A Cheerful Wisdom
The oracle at Delphi declared that Socrates was the wisest man in Athens. Socrates was astonished to hear this, because he always felt that he ultimately knew nothing. Upon reflection, he realised that he was wise because, unlike most people, he actually knew how ignorant he was. He knew the limits of what can be known.
Socrates moreover was famous for demolishing the pretentions of others. He regarded himself as the intellectual gadfly of Athens. He would innocently question someone about their opinions on Justice or Love or whatever. Then he would mirror those opinions back in a way that illuminated their falsehood and shallowness.
For Socrates, a healthy, canny suspicion is essential for wisdom. It pays to be automatically distrustful of authorities and experts and popular opinion. The surface is always a mask, so question everything. Things are never what they seem to be. Trust no one, not even yourself. We all have a natural talent for self-deception and are vulnerable to the deceptions of others.
The Book of Tao says a wise man is cautious and alert, like a man crossing a frozen stream in winter. In our behaviour, in our thoughts and in the world at large, we are always walking on thin ice. Wisdom is often about seeing a clear blue sky and knowing it is going to rain.
Yet Socrates was no disgruntled, post-modern cynic. It is always easy to rubbish the views of others, but Socrates knew that scepticism alone is also a kind of stupidity. He felt that you could always find the truth that mattered.
Socrates believed in the native intelligence, the ‘genius’, of every human being. Even if you were poor, uneducated, a woman or a slave, you could still be wiser than the rich and powerful, if you applied yourself.
Intuition is important but not enough on its own because, to be honest, our gut-reactions are often wrong. They can easily exaggerate dangers and mindlessly reflect our prejudices. By refining our intuition with the habit of critical enquiry, Socrates believed that we could find our own way to a satisfying life, in harmony with beauty and truth. We can discover what is good for us personally, and act on that knowledge.
For example, one of the best decisions I ever made was not to have children. When I was thirty, all my friends were having kids, both in and out of wedlock and mostly unplanned. Only three of us in that large circle of friends were childless: one was gay, one was depressed, and then there was me. I felt very odd.
I came under concerted pressure to have children myself, so I gave it a practice run. One of my girlfriends was pregnant when I met her. I attended the birth and played at being a surrogate father for a few months. The message was very clear: This is not for you! Don’t do it!
But my gut-instinct wasn’t sufficient in itself. I was in a good position to learn from the experience of others. By observing my friends, I could see what parenthood involved (a lot!) Furthermore, I could also see the statistical probabilities: a natural loner with no money who also wants to travel is unlikely to make a good father. In other words, intuition plus observation plus reasoning led to a wise decision. I’ve never regretted it.
Important as intuition and reason are, we also need experience. “No man is born wise”, said Cervantes, who certainly knew all about folly. Since wisdom is practical knowledge, tested in the crucible of experience, it is usually the province of the old. The young are hopeful and optomistic, seeing boundless possibilities everywhere. The old are usually sadder and wiser, very conscious of the vagaries of chance and the approach of sickness and death. The old see the young as living in cloud-cuckoo land. The young see the old as hopeless grumps.
The young try to live out their dreams, and usually fail. (How many young athletes or musicians ever make it to the top?) The old can be too pessimistic to try again. So who is right? Maybe there is both a wisdom of youth and a wisdom of age.
If we’re not smart enough to learn from the experience of others, the wisdom we possess tends to come through the school of hard knocks. Wisdom is often the consolation price for failure and disappointment. There can be something humbling, even humiliating, about being wise.
For many older people (after 40, let us say), the wisdom that should come with age and experience can collapse completely into bitterness and cynicism. Shocked by life, the older person is often a nervous wreck, haunted by anxiety and nameless fears.
Of course, this is not a rational or healthy way to live. In fact, it is a half-life. Admittedly, the world is an unpredictable place, as any older person well knows, but it always has been. I’d rather be living now, than in 1954 or 1937 or 1915. We live in a time of fabulous wealth and plenty. Nearly all of us are richer and safer and better informed than our parents and grandparents were. So why are all we so worried? Is it because we’ve now got so much more to lose?
Nietzche said that a true sign of wisdom is the absence of bitterness (and regret and fear and envy, I would add). He actually suffered extreme pain for much of his life, and yet one of his books was called ‘The Cheerful Wisdom’. To be wise is to be cheerful despite everything.
My favorite model of a wise old man is the anonymous High Priest of Jerusalem who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes. He enjoyed great success. He owned palaces, slaves and musicians, and loved both luxury and philosophy.
Yet he also said “I gave my heart to know wisdom and folly; and in much wisdom is much grief. For he that increases knowledge increases sorrow. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and behold all is vanity and vexation of spirit. ”
He saw vividly that absolutely nothing lasts. Despite all his great deeds, he would not even live in the memory of others. He saw that no one is justly rewarded: “The race is not to the swift, not the battle to the strong, nor riches to the wise” and that all ends in oblivion. “That which befalls beasts also befalls the sons of men. All have one breath. All are of the dust and return to dust.”
Despite this, his old man’s wisdom is an uncompromising ‘Yes!’ to life. “Whatsoever thy hand find to do, do it with all they might: for there is no work, no knowledge, no wisdom in the grave whither thou goest.” And: “Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of your life. A man hath no better thing under the sun than to eat, and to drink and to be merry.”
So many celebrities and self-made millionaires talk as if they were gods, but the High Priest saw right through the pride and arrogance that commonly goes with success. Julius Ceasar conquered Rome but, in his triumphal march through the streets, he was followed by a slave saying “Don’t forget, Caesar, that you too are human.” Of course, he did forget, and was dead two years later. It seems that no one can be wise without a deep, cautionary understanding of limitations and failure.
Knowledge, power and success are often the direct enemies of wisdom. Humankind is now far too clever for its own good, and the most obvious wisdom can get lost under the toys. Even a ten-year-old child can see that to plunder the worlds resources, or to build nuclear power plants or to bomb Baghdad, are not smart things to do. The figures just don’t add up at all. They’re not even close.
Finally, it can sometimes be wise to be foolish. No sensible person would ever fall in love, for example. ‘The heart has reasons which Reason never knows’, said Pascal. It is sometime sensible not to see the blatantly obvious. I made the best business decision in my life by being willfully blind to the likely outcomes.
The ultimate wisdom is to ride the changes of life well. As the High Priest said (stealing a quote from Bob Dylan!): “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. A time to kill and a time to heal; A time to weep and a time to laugh; A time to love and a time to hate; A time to keep silent and a time to speak.”
What is right today is often wrong tomorrow. Over the years, we piece together our personal wisdom as a mosaic of ideas, experiences and reflections. Ideally it changes as circumstances change and as more information appears. The way to have a satisfying life is to be both wise and foolish, cautious and reckless, social and solitary, acquisitive and spiritual, as the times dictate and as the spirit moves us.