I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it. – Thomas à Kempis
Irrend lernt man. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1
This is what I did when I was in Italy. Lounging with castles in the background.
You cannot be innocent and wise simultaneously. That is why depictions of wise men (usually men, sorry) in literature and film are of people of advanced age: they’ve had lots of time to gather experiences which have taught them life lessons. These lessons are taught primarily by a process of losing innocence, in which childlike naivete is exchanged for experience. This experience is hard-earned currency which, when accumulated sufficiently, crystallizes into something resembling the ineffable and unteachable wisdom. Books and movies contain wise people much more often than real life does – at least, we can recognize them more easily. When we’re getting advice, usually the person delivering it doesn’t have a long, white beard to signify that it is wisdom proper we are receiving, rather than bullshit.2 And it is way easier to assume everything is bullshit, because we don’t know what we don’t know. “I’m not innocent anymore!” bellowed the 15-year-old.
So why no coexistence of innocence and wisdom? Can the Guru not simply tell us his secrets? Can I not stay blameless while integrating his knowledge? Why is wisdom not readily communicated? Why isn’t it fungible? We shouldn’t have to have the same hard experiences to carry the same knowledge. Respecting certain kinds of knowledge, this is true. Each generation doesn’t have to relearn the entire catalogue of technological advancements or reproduce theoretical discoveries. This is because we have a process which we can call culture, or the accumulation of the best that has been known and said in the world.3 This works extremely well where this knowledge is always applied in carefully-reasoned and -controlled settings. This type of technical information is context-independent, easily categorized and recognized, and thus easily communicated.
Culture tries really hard to impart a separate kind of knowledge, which I am going to refer to as connatural knowledge. This is the wisdom I’m getting at here. But culture somehow fails in this task. That doesn’t mean all of history’s literary and humanistic canon – our great books and films and poems (and essays!) from the past - has no value, but that it fails to universally impart wisdom in the same way a math textbook can settle the Pythagorean theorem. This is because every one of us has to make countless decisions that require individualized and contextual knowledge, that may only reveal itself given the right circumstances and habituation. We actually have to give something up in order to gain this connaturality, something even beyond spending years reading difficult books. We have to suffer things.4 It also seems the Guru actually can tell us his secrets, but it won’t matter because we won’t listen.
A key distinction that marks connaturality is the moral component. Wisdom has recourse not only to information and reason, but also to human nature, ethics, and natural law (a term often associated with the connatural). This doesn’t mean it has to be high-minded or judgement, just that it has implications for how we actually live in the world. It isn’t value-neutral, like saying “spinach is green.” It’s more like saying “spinach is tasty” or “spinach is not tasty.” I’m suggesting that when Goethe says we learn through erring, we learn stuff, sure, but more saliently we learn how to be.
One of the most frustrating things about being human is knowledge. All the time, I think I know something, but I make a mistake that indicates otherwise, often with pain or embarrassment accompanying it. I try hard to learn certain facts but forget them,5 I carry random, useless knowledge around instead: I can remember Lil’ Wayne lyrics from 2007 but not my mandatory training at work from last month. Much of what I used to think I knew, I now know is false. What else I “know” carries me through every decision, both rational and subconscious. Partly, this comes about because of that distinction between information and knowledge – what passes into my consciousness is not guaranteed to be recalled, or even reliably referenced – and partially because calling upon specific knowledge doesn’t make sense in every context. I don’t need to know how my motor works to drive my car, etc. The trouble is when what I need – what I already know – leaves me at the critical moment, or was never there in the first place.
My rational mind is nearly always able to present a solution to the mundane problems of life. I’m still pretty innocent, after all. I know that I should wake up earlier to have more time. Or that the anxiety I am feeling serves me no purpose and is based on an unrealistic assessment of reality. Or that a person’s rudeness was about them, not me. Et cetera. But integrating these conclusions, knowing them rather than merely deducing them, remains often out of reach. I have to burn my hand on the stove – maybe once, maybe dozens of times - before I can subconsciously, seamlessly avoid it. I’m suggesting that this is not an information problem, but an integration and implementation problem. There’s plenty that I know that fails to come into play when I need it to. If it was a problem of information, we’d all be able to infinitely wise from browsing the (right places on the) internet.
