"Luck"

This essay had its genesis in an idea about writing of the good the United States has done over the years, and the sadness that we have become so polarized and divided. Christopher Buskirk, publisher and editor of American Greatness and opinion writer for the New York Times, recently wrote an essay, “The Vital Nation.” In it he wrote that “civilizational vitality springs from a shared identity that unites people.” Paul Johnson, the British historian who recently died at the age 94, wrote last April in The Spectator: “What is America? It is not a race but a cohesion of all the races of the world.” E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one – the motto on the United States’ Great seal. 

 

We used to think of ourselves that way, as individuals thrown into an American mixing bowl. Today, we see ourselves separated by identity, as in a salad bowl where the radishes do mot mingle with the tomatoes. The U.S. has its share of blemishes, we are far from perfect, but what other country has provided opportunities to so many from so many different parts of the world? I, for one, thank God that I had the good fortune to be born here, and that is how this essay came to be written.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Luck”

January 28, 2023

 

“Be grateful for luck. Pay the thunder no mind.

Listen to the birds. And don’t hate nobody.”

Attributed to Eubie Blake (1887-1983)

American pianist and composer

 

Tuesday will be my 82^nd birthday. So, forgive me if I wax nostalgic. I promise to be short. 

 

Luck is happenstance. Good or bad, it cannot be summoned or dismissed at will. It is, however, often denigrated. In his 1860 book of essays, The Conduct of Life, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.” I presume Emerson meant that effort was necessary for fortune. There is no question that, individually, we make our own luck, in aspiration, diligence, and hard work. As Edward Gibbon wrote in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.” Yet, so much happens in our lives – for better or worse – for which we bear no responsibility: the families and places into which we are born, accidents for which we have no fault, serendipitous meetings that lead to long and loving relationships.

 

None of us chooses the time or place of our birth, nor do we select our parents. It is purely by chance, or luck, if you will. It is the right people meeting, going back tens of thousands of years. The odds of being born, whenever or wherever, are infinitesimal. The fact we are alive is reason to celebrate.

 

Fortune smiled upon me from the start, first in the parents I had. While both had been raised in comfortable circumstances, they chose a life of impecunious artists in a New Hampshire farmhouse that belonged to my father’s parents. There they raised nine children: “our nine little seedlings/all planted with love/nurtured with patience/from Heaven above,” as my mother wrote on their 25^th wedding anniversary. In an undated letter to the editor of the Peterborough Transcript (probably from the mid 1950s), she wrote of parenting: “Children have to learn and learn young what goes and what doesn’t go…Our formula is lots of love, lots of sleep, and lots of time to themselves, with a good spanking when it is necessary.”

 

In another stroke of fortune, I met Caroline sixty-one years ago; we fell in love and were married on April 11, 1964. And the two of us were blessed with three children who, in turn, produced ten grandchildren. If that’s not luck, I don’t know what is. 

 

Of all times to have been born, I was lucky, even as the runway gets shorter. I look at the comforts of today versus what was available to those of yesterday; the leisure time we have, something unknown to prior generations; of the ability to travel anywhere and to easily communicate with family and friends; of the advances in medicine, which have stretched our lives; and of the relative peace our world has enjoyed. 

 

And, of all places to be born, I was fortunate to have been born in the United States. As Baxter Black, the late cowboy, veterinarian, and poet wrote in 2008: “I’m lucky to be an American, and the freedom that I have.”  It has become popular to accentuate our nation’s faults and minimize her virtues. She is not perfect – “pay the thunder no mind” – but she remains the preferred destination of those wishing to emigrate from other countries all over the world – “listen to the birds.” I am lucky to have been born in the U.S. of A.

