The defining symptom of the modern time is a fixation on surface traits, and a denial of the underlying structure that is less obvious.
In order to have equality all words, concepts and communications must be exoteric, or accessible to every person in the group with a single step.
This in turn means they will be one one-dimensional, or represent a look at reality where face value becomes a universal, absolute, true and permanent condition which is an attribute of the object itself.
The resulting denial of cause-effect relationships, the passage of time and the fact that most properties arise from interaction instead of belonging to objects themselves, as a modern symptom, creates a kind of blindness that can even infect science.
But it is popular because it extends to all and every one the approval they need to join in society; for this reason, the individual does not feel threatened or compelled, and likes this state.
Unfortunately for them, challenges from life are how we grow. Even more, connections to other people including obligations are how we find meaning. We work together toward goals and others appreciate what we do.
However in a modern time that knowledge is covert wisdom, meaning that it can only be transmitted between those who have accepted the risk of breaking the taboo line.
The contrary idea, which is that all truths are immediately apprehended as a single property, remains very popular and expresses itself through many attitudes.
The worst perhaps of these is book worship — a weird fetish that idolizes the instruments of learning in lieu of the learning itself — because it substitutes fake knowledge for real.
Pretending that going to college makes us smarter, or buying books makes us wiser, is a modern conceit. Anyone can do those things and thus, if we’ve done them we feel no guilt, and if we’re good at them feel justified in being proud of that.
The fetishism of books and education is like all modern things a surrogate for actual knowledge. The learning process is not knowledge, nor are the books, nor the attendance of schools itself. Knowledge and wisdom are internal traits created by a compulsion to learn, and not just learn anything, but learn abilities which requires a study of reality.
If that were a widely distributed trait, humanity would be in a much different place. Since it is not, we fetishize books and other accoutrements of the educated, and pretend it makes us all equally wise and powerful.
45 queries. 1.016 seconds
Have you ever thought or, maybe, written about the judeo-christian/Enlightenment cult of documentation and writ-worship versus the Indoeuropean/Vedic tendency to pass wisdom on to younger generations via natural memory? Here you’re close to this subject.
In argument about the alleged benefits of christianization, the christians around me usually claim that their religion “brought grammar and books to this clueless barbaric land”, and that that was “a giant step forward”.
Today’s liberals also like to call their opponents “uneducated, unreading closed-minded cave dwellers”.
2000 years of progressivism: what to think
tradition: how to think
Crow: how to not think.
Nice one. I’ve often written about this subject.
Any description of – say – wisdom, is only a description of it. It can never be the wisdom, itself. The writer may describe what it is, and how it may be achieved, but can never actually give it to anybody.
People, being people, reading such descriptions, repeat what they have read, as-if they are now wise. As-if their reading has made them so.
Fail :)
People are always telling me I should read this, read that, but I never do.
Philosophy, knowledge, wisdom, all are hands-on experiences. They come from living, at first-hand, not at second.
Welcome to The Oprah Book CLub. Yet another example of commodity fetishism in action.
The bigger the book, the more important. How few people have actually read the Bible? It matters not – they are sure of its importance because it is really big and the bits they have read they don’t really comprehend.
The most perceptive people I know tend to be the literate but not overeducated classes of the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Latin America. There seems to be enough socialization which helps contextualize and interpret so-called “facts”. Some of the most clever, but unwise people I know are the WASPs and WASP wannabees. All degrees, job titles but no character or deep core – relative to the others mentioned.
All ego – no wisdom.