the other day, I wrote about wisdom and knowledge and what is the connection
between the two. We have hundreds of books that go into knowledge and what
knowledge is and how we can be certain about our knowledge. But few if any books on
wisdom. How does one become wise? Socrates felt he had wisdom because he at least
knew he wasn’t wise whereas the others in Athens thought they were wise and they were not.
but if you think about that, it is a very particular wisdom. You are wise because you know
you are not wise. Facts/knowledge doesn’t have this problem. You either have facts or you don’t.
The earth is 93 million miles from the sun. but this “fact” is really not a fact because the 93 million
miles is more of a mean rather than an actual set in stone fact. we circle the sun not in a perfect
circle but an imperfect circle where sometime we are 92 million miles from the sun and sometimes
we are 94 or more million miles from the sun. this so called fact is really more of a approximation
than an actual number. Facts are like that, more of an approximation rather then a true or real figure.
Is wisdom like facts? Not really a set in stone figure but rather an approximation?
How am I too know if I am wise? I guess that is the question for the day. I work with a bunch of kids,
mostly baggers, and I know I have greater information than they do, but that is a function of age.
I am older then several of the baggers parents. I have the wisdom of age, but a lot of people have that
and yet, with that said, I see people who are older than me hold dubious idea’s. for example,
a lot of older people 60’s and 70’s love Donald trump stand on immigration. A rather stupid and
a very damaging idea to America if it was ever enacted. So I cannot fully attribute wisdom to
older people because they clearly favor an idea that will seriously damage America. Goethe once
said, he thought he was wiser at age 20 than he was at age 70. I am not actually sure if he meant it or
if he was joking. Was I wiser at age 20 than now at age 56? that is a no and hell no. So how would I know
if I was wise or not? It would depend on what you mean by wise I guess.
I doubt. I have no real certainty about anything. that doubt, that uncertainty is a wisdom of sorts.
So I have the wisdom of doubts. A rather strange wisdom, but maybe wisdom is strange. If you
feel you have it, you don’t and if you don’t feel you have it, you have it.
Kropotkin