"AI in the Age of Wokeness & Expanded Government"

 Peggy Noonan was right in her weekend column in The Wall Street Journal, “George Santos Has Got to Go.” He should not be in Congress. While he fits in with that august body of liars from both Parties, he is an embarrassment to the American people. But Ms. Noonan failed to address the most disturbing questions. How did he become the Republican nominee? Why did the Republican Party not fact-check him? Why did mainstream and social media fail to investigate him? Why weren’t voters in his district more skeptical? One cannot help but suspect that Republican leaders did not want to peer too closely at someone who looked he might claim a Democrat seat, and it is my guess that New York’s left-wing media gurus knew of Mr. Santos’ transgressions, but they preferred to disclose them after the election, when embarrassment to the Party would be more keenly felt. 

 

We are reminded once again of the wisdom of Mark Twain: “There is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.” At any rate, today we start the Chinese year of the rabbit, a happy omen for what we all wish will be a good and productive year.

 

Sydney M. Williams

http://swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“AI in the Age of Wokeness & Expanded Government”

January 24, 2023

 

“Technology is a useful servant, but a dangerous master.”

                                                                                                                Christian Lous Lange (1869-1938)

                                                                                                                Norwegian historian

                                                                                                                Nobel lecture, December 13, 1921

 

Over a hundred years have passed since Professor Lange gave his speech upon winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1921. A few years later, Albert Einstein, made a similar observation: “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” Both men – Lange in response to the trench warfare of World War I and Einstein to the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – had in mind the destructive nature of modern weapons. Yet technology, generally, has been a force for good: from medicine, communications, factories, publishing, heating, and air conditioning, to transportation, information, food processing, agriculture, entertainment, sports, etc. Technology has increased productivity, enhanced living standards, and reduced poverty. It is not so much that technology represents a threat, it is how it can be used and manipulated.

 

Just as technology has become ubiquitous in our lives, so has government. We may disagree on how big government should be, but it has grown larger over time. According to data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve, in 1940, before the U.S. entered the War, U.S. federal spending, as a percent of GDP, was 9.2%. During the War years, it topped 40%. After the War, factories that produced tanks and machine guns reverted to making cars and washing machines. Government spending fell. Following the Johnson and Nixon years, it rose to the low teens. Under both parties, it has since drifted higher, reaching 31% of GDP in the recession year of 2020. With the economy recovering, the ratio declined modestly, but the trend toward higher spending remains. This increase in federal (as well as in state and local) spending has inhibited private investment. From 1950 to 2000, U.S. GDP growth averaged just over 3%, while, for the first twenty-two years of the 21^st Century, GDP growth has averaged just over 2%. The increase in government spending is not the only cause for slowing economic growth, but it is one reason, and perhaps the principal cause. (Other factors would include an increase in the average age of Americans, from 29.5 in 1960 to 38.8 in 2021, and labor participation rates, which have fallen from 67% in 2000 to 62.2% in 2021.) 

 

As the tentacles of government reach deeper into our lives, the role of artificial intelligence (AI) should concern us. It has powers we are just beginning to appreciate. In the current issue of National Review, Vahaken Mouradian wrote, “Don’t Rage Against the Machine: AI can create something beautiful by identifying and replicating the features that constitute beauty, such as smoothness, rhythm, elegance…, and symmetry…It cannot, however, obtain the sublime, because it does not have feelings; it does not have faith; it does not have the ability to think independently…AI cannot reproduce a humanlike psyche or develop one of its own.” Bots (robots) have a “brain,” which allows them to take in, retain, digest, and regurgitate data, in accordance with instructions dictated by whomever controls the input. An artist might use a Prisma Labs’ Lensa to convert a photograph into a work of art, or a writer might use Chat GPT to complete an essay. AI computers may be able to express through writings religious beliefs, music, poetry, love, hate, or fear, but they cannot feel them. They have what might be considered a brain; they do not have a mind that allows them to think independently.

