Today David Brooks’s New York Times column was about wisdom:
When I think of the wise people in my own life, they are like that. It’s not the life-altering words of wisdom that drop from their lips, it’s the way they receive others. Too often the public depictions of wisdom involve remote, elderly sages who you approach with trepidation — and who give the perfect life-altering advice — Yoda, Dumbledore, Solomon. When a group of influential academics sought to define wisdom, they focused on how much knowledge a wise person had accumulated. Wisdom, they wrote, was “an expert knowledge system concerning the fundamental pragmatics of life.â€
The most worthwhile passage in the column is a quote from Montaigne:
Wisdom is different from knowledge. Montaigne pointed out you can be knowledgeable with another person’s knowledge, but you can’t be wise with another person’s wisdom.
which explains succinctly why wisdom will become increasingly rare. Google can provide you with facts; it might provide you with knowledge; it can’t provide you with wisdom.
The thoughts in the column were said better and more tersely a millennium ago by the Neo-Platonist philosopher Solomon ibn Gabirol:
The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others.
Seems like humility ought to be in there somewhere, but that probably comes along with listening and silence.
Steve