The Death of Wisdom

Socrates is considered one of the wisest men who ever lived—and the core of his wisdom was in his ignorance. “All I know is that I know nothing,” he said. What this means is that he did not claim to know much of anything—he was comfortable not knowing. He preferred not knowing.

This kind of wisdom seems especially impossible today, when digital space is so entwined with us at all times, pushing so much content and information in our faces—we all know way too much, about everything. If you took a few minutes to think about all the things you know, but don’t want to know, you would probably be sickened. Wisdom comes from building a barrier between your mind and the outside world—by being selective about what you allow to get inside of it.

The plummeting intelligence of most people has been widely recognized over the last decade or so. Everyone can sense that the smartphone era has made us all stupid—but the paradox is often overlooked, that these devices that bring us so much information have also brought about so much stupidity. Shouldn’t everyone be smarter now?

You can get wisdom by ignoring most things. This is why wisdom is so rare now. The world is in your face in a thousand different ways all the time. There’s no more wisdom. But we do have a lot of experts. Especially during the Covid era, experts and expertise were fetishized and celebrated like never before. Trust the experts, listen to them, etc.

What is the difference between expertise and wisdom? At first glance they seem the same—wisdom comes from ignoring most things, and expertise comes from ignoring most things that aren’t your expertise. But it’s not really the same. Experts block out the world so they can focus on one thing, their expertise, which they have selected to be their expertise because it has value, prestige, or personal interest to them. (Usually one that has social value—highly esteemed experts are generally guided by pragmatism). Experts block out the world so that their area of expertise can grow as a result—the less the chemistry expert knows about the world at large, the more they know about chemistry. The blocking out of the world by the expert is strategic, done for a purpose—and anything done strategically is not done for wisdom.