 

While AI is limited to what has been inputted into its “brain,” it can be manipulated as to what output will reach its target audience, reminding one of dystopian novels, like George Orwell’s 1984 and H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. The ability to control human behavior was a concern expressed by theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking in an interview on BBC in December 2014: “If you try to create a thinking machine, then it will pose a threat to our existence.” Two years ago, Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher of MIT wrote The Age of AI and Our Human Future, which introduces the reader to the promises and perils of artificial intelligence. In a review, Kevin Roose of The New York Times posted his first few paragraphs into Sudowrite and asked it to finish his review.  “…within a few minutes,” Mr. Roose wrote, “the A.I. was coming up with impressively cogent paragraphs of analysis – some, frankly, better than what I could have generated on my own.” Computers have already defeated the world’s best chess players, flown drones, and launched missiles. They soon will drive cars and diagnose diseases. But will they be used in schools and universities to indoctrinate youth with a preferred ideology? If we believe that wokeism is infecting our schools now, think what is possible with AI in the wrong hands.

 

We must continue to innovative; however, we must ensure individuals remain free to think, to argue and debate, to read and opine on whatever they choose. Democracy and freedom depend more on diversity of thought and expression than on such wokeisms as DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance). These policies, promote discrimination by physical traits, and they prefer identities over merit, even as the latter is blind regarding race and gender. LinkedIn ranked diversity and inclusion managers the second-fastest growing jobs over the past five years. We saw this elitism in the arrogant, platitude-filled speeches that dominated the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. We see this antidemocratic attitude in the requirement of signed “loyalty” oaths at cultural events (such as the ones at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, so humorously described by Gary Geipel in last Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal), and in the cancellation of conservative speakers and the shutting down of debate on college campuses.

 

Artificial intelligence can (and will) enhance our lives. But in the wrong hands, it aids those who wish to control what we do and how we think, whether the perpetrator is government, an organization, or an individual.  It is a threat that should not be dismissed. Combined with recent growth in government, it portends “Big Brother.” How to respond? Families should instill in their children values that have stood the test of time. And schools and universities should instruct students in the art of skepticism – to investigate and question, to think independently. Don’t trust AI’s formulaic answer to the question.

"National Winnie-the-Pooh Day"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“National Winnie-the-Pooh Day”

January 15, 2022

 

“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now,

bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head…”

                                                                                                Winnie-the-Pooh, 1926

                                                                                                A.A. Milne (January 18, 1882- January 31,1956)

 

Wednesday will be National Winnie-the-Pooh Day. Like millions of children born after 1926, I was raised on Winnie-the-Pooh[1], along, of course, on oatmeal, goats’ milk, and spinach. So, it was not a surprise when, in the mid-‘80s, a day was set aside to celebrate Milne’s “Teddy Bear” – “A bear, however hard he tries/Grows tubby without exercise.”[2] The celebrations’ origin likely stems from Disney. The company wished to promote movies, like Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966) and The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh (1977). Whatever the reason, the day should be celebrated; for love of Pooh is universal.  

 

………………………………………………….

 

During the war, my mother returned to her family’s home in Madison, Connecticut. My father was in the army, first in Texas and then in Italy. My grandfather was in charge of plantations for U.S. Rubber and traveled a great deal. But he loved his grandchildren; deep in the surrounding woods he would lead us to what he called Bruin’s lair, an indention under a large tree, which is where our imagined bear slept. How did we know “he” was a boar, not a sow? I don’t know. We just did. We never saw Bruin, but we knew he existed, for food we left was gone by the next day.

 

In the woods that surround Essex Meadows I have seen no pooh bears, tiggers, eeyores, roos, or heffalumps, but we do have imaginations, and this place sits on a hundred acres of woods, fields, and swamps, with trails through them, so it is possible our woods, fields, and swamps are alive with Pooh and his friends.

 

It is estimated that seventy million copies of the four Winnie-the-Pooh books have sold over the ninety-nine years since the first one appeared in 1924. And countless millions of children have seen the twenty or so movies and the many television shows that have been produced, since the first Disney movie appeared in 1966. Additionally, a dozen video games starring Winnie are on the market. 