Albus Dumbledore is the fictional icon of wisdom. He’s old, he’s very powerful, and he’s a wizard. He has a stout beard and wears luxurious robes. When we discover that he had a close relationship with Grindelwald (magical fascist/supremacist/proxy for Satan), or that his father killed three muggles, or that he perhaps neglected his brother, it is shocking as a reader. This is because wisdom and virtue, the ethical life and the considered life, tend to go together. Dumbledore is without question one of the “good guys.” How could his past not be entirely innocent? Full of intrepid adventuring and perseverance in the name of justice? I argue that it is because he is wise, and he had to become wise. And it is only through fucking up deeply that we can become wise.6
Blake knew this, even though Songs of Experience came out only five years after Songs of Innocence.
Coming at this from another angle: there are a great deal of facts that I know but I don’t know. I “know” getting shot in the leg is painful. I know that I should always drive carefully, because being in a car accident sucks, and is scary and dangerous. But I don’t know the visceral pain of a bullet in my vastus lateralis, or the terror at seeing blood spill down my shin. And I still drive on the riskier side of average, sometimes. That knowledge is not connatural to me, it exists only outside of me in an abstract way, rather than being immediate, deep, and applicable. The only way to bridge this gap is to have those experiences. As much as I value and seek wisdom, I will try hard to avoid having them. The price of connatural knowledge is rather steep.
Confucius is also known as being pretty wise, or at least he has influenced many who sought wisdom. He taught that to acquire virtue, rather opposed to my thesis here, one should practice strict forms and rituals of life, cultivating lǐ (禮) through a constant orientation towards rules of etiquette, piety and propriety. Once one has done this for long enough, these practices are integrated into the person’s character and conduct. In other words, it is by practicing being good that we become good. Connatural knowledge arises from its own imitation. This is like telling yourself a lie so many times that you eventually believe it.7 Repetition, ritual, rules, over and over and over, eventually seep through into the soul (he wouldn’t have said it that way) and so form the person. This was his answer to the problem raised by Mastorianni and reiterated here. For Confucius, the distinction between integrated, subconscious, connatural knowledge – which I’m calling here wisdom - and knowledge of a rational, discursive type is bridged through practice.
This is still a steep price! It’s kind of like the wisdom-path offered by reading the canon. It’s an offer of a slow, steady climb towards the integration of connaturality. I fear that these methods can only really hint at what is more readily gained through the visceral immediacy of experience, which contrarily shock us into change, into reflection, and into understanding. I do bridle a bit at the “fake it til you make it” component of this method, but I still want to avoid making the mistakes that would bring me wisdom sooner. And if I sought mistakes out, they wouldn’t really be deserving of the name: they would offer no sapiential or didactic value.
Thank you for reading. Goodbye!
Goethe is possibly the GOAT. Debate me.
I recently shaved my long(est ever) beard, so you can’t know either.
Matthew Arnold
Reading hard books is a kind of suffering, and so we are rewarded for it in wisdom gained. If you think reading hard books is pleasure, and that pleasure can never be suffering, you’re wrong. One useful marker of a great text is its universality, and through this universality we can access components of the human experience we haven’t had or never will. So, reading the canon is a legitimate wisdom-path.
I wish I knew how to recite anything other than pop music lyrics by heart. I tested myself the other day and I only have The Lord’s Prayer and Goethe’s Wanderers Nachtlied II. Rather like classics in music, quotes are something that seem to exist almost entirely in my passive vocabulary, to be recognized b not identified. If you were to say: “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” I would say, “Shakespeare!” (But I would have first thought Bradbury!) I suppose this is something like the calculator effect in the verbal landscape. Rather than deferring basic long division to a machine, I also defer the recitation of prose and poetry to it. It was only through rote memorization that I learned Nachtlied in highschool, and why would I subject myself to that now? A strong case can be made that memorization is useful (since I’m not an actor and will never be an actor) for prayer, because it’s better to stand on the well-worn and sturdy shoulders of a sacred text or a canonical script than the flimsy scaffold of whatever prosaic sincerity I can come up with in an extemporaneous conversation with God. But otherwise? Why should I? Memorization takes the pleasure of learning and beats you over the head with it until you hate the content you are stuffing into your consciousness. Maybe I am uniquely slothful when it comes to this stuff, but I think not, really. I’m not slothful. But I can’t seem to maintain interest in practicing songs on the piano past the first 30 seconds or so, and I’m so tired of those 30 seconds by that point that I now want to learn something else.
See above link
This works apparently, so Confucius is right. It’s called the illusory-truth effect.