I recently read an article by Mark Murray, “’Downhill’, ‘Divisive’: Americans sour on nation’s direction in new NBC News poll”. The article chronicles the general pessimism and gloom across the country regarding the future of the United States.
I understand that the article was trying to capture the current political mood of a nation. However, the article did not reveal anything new to my understanding of the general attitude that I have observed for the last decade.
If my observations are correct, there is a consensus that there is something deeply wrong within the society of the United States. The cause of the problem is vigorously disputed but I see very few claiming that there is not a problem.
I see a lot of fingers pointing to problems that are “out there”. I hear the shouting of insults from one group at the perceived source of “the problem” and the vitriol response of “the problem” back at the origin of the original insults. Around and around, we go with hope and optimism the victim of every cycle. We have ridden this merry-go-round of mutual destruction to the point that we sit in our self-dug holes of pessimism and gloom.
What are we to do?
This is not the world that I want to live in. I want this destructive discourse to stop but the question is how. I believe that the solution that plagues is not out there. The true problem that inhibits us is within you and within me. The true problem is that we all lack wisdom. We lack wisdom and we are being played as suckers because of it.
I follow a simple definition of wisdom:
Wisdom is the application of knowledge and experience to address real problems.
The solution to our problem lies in being intentional about who we listen to and who we are led by. We are awash in content. Most of that content lacks wisdom. Therefore, we are being blown all about by non-sense.
The following are four principles of wisdom that I apply in my attempt to stop being played.
Knowledge without Experience is not Wisdom
There are a lot of individuals with credentials telling us what we should do and how we should respond. Yet, they have never had to implement any of their own ideas. This is not wisdom.
I was given an article of the Harvard Business Review with a recommendation to read an article. I immediately flipped to the end of the article, which is my practice, to read about the authors of the article. The authors were university business management professors who, according to LinkedIn, have never held a job outside of academia. Also, they had just released a book on the same topic of the article.
I still read the article, but I read it with a degree of pessimism as to actual practicality of their ideas. Clearly, they have not implemented their own ideas with the consequences due their own business. As Nassim Taleb has stated in his book “Skin in the Game”, they have no skin in the game; they bear no risk of the implementation of their own ideas. At least, they have no skin in my game. Their game is to sell books and/or meet the academic objective of publishing an article.
This article provided me knowledge, but not wisdom.
In the same publication, there was another article. It was written by the President/CEO of a mid-sized organization. He wrote about his management approach and his experience in implementing that approach with the associated results. He had “skin in the game”. He has experience running a complex organization and understands how to apply knowledge to his organization to solve actual problems. That is wisdom.
I saved that article because it was written from the point-of-view of wisdom. I will allow this author to influence me.
We need to be discerning about who we allow to influence us. The reality is that we all cannot be wise regarding every topic. However, we can be wise regarding who we will allow to speak into our lives and provide us the basis upon which we make decisions. Our decisions should be based in wisdom. If it cannot be based on our own wisdom, then make sure the advice that you are acting upon is coming from wisdom. Make sure that those you listen to have “skin in the game” and actually have experience in bearing the risk of applying their own advice.
Experience without Knowledge is not Wisdom
I am an engineer. I have heard the slur on more than one occasion that “I am an educated idiot”. The premise of this insult is that engineers have the knowledge of engineering but no understanding how things work in the practical world. There is some truth to this insult. Many engineers, particularly early in their careers, don’t have the experience to know how things actually work. They lack wisdom. They have knowledge but lack the experience. The career goal of an engineer is to become “wise” in their profession.
The problem with the insult is a diminishment of the need for knowledge. There is a fundamental difference between being aware of a cause-effect relationship and an understanding of how the cause results in the effect and how to predict or avoid such a relationship. That takes knowledge; typically, a deep knowledge.
That is knowledge that cannot be learned from a few hours of research on the internet or through watching a couple of YouTube videos. The knowledge associated with someone who has spent years studying a specific subject in depth should be respected. There is value in that knowledge because it works in harmony with experience to produce wisdom.
We are often too quick to ascribe knowledge to someone who can recite fundamental facts and statistics, when we need experts. We need individuals who have devoted themselves to a field of study that results in a deep understanding of their topic. This doesn’t have to originate from the academic world and there are reasons to be skeptical that the academic world is still providing this knowledge. True knowledge is still essential; however it is obtained.
I find it shocking how much of the content on the internet fails this test. There are many people spuing out content that they have derived from their own limited internet searches. They have no true knowledge. They find a few articles, re-package them, and publish them as a list of essential recommendations that we either need to start or stop doing. This is not wisdom. Why would we allow it to influence us?
