemed intellects), and whose philosophical teachings, inquiry and questioning of conventional wisdom did resonate with many of us for the ethics, humility, and insights into the philosophy of life. However, Socrates never documented any of his teachings and relied on people such as Plato and Xenophon to interpret and record them. On the surface, that doesn’t sound too wise – especially imagine the mayhem that the western civilisation would experience without the gentle hand of Socrate’s teachings guiding us from all those centuries ago. But it does make you think, whether Socrates was so lacking in self-awareness and the fountain of his own wisdom, that he did not see the value in his own teachings … so why then should we? Or, was he so wise … and manipulative … that by pretending to not care for his own teachings, he knew full well that Plato and Xenophon would eat this philosophy stuff up like their cornflakes for breakfast (… or the equivalent Ancient Greece breakfast cereal of choice). Socrates could also have been incredibly lazy and didn’t care much about anything, let alone his never ending ramblings and public pontifications … and after all he was always humble about his own knowledge and was just wanting to have some fun with us all! Maybe, he suffered from some chronic injury while training for the archery at the Ancient Olympic Games and could no longer write, or a war injury from the battles Athens undertook. Whichever way, for many Socrates is the touchstone, and creator, of western philosophy, with the elevated wisdom that comes with that status … whether he accidentally tripped over and fell upon these pearls of wisdom or was just a naughty prankster.
People with long careers and life journeys, bring significant experience that the younger generations have not yet been exposed to. They may be viewed as sages, that bring deep insights. Although this is likely to be a delusional state, as many are likely to be too self-indulgent and driven to think any other person has any experience of any benefit to impart. They may just be an easy prey to trample over. Many parents, use the benefit of their life experiences, with the hindsight of their many unfathomable mistakes, to impart their wisdom and guide their children in the formative years of their life. Although you will be hard-pressed to find any teenager that doesn’t think their parents are useless. But is all that experience or guidance we impart truly wisdom? Or, are we so clueless that we blindly just keep the hamster wheel of our self-indulgence turning, without applying any of our own homespun wisdom with the advice we just imparted to those malleable young minds? Do we not stop to think enough about the “what and why” of our advice to realise that we may just tar and feather those innocent minds with the same insecurities we have dragged around in our own overflowing baggage? Wisdom comes from spending (a lot of) time in self-reflection, and with an abundance of humility to think first about what we are about to say, and then realise we should just shut up, gripped by the fear our children will become just like us. The wisdom and humility of Socrates would be to not pass on what we value from our selfish lives. Better to find those uncontrived, selfless moments of vulnerability, clarity and authenticity when we really have nothing to say, leave our baggage at the door, and listen and be there for those interactions with our children, family, friends and colleagues that may be intelligent enough for us all to share. Popular wisdom will tell you that we are all different, and it can also tell us we are also all the same. We can be too ego-centric and clueless in easily offering up our own valued wisdom as well worn lessons, without taking a few years of self-reflection in a desert first. Our wisdom is our learned and passed-on behaviours, bundled with our insecurities (incidentally not our fault), and it may be better to stay in that moment, and stumble around blindly in the dark for a very long time.
But even the wisdom of Socrates can be debated, questioned and challenged using his own Socratic method. A bit like turning the sword onto the master. His teachings are unparalleled in their impact on education, philosophy, and ethics today. Socrates spent a significant part of his life in philosophical inquiry, debate, challenging the nature of morality and knowledge. However, political action and challenging authorities was not anything he was inclined to do. During times of political oppression, executions, and the erosion of democratic principles, were not actively opposed by Socrates, even if he may have privately disagreed and his ethics would have challenged these actions. Direct political involvement was likely to be dangerous, but the importance of virtue and living a good life make this seem paradoxical. However, I am not here to pass judgement irrespective of any historical accuracies. We can only question and challenge
There is a virtue in living a good life, that with time, and for all the tripping around in the dark, I know even less than when I became conscious of my own existence. What is love and where can we find it? Sometimes it feels like an abstract concept, or marketing campaign. There is no definition I am satisfied with, even while asking Google, Wikipedia or ChatGPT. The replies all seem well worn cliches and lack some essence to be complete. I believe I have experienced it, especially with my family but it is difficult to be sure I am all that good at it. I continue to read endless quotes and poetry on love. From this it seems love is mostly about being hurt and being endlessly in pain that can stop you functioning as a human, so you start sleeping a lot. Unfortunately, I do take note of the depressing videos I get bombarded with, offering homespun advice as to what is wrong with me and how to relieve the misery I inflict on myself but did not realise I had been doing in the first place. These character defects get inadvertently collected and added to my list of insecurities, so the rest of them no longer feel alone, and can party all night long. The only decisions and behaviour sillier than my own with understanding and finding love in life, are the ones I see everyone else make – but that is another insecure and self-serving attempt to see others stumble as much as I do. Maybe there is no real wisdom to love that can satisfy us all, and it is the one thing in life that is not possible to “contemplate and act productively using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, and insight“. Is it a gift in the game of life, that humans give each other to cause each other pain? Then, are we all pranksters with each other’s feelings, and like to share the pain so we are not alone? Is it our hunger games without necessarily the dire existential consequences if you lose – this depends on your perspective on the pain of love. We can see love all around us (and I don’t mean the song or the movie here), but it can so unexpectedly turn into the ghost(ing) of a long lost past (text). Maybe we are just a bunch of scared weird little guys, and only those who are brave, courageous, imaginative, non-judgemental, humble and selfless can join this secretive cult. Someone really needs to help explain if there is any wisdom to guide us all in the pursuit of love before the pranks backfire, the games begin and I accidentally trip and cut my finger off! Jeremy Taylor said that “Love is friendship set on fire” … hopefully I just get burnt instead!