Forum: Featured Discussions: Has the world become more or less wise over the past 50 years?

At the Defining Wisdom Network Meeting in June 2009, participants were asked to come up with a series of questions about wisdom that might shed light on the broad issues of our project.

One participant asked the following question: “Has the world become more or less wise in the last 50 years? Or is the total amount of wisdom constant?”

I would like to ask the Defining Wisdom Network members to reflect and share their thoughts on this topic. What do you think? Is this a good question?

-Joy Wattawa, Assistant Director for Interdisciplinary Outreach and Communications, Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience

Photo from Flickr Creative Commons.

Initial thoughts:
As a civilisation, we have all the wisdom we require to address any challenge wisely. However, we are not always able to access it from within ourselves or others. And when are able to, we are not always able to apply it effectively.
The benighted aspects of our minds often prevent this access and application.
My initial feeling in response to this question is that up until now the developments in technology and industry that have enabled human beings' access to unprecedented levels of knowledge and collaboration have also given rise to ever more complex obstacles to and distractions from accessing, trusting and applying wisdom. The result of which is that less wisdom is being actualised. This is reflected in the many 'we have more now than ever of so much, yet so much less in so many ways...' paradox cliches.

I

This question seems ripe for methodological critique (what is meant by "world" or by "more or less wise"). Which would too bad. I suspect that thrashing around with some answers to even this vaguely-worded query will be worth more than debating its terms.

So, to jump in, I would venture that the world is less wise today than one or two generations ago. Why? My own sense is that wisdom depends on a number of factors which have for a long time been shrinking in supply. For example, people today often debunk, dismiss, or altogether forget the traditions, rituals, and stories, which, while perhaps mythical or even ridiculous in themselves, used to provide young people with a sense of the world as a whole worth being curious about--and wonder, one could say, is the beginning of wisdom. Also, we've largely lost practices of instruction and exercise in character development, with emphasis on the union of the passions, particularly eros, and reason. It's hard to be wise with reason and eros at odds. In addition, an ever-smaller percentage of our population appears to take active roles in "public affairs," from civic debate to military service, which force one to grapple with contending visions of the good and self-sacrifice, a struggle key to developing practical wisdom. And certainly the frenetic pace of our society devalues or simply shoulders out of existence well-ordered leisure as a worthwhile ornament of life, including art, music, and time for quiet reflection. I would count all of these elements as factors in fostering wisdom. Not sufficient causes, but necessary ones. And as they (and probably others that I've overlooked) decline or disappear, I would expect wisdom to become more infrequent as well.

I would welcome other community members' rejections or rebuttals (or support) of these brief claims. Some of these are topics that I take up in the recent Wise Counsel Research report, "From Wealth Counselors to Wise Counselors," posted at www.wisecounselresearch.org. If you're interested, please visit the WCR for this report and future additions on topics of interest to the wisdom community.

... because I prepared a comment some days ago arguing that the world has indeed become wiser, and then had no time to post it ... now, having read your points, Keith, I am no longer so sure but rather than revising my comment I'll just post it here and see what happens :-)

The question is, of course, related to the question what wisdom is – if the definition of wisdom is fully culture/history-dependent, people at all times may have thought they were at a wisdom high. But then, I would tend to believe people in the Third Reich did not consider it a particularly wise regime even if they endorsed it. Assuming (which is certainly disputable!) that some core elements of wisdom have to do with tolerance, respect for diversity, balance, and high levels of moral reasoning, I do think that at least in my region of the world (Western Europe) there has been a kind of upturn of wisdom over the last 70 years in the way people, as well as nations, deal with conflicts and problems (see, e.g., human rights issues, gender equality, environmental issues, etc. …). We are certainly far from optimal levels, but when I think about what Europe was like 70 years ago, what values were taught to children for example, we have come a long way. This also applies to some aspects of life in the US, I think, e.g., concerning race issues. There have certainly been highs and lows before, and this current time may be qualitatively different because it goes with the loss of so many other things that have been here for a long time, such as (in Europe at least) a large-scale abandonment of religious values -- and maybe I'm just too affected by my own values. But my perception is that we may be moving towards a time where wars are fought (if they have to be fought at all) for morally better reasons than (a) the belief that the other side is basically evil or (b) economic reasons. 

I think a more general question is whether civilization can overcome some aspects of “human nature”, i.e, our evolutionary background, for good. For example, we share with other primates a strong tendency to think in ingroup/outgroup categories, that is, to support those people we consider part of our group and fight or suppress those we don’t. If we can learn either to overcome this inbuilt mechanism or to teach our children that the ingroup includes every human being, independent of race, nationality, socioeconomic status, etc. (some people would probably include animals), we could probably make the world a wiser place.

Sorry that my comment starts with "because" -- I put in a heading ("This is exciting..." that isn't shown.

Thank you, Judith, for your thoughtful reply. I was feeling a bit lonely. Your comment recalled to my mind my long-ago reading of Rousseau, particularly your remarks about wisdom consisting, at least in large part, of compassion or tolerance, and your connection of wisdom to the task of our overcoming our (animal) nature. Rousseau makes quite a case that man's special quality is not his wisdom or virtue but rather his perfectability, which leads eventually, in the Enlightenment project, to society, science, alienation, and slavery (mental as well as physical). As a counterbalance, Rousseau cites our compassion--which isn't exactly the same as tolerance, but looks similar--which is grounded in our animal nature, but greatly extended in civilized people, such that we feel pain when, for example, we see pictures of corpses in Haiti and, moved by our feelings, react with kindness and care rather than coldness and disregard. Perfectability extends compassion beyond our physical limits, but it also dilutes and may even easily extinguish it. Man cannot remain an animal, but neither should he forget some of those animal sentiments. All that's to say that I would agree with Rousseau, that overcoming our nature and being tolerant--twin expressions of the counter-Enlightenment or contemporary thought--are deeply in tension. If we pursue one, we may threaten the other.

Leaving aside the question of whether the world has become more tolerant (cf. 9/11 and terrorist attacks around the globe since then), all this also raises the question of whether we should agree with Rousseau that well-developed sentiment, a new "virtue," "the sublime science of simple souls," should be called "wisdom." My sense is that it is possible to get a much larger percentage of any population to behave tolerantly than virtuously (in the classical sense). But I also believe that tolerance and compassion leave out much of what many people, in many different times and places, have considered elements of human excellence. Here the very question (about "the world") may have inadvertently focused us on a low and effective but ultimately incomplete standard.