No country for wise men

By Daniel B. Rundquist

Just calm down already. Really. Sit down and relax. Take a breath. Turn off your television. Americans today are so on edge and hypersensitive to every soundbite we hear these days. Don’t worry that you’ll miss anything; the media vomits out another breathless panic attack inciting soundbite about every four hours. You’ll be fine if you miss one or two of them. Let us take a few minutes to look around and see where we are.

It is clear that we have been driven to become a now hopelessly divided nation. Our issues continue to deepen and become more serious by the day, and these changes have nothing whatsoever to do with the Covid-19 virus or the so-called vaccines to treat them. Our issues are fundamental ones that one political party is driving. They are in fact, purposely pushing the nation over the metaphorical cliff into the political abyss of anarchy, which, they hope, will be followed by dictatorship.

It is, in fact, the Saul Alinsky program being executed flawlessly. The tools employed in this process are in fact anything that can cause fear or mistrust – that is because with either of these, especially fear, it is easy to manipulate an entire society in short order. Covid has worked beautifully as the latest of these tools–we have maskers against the non-maskers, vaccinated people against the “anti-vaxxers,” Covid believers and covid deniers, and so on. 

In the midst of all of this, we have lost many other things along the way; including our collective capability and for reason, logic, understanding, curiosity, accountability, compassion, scientific methodology, common sense, and wisdom. These things are all being made obsolete and by a large degree, outlawed by the party in control. Not only is this alarming and dangerous, it was also predictable by those who have bothered to study history. 

Do you perhaps think that this is a bit of drama and sensationalism on my part? I’m not alone in this line of thought, just ask any Russian over the age of 30. Abbot Tryphon (Parsons) of the monastery of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in honor of the All-Merciful Savior in Washington state remarked in August, 2020 that:

“In my opinion, behind-the-scenes actors, who compelled people to take to the streets, are trying to start a revolution. What is happening now in the United States has a lot of signs similar to those that took place in Russia before the overthrow of the tsar … The United States has never been as divided as it is now – except during the Civil War of 1861-1865. But then there was a clear division between the North and the South, whereas now the differences are pushing the state boundaries. This occurs in the realm of consciousness and mentality.”

Conventional wisdom which has brought our nation out of so many hard times and crises prior, has been completely demonized. We have been told to substitute raw emotions and political narratives in its place. This is why we see rioting, looting, and civil unrest across the nation which of course helps the entire agenda of “transforming America” along. How can we restore conventional wisdom? First, we must understand what it is.

When people graduated from school we used to tell them that “the learning never stops.” It is still true. There are many things that we will need to learn both from school and outside the classroom. The sooner that we learn them the better off the remainder of our lives may be.

Lesson 1: Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom.

It is also true that we live in what is called today the “Information Age.” Anyone with a computer or a cell phone can access Google and find information about anything at any time. This, perhaps ironically, has worked against the effort to truly educate people properly.

Nowadays people really think they are intelligent because they can get an answer from the internet in seconds. Academia as a whole facilitates the perpetuation of this cruel myth by their continued and deliberate degradation of the type of learning material presented to students in classrooms, and the constant lowering of grading and testing standards, which is well documented and designed to support the Leftist political narrative.

We have these three things, information, knowledge, and wisdom, which are today commonly thought of and assumed to be the same things. They are certainly not the same and knowing the difference is a must. 

Information can be thought of as simple data. That’s all it is. It is not creative, intelligent, or active. It is more like a road sign that says, “Speed Limit 45 MPH.” This information neither drives the car nor makes the road safe. We are exposed to a lot of information every day.

Knowledge is rather more involved. My definition may differ with that found in a dictionary. Knowledge is a skill set that can use information to perform a task and create an outcome. So while “information” shows us what numbers are, your applied knowledge in arithmetic using those numbers will allow us to solve math problems or balance a checkbook.

Specifically you can apply this knowledge to learn that because you worked this month, you received four deposits of $1,000 dollars each on every Friday into your checking account totaling $4,000, for example. If you did not have basic information about real numbers then you would have no clue as to why you needed to work, and if you did work anyway, you would have no concept of what it meant to have deposits of money into the bank. Knowledge of basic arithmetic also leads to the conclusion that spending for the month should not exceed $4,000.

In the driving analogy, knowledge of how to drive a car puts you on the road, but the information about the speed limit posted on the sign lets you understand that the DOT does not consider that road to be safe above 45 MPH. 

Wisdom then requires both information and knowledge but with an added ingredient of experience. Wisdom sees beyond the present in many cases and is able to drive favorable results usually by capitalizing on some positive thing or at least avoiding or mitigating a negative.

At the bank again, while knowledge tells you how to manage your money and not overdraw your account, wisdom reminds you that there will be serious penalties from the bank and your creditors if you do so. Wisdom shows you the potential outcomes of actions based on information (ex. bank policy says you cannot overdraw, lays out penalties for doing it, and state law says you can be prosecuted for writing bad checks) and knowledge (ex. you have the skills to keep your spending under control and your account balanced). Experience, either your own or by the observed actions of others, is the catalyst that drives wisdom to be valuable (ex. you totally understand why not to overdraw your bank account and so you can react proactively to take measures not to do it).

Again with the driving analogy, you have the information of the speed limit being 45 MPH, you are knowledgeable to be able to drive the car on this road, but wisdom (using additional information of seeing a police officer ahead) reminds you that exceeding the speed limit may get you a speeding ticket from that police officer sitting in his car at the bottom of the hill.

In summary, most information we can source from the internet to be sure, but it also comes to us through observation of our own. Knowledge can be discovered in books, through personal instruction, or on the internet also – if we don’t know how to do something, usually there is some guy who made a YouTube video showing you how to do it. Wisdom, however, requires experience, memory, and critical thinking skills to be applied to the information and knowledge you acquire. 

When you are presented with any material at any time, we may think immediately to categorize it. This alone will help us in applying it correctly — or discarding it — but in either case NOT mistaking either for wisdom.

If we wanted to derive wisdom directly instead of having to learning it all from scratch, there is in fact a shortcut to in finding it. The best repositories for wisdom are our senior citizens and veterans of the Greatest Generation. They have seen it all, done it all, and often know it all. They seem to universally understand common sense and are happy to explain it to us and warn us about the problems associated with ignoring it. We are now losing them at an alarming rate.

The wisdom that the seniors know runs contrary to the current political climate in America and so it seems obvious why democrat run states placed Covid patients into nursing homes, infecting them with the virus. Some reports now show that 50% of the total reported Covid fatalities were patients in nursing homes. This of course, means that the survivability rate for the rest of the population outside of the nursing homes is actually double what is being reported. But let’s not allow the facts get in the way of the truth. This is no longer a country for wise men.