 

Following service with the Signal Corps in World War I, A.A. Milne (Alan Alexander), who had a degree in mathematics from Cambridge, failed to get his job back at Punch. In 1913, he had married Dorothy de Sélincourt, and in 1920 his only child was born, Christopher Robin Milne. In 1924, A.A. Milne, then a poet and playwright, produced the first of the four Pooh books, When We Were Very Young – a book comprised solely of poems. In this we are introduced, in a poem titled “Teddy Bear,” to Edward Bear. In the Introduction to the first English edition of the book Milne explains that you will find some lines about a swan in the poem, “Summer Afternoons”: “I should have explained to you in the Note,” he wrote, “that Christopher Robin, who feeds this swan in the mornings, has given him the name of ‘Pooh.’” Two years later, in October 1926, Winnie-the-Pooh was published, introducing Edward Bear as Winnie-the-Pooh.

 

Christopher Robin Milne was born on August 21, 1920. At age eight, he was sent off to boarding school. While some people give October 14, 1926 as Pooh’s birthday, the day Winnie-the-Pooh was published, a better date might be August 21, 1921, Christopher Milne’s first birthday. Christopher was given a teddy bear, or at least that is what one infers from some lines in the last chapter of the final Pooh book, The House at Pooh Corner (1928): “’Pooh, promise you won’t forget me, ever. Not even when I’m a hundred.’ Pooh thought for a little. ‘How old will I be then?’ ‘Ninety-nine.’” 

 

Regardless of what date we commemorate Winnie-the-Pooh, we should celebrate remembrances of childhood, of a time unblemished by the realities of life. We should never forget our memories, of a time when days were long, and the future was only as far as tomorrow. Soon enough, we grew up; we learned what was real and what was not, or, at least, we thought we did. In the final paragraph of The House at Pooh Corner, as his son was headed off to boarding school, Milne wrote: “So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.”

 

And so it was for us; we abandoned childhood, not because we wanted to, but because we were growing up. Our voices changed and our bodies developed in mysterious ways. As it says in Corinthians, “… when I became a man, I put away childish things.” And now, as I grow old, memories come flocking back, of the enchanted places where I once played. My childhood will always be a part of who I am. And as it is for me, so it is for you. That they cannot take away, as Winnie-the-Pooh is here to remind us.

"Destiny of the Republic," Candice Millard

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

Destiny of the Republic, Candice Millard

January 14, 2023

 

“There is a tone of sadness running through this triumph,

he wrote, “which I can hardly explain.”

                                                                                                        James Garfield, letter to a friend

                                                                                                        November 1880

Quoted by Candice Millard

 

Four U.S. presidents have been assassinated; three of them within a thirty-six-and-a-half-year period: Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, James Garfield in July 1881, and William McKinley in September 1901. The fourth, of course, was John Kennedy on November 22, 1963. It was not until McKinley’s assassination that the president was assigned a secret service detail. Even then, ex-presidents were on their own. In 1953, President Truman and his wife Bess, famously, took the train home to Independence, Missouri, mingling with passengers and without secret service protection.

 

Ms. Millard tells the story of James Garfield, his abbreviated tenure as President, his assassination, and the times in which he lived. It was on the 36^th ballot, at the Republican convention in Chicago in early June 1880, that Ohio Congressman and former Union General James A. Garfield was nominated for the Presidency – a position he had never sought. On November 3, 1880, he was elected the 20^th President of the United States, narrowly defeating Winfield S. Hancock. “Although he was by nature,” Ms. Millard wrote, “a cheerful and optimistic man, like Lincoln, he had long felt he would die an early death.” On September 19, 1881, Garfield did die of septicemia and dehydration brought on by a bullet wound, inflicted by a deranged Charles Guiteau on July 2 at the Baltimore and Potomac railroad station in Washington, D.C. 

