As the thread builds, the reasons for the alarming lack of wisdom of the last two generations becomes more obvious. It is the technological developments of the 20th Century that has ruined our old people. There is nothing genetically wrong with them - they could have been wise if they hadn't lived in isolation and interacted with commercial products for so many hours per day.
OK. I am going to take a risk and answer you seriously.
You claim that seniors lack wisdom. All of them? What you are failing to realize is what "wisdom" is and how it is so absolutely situational. So if the son of a farmer seeks advice from his grandfather the farmer he is going shopping for answers that are unique to his situation. Different answers from those a big-city accountant might give his son.
What is wisdom anyway? Knowledge and good judgment? Here is the question. Dr Lee. You are an old man. You are educated and reasonably successful. What advice to you have for me about how to live my life?
Answer 1: Get a good education. Get a good job. Get a good wife or husband. Save your money so you can retire happily.
Answer 2. Blow up your TV. Throw away the paper. Move to the country. Build you a home. Plant yourself a garden. Eat a lot of peaches. Try to find Jesus on your own.*
Answer 3. Don't be afraid. Ever. Do all of the things I did not do. Make love to the girl down the street. She won't give you a second glance when you are 65. Spend another week in the south of France. Drink better wine. Squander your time in the pursuit of pleasure.
Answer 4: Grab life by the balls. Become rich. Exercise power. Do not be a middle lemming. Lead or get the fuck out of the way. Take what you want and enjoy all you take. It is not the earth the meek inherit it is the dirt.
Which is the wise answer? Which displays wisdom?
I think wisdom is and has always been a rare thing. I think that it should always be preceded by the word "relatively". I have never made a stupid decision in my life. I am not a stupid person. I have made zillions of unwise ones. Does that mean that my life experiences are useless to pass along to others? No. Here is the key to wisdom.....
When the student is ready the master will appear. And the student will label him wise. Whether the wise man is an old lock smith whonever graduated from high school but gave the answer the student needed at that moment or a PHD with a 146 IQ and a lifetime of names to drop answering the same question. In the eyes of the seeker, both are equally wise.
I know how to answer this thread and give you a world class hand job Qatz. I know what you want to hear and could lay it out there easily enough. And you would tell everyone how I am the exception to my generations descent into the abyss. I think it was Churchill who said, "the difference between a politician and a statesman is that the statesman agrees with you".
This is why the seniors from less developed nations are often far more respectable than the old people in the Anglosphere. Less TV, less suburbia, and less commercial distraction. This "less" gives them far more time to interact with other humans.
Give them more time? Or gives their children more time to spend with them. Who are you blaming here? We have a bunch of old men and women here. When is the last time someone asked us a question in search of wisdom? When is the last time you sought out your father, uncle, grandfather, mentor......and simply listened? Whose fault is that.
On the rare occasions that young people seek out advice from me I will tell you what the most important thing I do is. I listen. Really listen. I let them talk. And guess what happens? They talk themselves into the answer. So what is wise about that? I know from the wisdom I have acquired in 7 decades that just giving people the answer, my answer, rarely penetrates as well as gently guiding them to reach the conclusion that works for them. Both of us actually.
Teaching point. If you want to be the best conversationalist around....the one everyone seeks out......learn to ask questions and shut the fuck up while they answer them.
And I won't even waste any pixels on the members who think "Trump" or "Brexit" are examples of lack of wisdom. Obama stole a year's worth of taxes, but his black skin convinced a generation of Cosby Show viewers that everything would be okay by the next commercial break.
This is just nonsense. You don't get to chose. You get to work. If you want to go to work and fix these things then put down your keyboard and go at it. Stop blaming us for your problems. My generation gave you unspeakable knowledge. Knowledge we worked very hard to get. Under your fingers right now is vast knowledge. If you want to know how many llamas there are in Peru (over seven million if you count alpacas) then you can know it for the asking. When I was young that knowledge would have been literally unattainable to me without enormous effort and expense. While you claim we were wasting our time on the Cosby show we were actually handing you the knowledge of all mankind on a silver platter you ungrateful little twit. You do not even have the wisdom to understand what a profoundly important tool this is. You have to develop the wisdom on how to use it. We gave you God like knowledge by 1950's standards. Don't fuck it up.
The EU was created so that a central group of predators could suck all the money out of Europe.
You mean unlike Roman legions and medieval kings and the Napoleon's armies?
Our lack of real opposition to banksters and international commerce reveals how brain-dead our TV-viewing, mall-frequenting culture is, and it was the last two generations that were the suckers who sucked us all into this mortal ignorance.
Ignorance? You should have seen how it was before. Honestly. You might benefit from a few history classes. You are romanticizing times that for the overwhelming majority of people were just as ignorant and baffling as today is to you. Or to put it another way, there were no good old days.....just occasional good days. Wisdom is the art of getting more good days than bad ones.
And I will re-ask this: when was the last time you asked an old family member for sage advice regarding the workings of the world?
Back at you. Same question. What makes you think that we are supposed to be masters of the workings of the world? Who ever was. Name one? My avatar was a wise man but master of the workings of the world?
Oh yeah. Never. Professors are paid to simulate this role for brats who are wealthy enough to buy their fake McWisdom.
One does not go to college to get wisdom. You go there to get a job. (And hopefully laid.) Professors impart knowledge to their students. That is not the same thing as wisdom. People with a lot of knowledge and life experiences can impart wisdom to others only when there is a convergence of that knowledge and life experience and a question it serves to answer.
Elders are not less wise than before. You are chasing your tail. You are either trolling or frustrated and lashing out. I am old and have the wisdom to see that. So I shot you an answer. If you are sincere and I helped you look at this differently then you will say I am wise. If not you then perhaps someone else driving by may have an insightful moment reading my words. If not even that, this does not mean I am unwise. There are plenty of wise people out there Qatz. Tons of them. You just need to peddle your ass over to them, leave your expectations at the door, sit on the floor and listen. Do that and get back to me.
- By Rich
- By JohnRawls
- By Dr House