The same principle applies to knowledge as with experience. The content that you are consuming should be based in true knowledge of the subject. Do not let Google determine the “expert” that you allow to influence your opinion and decisions. Research the knowledge base of those you listen to. If they have no deep background in the subject that they are pandering, then don’t accept it as wisdom.
Solving Created Problems is not Wisdom
I don’t need to go looking for problems. Enough problems have found me. Yet, I am regularly accosted by solutions to problems that I did not know even existed. I continually feel the anxiety of needing to have an opinion about a crisis that has no basis within my own life or to express outrage about things, which are beyond my control. These are problems that are not relevant to my life or for which I have no power to effect.
Therefore, the first step of wisdom is to determine whether the problem is real or as bad as it is portrayed. There is a lot of truth in the statement of Rahm Emanuel:
You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.
Rahm Emanuel
The reality is that most of the discord in our society are solutions looking for a problem that can be exploited. There are many pushing a political, social, financial, environmental agenda that need a problem to achieve their goals. All one has to do is follow the news for any length of time. An existential problem will arise that needs immediate action otherwise there will be dire consequences and then it just goes away into the wake of the next crisis. It is not wise to expend your energy on those manufactured problems.
Wisdom is recognizing that all problems are not real. The question of who benefits should always be asked. If there are people getting rich by expounding a problem and/or its solution, then you should be hesitant about how much credence you give to them in your opinions and decisions.
There are other problems that are real, but you have no practical way of addressing them. Wisdom is understanding that you cannot solve the world’s problems. They can grieve you, but everyone has limits to the power they possess to change their world. We need to apply our wisdom to the community that we live within. The level of energy we expend solving problems should be greatest at the personal level and diminishing as you expand outward. We all have personal, family, work, city and county problems. Those problems need wise solutions. You have the best perspective of understanding whether those problems are real.
The reality is that if we spend time applying our knowledge and experience to solving the problems in our personal and family lives, we will be going a long way to resolving the real problems in our greater community and not those manufactured problems designed to capture our attention.
The Lack of Virtue nullifies Wisdom
As has already been stated, the purpose of wisdom is to solve real problems. Inherent within this definition is a necessity that one can trust the application of knowledge and experience of the wise in forming the consensus to solve the real problem for the benefit of the whole community.
The reality is that there are “wise” individuals, who are willing to use their “wisdom” to manipulate others to get them to do what they want them to do. They are willing to manipulate their knowledge, the information that they possess, so that they can achieve a pragmatic result.
The result of this manipulation is that these individuals cannot be trusted.
The collapse of trust in our society’s institutions is well documented; just look at any poll. These institutions have long been the sources of wisdom that we could rely upon. However, consider the collapse of trust in the institutions of government, media, academia, religion, etc. The fundamental cause of these institutional collapses has been that those within them have lacked virtue, specifically individuals within them have a pattern of lying, cheating, stealing, and pursuing their own interest at the expense of others.
We need to demand more from the “wise” in our society.
We need to stop being influenced by persons with knowledge and experience when they demonstrate a lack of virtue. We need to refuse to vote for them. We need to refuse to buy their products. We need to refuse to continue to support them. We need to refuse to give them our most precious commodity, our attention. We need to demand virtue in all those we allow to influence us. Otherwise, we will continue to get corrupted “wisdom” and we will continue to be played as suckers.
It might be strange to place so much emphasis on virtue at a time when there are so many unresolved moral ambiguities. Therefore, I will keep my premise of virtue as simple as the Silver Rule. Nassim Taleb, in his book “Skin in the Game”, defined the Silver Rule as:
Do not treat others the way you would not like them to treat you.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, “Skin in the Game”
As Taleb points out, “we know with much more clarity what is bad than what is good”. A virtue becomes the opposite of that bad act that you do not want done to you. Gerhard Von Rad, in his book Wisdom of Israel”, noted that the ancients were much more pragmatic in the definition of what was good or bad (evil).
Both good and evil create social conditions; in a completely ‘outward’ sense they can build up or destroy the community, property, happiness, reputation, welfare of children and much more besides.
Gerhard Von Rad, “Wisdom in Israel”
Therefore, the person who uses their wisdom to build up our community, property, happiness, reputation, and welfare for everyone is acting with virtue. The person who uses their wisdom to destroy our community, property, happiness, reputation, welfare is acting without virtue.
We need to stop allowing ourselves to be influenced by those who divide rather than unite; those who create the “us versus them” scenarios; those who gain an advantage at the expense of someone else.
Choose Your Team
We all make individual choices about what team we are on. How about we reject all those teams and make a new team? A team dedicated to wisdom guided by virtue. To join this team, you must start by pointing your accusing fingers at yourself. It is the only way that I can see to get off the merry-go-round of gloom and pessimism. It will give us the best hope of being able to address real problems as a true community.
That is a world I want to live in.
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
A DEVOTED LIFE 