 

Ms. Millard has a talent for setting the stage on which her story unfolds. In this, which culminates in the assassination and its aftermath, we are given a brief biography of Mr. Garfield, along with a sense of his killer – “…highly intelligent…surprisingly articulate, but his mind did not work like that of a sane man.”. We are provided a window to see the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution, especially in medicine, along with pictures of her choices for heroes and villains of the era. Among the former are Garfield, a talented student, soldier, politician – a kind and gentle man; Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone in 1875 who was working on a metal detector when Garfield was shot; Joseph Stanley Brown, Garfield’s private secretary at age twenty-one and who three years later married his daughter Mollie; and Joseph Lister, a British doctor who developed the principle of antisepsis – the use of antiseptics to eliminate microorganisms that cause disease. Villains include Garfield’s personal doctor, D. Willard Bliss, a skilled surgeon, but a man who refused to accept new processes in sterilization, and New York Senator Roscoe Conkling, leading member of the “stalwarts,” the faction of the Republican Party that opposed James Garfield and supported political patronage. Chester Arthur, Garfield’s Vice President, was a stalwart, but he ended up signing the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, which Garfield had supported and which stated that federal government jobs would be awarded on the basis of merit, not patronage. 

 

This is a well-written story of a man lost to history, and of the fledging nation that allowed him to rise from poverty to President. James Garfield’s untimely death proved a catalyst for the way healthcare is delivered, while it brought sorrow to a nation still recovering from the divisive effectss of the Civil War.  

"So, Who's the Liberal?"

 

Despite headlines of portending doom and schadenfreude-laden Cassandras who thrive on tales of woe, 2023 has had a decent first ten days. While internal squabbling has made House Republicans look amateurish, we should never forget that our Representatives are not expected to always march together in sync. Stocks are up about a percent and a half, the yield on the Ten-year has declined about 25 basis points, the VIX has declined modestly, and the Dollar has retained its strength. On Monday, the UN Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization issued a report in which they found a “significant thickening” of the ozone layer (“a bit of good news for the planet”), suggesting that perhaps our grandchildren will have a world in which they can live. Topping things off, the January 2023 issue of The Spectator published an article, “The great anti-ESG backlash,” foretelling the end of a policy that has brought political correctness to investing and bank lending, a policy that Warren Buffett has called “asinine.” And, at least for a few months, we will be rid (or mostly rid) of politicians politicking. 

 

Onward, as Charon was wont to say, as his ferry slipped its mooring on the river Hades.

 

Sydney M. Williams

https://swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“So, Who’s the Liberal?”

January 11, 2023

 

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 

“it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

 

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

 

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

                                                                                                                                Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

                                                                                                                                Through the Looking Glass, 1871

 

The word liberal reminds one of Humpty Dumpty’s proclamation. It means different things to different people. The word is polysemous. To the Left it means big government, which actively supports social change. To the Right it refers to less government interference, the endorsement of individual rights, civil liberties, and free markets. The word stems from the Latin, liber, meaning free or unimpeded. In Lewis Carroll’s story, the word that caused the skirmish was glory, when used as a verb. “They’ve a temper – some of them, particularly verbs,” Humpty Dumpty says to a puzzled Alice. The word liberal is not temperamental (at least as far as I know), but it can self-camouflage, to ambush the unsuspecting. 

 

Over the years, the Left has usurped the word. so that for most the word refers to those who prefer a large role for government in their lives, while conservatives have become deplorables, birthers, conspirators, or just plain racists or right-wing nuts. We on the right should seize the word back. In his 1953 book The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk wrote of Edmund Burke (1729-1797), of how he defended the liberties of Englishmen against their king and of Americans against king and parliament. He defended those liberties not because they were innovations, “…but because they were ancient prerogatives, guaranteed by immemorial usage. Burke was liberal because he was conservative.” (Highlights mine.)

 

It is amusing to consider how the definition of liberal has morphed over time, so that today’s social liberals consider themselves the sole owners of the word, “even as,” Daniel Henninger wrote in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, “they surrender to the state an array of long assumed freedoms – of opinion, speech, and privacy.” Classical liberals believe that such rights, along with “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” are natural; they are God-given. The purpose of government is to secure and ensure those rights, not to dictate social behavior.  

