Defining wisdom: An unmarketable commodity

Defining wisdom: An unmarketable commodity
By WILLIAM PAGE
Published on April 9, 2009

The Templeton Foundation recently gave US$3 million to the University of Chicago to set up a program called "Defining Wisdom". They wanted to find out what wisdom is. To that end, the university disbursed the money in grants to reputable academics, who wrote up proposals for research projects on the topic.

In one sense, this was a praiseworthy endeavor. Wisdom is not a marketable commodity, and for a prestigious foundation to encourage the quest for it in our greed-soaked age is to light a candle in the darkness. But in another sense, they should have saved their money. The assumption that academics must necessarily be wise, or know anything about wisdom, is questionable. Academics are concerned with scholarship. There's a big difference between scholarship and wisdom.

Besides that, just because a person can speak and write eloquently about wisdom doesn't make him wise. Lao Tzu puts it tersely: "Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know."

The wisest men keep their mouths shut.

Eleanor Roosevelt once made a remark about Madame Chiang Kai-shek that went something like this: "Madame Chiang talks beautifully about democracy, but she doesn't have the faintest idea of how to practice it."

When it comes to wisdom, anybody can talk the talk; not many can walk the walk.

It's puzzling to learn that the Templeton Foundation wants to define wisdom when there's a vast body of wisdom literature already out there: in the Bible, the Talmud, the Chinese classics, the Greek and Roman philosophers, the scriptures of Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, and no doubt lots of places you and I don't know about. Maybe they want to boil it all down to a sound-bite.

Some people may object to the religious sources mentioned above. They'll say they want wisdom unencumbered by the religious baggage that often accompanies it. That should be easy: Just screen out the religious baggage and focus on the wisdom. If that can't be done, and you don't like the religious baggage, chuck out the whole business.

There's lots of wisdom in the Upanishads, but it's inseparable from the belief in a universal Spirit that is both immanent and transcendent. If you don't like that belief, better not go near the Upanishads. The Jewish wisdom books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Ecclesiasticus are grounded in a monotheistic worldview that many will reject, but they also contain a great deal of wise advice that can benefit anybody.

In the light of our current knowledge, we have to approach the wisdom handed down from ancient times with a certain caution. Much of it is based on beliefs that we now regard as questionable. In particular, we need to question two charming but naive beliefs that pervade classical Chinese philosophy and Jewish wisdom literature.

The ancient Chinese philosophers believed that if the ruler of a country is wise and virtuous, his subjects will emulate him. This belief has been refuted right here in Thailand, where the wisdom and virtue of a much-beloved monarch have not generated the same qualities in his people, although they have certainly produced considerable lip service. The writers of the Jewish wisdom literature believed in a just God who consistently rewards good and punishes evil. It is to the credit of the greatest book in that tradition, the Book of Job, that at least one thinker dared to question this idea. An essential part of wisdom is to recognize its limitations.

Wisdom doesn't confer omniscience or enable us to foresee the future. It can't save us from bad luck, bad timing, or occasional errors in judgment. It usually gives us the perspective to take the long view of things, to look deep and embrace a broader reality than the obvious banalities of the here-and-now. At the same time, it has to pay attention to details. While we're contemplating the danger of long-range missiles, we may get blown up by little grenades thrown right at our feet. In that case, of course, we're not really wise. True wisdom keeps mindful of both the distant missiles and the nearby grenades.

If the Templeton Foundation is looking for a sound-bite that encapsulates the essence of wisdom, we have it right here in Thailand. That is the declaration of the Buddha, "Sabbe dhamma anicca - All compound things are transient," also translated as "All constituents of being are impermanent." I'm not a Buddhist, but to me this insight embodies the essence of wisdom. It tells us everything we need to know about ourselves and the world we live in.

Simply acknowledging the truth of this statement won't make us wise, though. We have to study it, draw conclusions from it, mold our thinking around it, and act accordingly. For wisdom is not a single idea, nor a list of precepts, nor even a body of knowledge. Wisdom is an attitude. It's an attitude born of the knowledge that everything changes and anything can happen. It knows that we live in an open universe, with no absolutes but many relativities - some of them better than others, and some worth fighting and dying for. It's an attitude of alert receptivity to everything that happens, and a readiness to respond. It is flexible, but rooted in integrity. Always aware of the power of evil, it is determined to work for what it regards as right and good. As the Serenity Prayer suggests, it includes the patience to endure the things we can't change, the courage to change the things we can, and the intelligence to tell the difference. It accepts new truths never dreamed of before, once they've been proven true, even when they topple older truths we thought were carved in stone.

Wisdom doesn't cling. It knows when to commit and when to detach. It is wary of extremes, tries to reconcile the opposites of the real and ideal worlds, knows when to strike and when to hold back. Wisdom trusts in God but tethers its camel, praises the Lord but passes the ammunition. It is never surprised by anything that nature may inflict upon us, nor by anything that human beings may do. It knows that we are a flawed but promising species, somewhere on the long, hard road from ape to angel, laboring along that road by fits and starts, now leaping ahead, now falling back.

Rooted in the central truth that everything is transient, wisdom accepts impermanence like a Stoic and resolves to do the best it can with transient things for as long as life shall last.

William Page is the author of "The Nirvana Experiments and Other Tales of Asia." E-mail: [email protected]