“A crisis of wisdom as the defining crisis of our time? This diagnosis, and from a scientist and scholar at that, is unusual. Science, psychology and even the multitude of modern and postmodern therapies and social practices, have not been able to fill the vacuum.”
Thomas Steininger
“Who wants to be wise anymore? People want to be right, rich, popular and in control. But wise?”
Heidi Husted
“With the Enlightenment and the move to a secular world, we lost a religious worldview that homed us and gave us access to wisdom,” Vervaeke observes. “We have tried to replace that worldview with political structures and socioeconomic structures that are supposed to do the same thing. In modernity, politics is basically ideological competition. While it claims to be addressing the human pursuit of happiness, whatever that’s supposed to mean, it has degenerated into ideological competition, and it thwarts us and blinds us to the level at which we need to address the issues we’re talking about here. So, the rise of secularism and the secular state with its sociopolitical discourse and ideological competition has accelerated our disconnectedness in a profound way.”
John Vervaeke
As a non theist – I find this peculiar – that I viscerally feel the absence of shared values. That I wish we’d memorialize principles we agree are good to live by, derived from the truest empirical observations of the human condition. But… not encoded in religion or state.
I can’t take this further… beyond pointing to it as a distinct and obvious consequence of secular life. I am not alone…
- We Are Suffering From a Wisdom Famine
– Thomas Steininger, John Vervaeke - A Replacement For Religion
– Alain de Botton, School of Life - Wisdom in the Age of Information
– Maria Popova - Our Loss of Wisdom
– Ben Schwartz
The only antidote, of course, is consideration of wisdom. But, what trustworthy source(s) can we coalesce around?
It may be that there can never be one source – merely a smattering of heroes and charlatans trying to fill the void. My effort is to track and catalogue most worthwhile ones, below. At the moment, they are the best we have.