 

While classical (conservative) liberals emphasize the freedom of the individual to achieve his or her goals, they recognize the necessity of government in maintaining order, in protecting us from enemies, in providing a quality high school education, in ensuring a sound currency, in adjudicating differences, and in making sure that the sick and the elderly – those who cannot care for themselves – live comfortable lives. At the same time, they emphasize the dignity of work, personal independence, self-determination, personal responsibility and accountability, and the importance of thinking for oneself.

 

On the Left there are social liberals who see the state’s role as being ubiquitous, that equality should include outcomes as well as opportunities, that ease of voting should trump security of the polls (they are equally important), and that healthcare should be free for all. Their efforts have encouraged the growth of the administrative state, creating agencies with expansive legislative, regulatory, and judicial powers. Have they pushed liberalism too far? In Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Andy Kessler wrote: “Liberals, implied in the name, say they are for freedom, but are they? The progressive wing is full of authoritarians telling others what to do or how to think: America is a racist country. Wear a mask. Limit charter schools. Bees are fish (in California.)” Regulatory bodies, created by Congress and managed by unelected bureaucrats, are not accountable to the people. Their powers, however, can be unleashed – or restrained – by whomever is President. Recently courts have begun to push back, questioning, for example, the doctrine of “deference to regulators.” It is the Left that comprises the bulk of college professors and administrators, and they decide what speech and which speakers are acceptable. Social liberals control the teachers’ unions and most of mainstream and social media. In Up from Liberalism (1959), Williams Buckley (1925-2008) wrote: “Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them that there are other points of view.” Are liberals open to contrary opinions? Am I? I hope so.

 

Is it liberal to call those who question the efficacy of a vaccine anti-vaxxers? Is it liberal to denounce as deniers those who question the contention that man is the primary (or sole) reason for climate change? Is it liberal for a university liberal arts professor to deny a speaker who does not hew to a preferred political ideology? Can a liberal believe in tradition and custom? I am not sure about a social liberal, but a classical liberal would answer yes, when the question refers to long-established modes of behavior: accepted manners, respect for others, humility, and charity. But he or she would not if it meant providing advantages to preferred groups – racial, national, or ethnic – whether it is America in the 1950s or in the 2020s. Is it liberal to replace merit and achievement with identity essentialism? I think not.

 

Who is a liberal? It depends, as Lewis Carroll wrote, on who is using the word. But well-intentioned authoritarianism, whether from the Right or the Left, is not liberalism. A school friend, now living in Denver and with whom I reconnected fourteen years ago at our fiftieth reunion, writes a clever, satirical piece, The Apocryphal Press. He puts to rest the old belief among conservatives that the Left is devoid of humor. Today, we are good friends, yet we stand at opposite ends of the political spectrum. We both describe ourselves as liberals. And yet, while I believe my friend when he professes to be liberal, I see nothing liberal about policies his side backs: universities that deny conservatives the right to be heard, schools that teach gender identification to pre-teens, biased media organizations, corporations that require adherence to woke dogma, social policies that disrupt or discourage family formations, and an administration that demands social media companies comply with demands regarding vaccinations and that still fails to enforce immigration laws at the border. And I see nothing liberal about politicians – on both sides of the aisle – who lie about their backgrounds.

 

So, who is a liberal? Perhaps they have become endangered, at least in Washington.

"Whither Wisdom?"

 

2022 was quite a year. The stock market put in its worst performance since 2008. Interest rates returned (painfully) to more normal levels. Cyber currencies experienced a dose of realism. 

 

Internationally, Ukraine showed that people will fight for freedom, while both Russia and China suffered for a lack of the same.

 

Domestically, political extremism continues to command soapboxes, while political correctness continues to dominate educational and cultural institutions, but the air feels a little fresher. The old guard of political leaders are showing their age. It is my prediction that, in both parties, Generation Xers (1964-1980) will replace Boomers (1946-1964) in the next Presidential race. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

https://swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Whither Wisdom?”

January 2, 2023

 

“Wisdom is not a product of schooling, but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”

                                                                                         Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

                                                                                         Albert Einstein, the Human Side: from his Archives, 1981

                                                                                         Editors, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman

 

When sixteen, with a new license in my wallet, I took my father for a drive. He cautioned me about driving too fast. I replied, “My reflexes are faster than yours.” “Yes,” he responded, “but you lack judgment.” His words were wise, while mine, which may have retained a scintilla of truth, were foolish.

 

Having good judgement means having the ability to see things from all sides, the ability to make a choice based on logic, experience, reason, and good sense. Good judgement is related to wisdom, which can be defined as having insight, understanding, perception, and common sense. Mimicking Einstein’s words in the rubric above, the four sources of wisdom, according to the Book of Proverbs, are: observation and experience, instruction based on experience, learning from mistakes, and revelation. The latter refers to the fact that the Bible teaches us that God is the ultimate source of wisdom. 

 

But today wisdom has yielded to wokeness, which is defined as the state of being aware of social problems: racism, inequality, sustainability, and injustice. Everyone agrees that racism and injustice should be combatted wherever found. We all agree that equality before the law is critical to a democracy, and that equal opportunities should be offered to all. But we are not equal in abilities or aspiration, so outcomes will never be equal. In his new book, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategies, Henry Kissinger wrote of “the natural inequalities of endowments,” which should be harnessed “for the public good.” Individually, we should play to our strengths, be they academic, athletic, mechanical, or artistic. We should strive to do what we are best at: teaching, building homes, playing the Cello, investing, or plumbing. It is what makes a strong community. And while we should agree that care for the environment is a sacred trust, it would be foolish to let the quest for sustainability destroy our capitalist system, which has raised living standards, reduced poverty, and made life more bearable for the world’s poorest. We can and should do both.

 

In our desire for social justice, is it wise to eliminate merit as a requirement for admission to selective, public schools. In their zeal to call out inequality in economic outcomes, the woke fail to acknowledge that work provides dignity. In a Wall Street Journal review of The Myth of American Inequality by Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund, and John Early, Charles Calomiris noted that in the bottom quintile of income earners only 36% of the people work, versus 92% of those in the middle quintile. While some of the poor cannot work, is not there a lesson in those statistics? And what about climate warriors? Approximately 79% of energy consumed in the U.S. comes from fossil fuels – coal, gas, and oil. While that percentage has declined, is it wise to sacrifice this energy source in a bid to get to “net zero” emissions by a set date, like 2050? – a goal called for by the President, but which the Electric Power Research Institute says is unrealistic.

 

On international tests, our public schools (K-12) perform poorly, especially when one considers the amount of money spent annually on a per student basis – the fifth highest of all countries, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Yet the results are subpar. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducts tests every three years for fifteen-year-olds. The most recent one from 2018, and released in December 2019, showed the United States 13 in reading, 18 in science, and 38 in math. (PISA tests for 2021 were postponed until 2022.) With such poor results, is it wise to offer a course on transgender studies when that time could be spent more productively, for example even reading Aesop’s Fables, each with its moral lesson? After all, Aesop was a former African slave who lived on the Greek Island of Samos 2,600 years ago, and the lessons his stories teach are timeless. Has social media made youth wiser, or has it made them more fragile, raising levels of anxiety? Is it wise for them to spend hours on Instagram or Tik Tok, subjecting themselves to taunts? They should be accountable, accept responsibility for their words and actions, not hide behind anonymous devices. They should rid themselves from making half-assed excuses for failure, like claiming victimhood. As well, the unwise suppression of speech by universities and media outlets – decisions justified with claims of hate, disinformation, and a failure to “follow the science.” 

 

Is it wise for a government with $31 trillion in national debt and almost a hundred trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security – about $400,000 for every man, woman, and child – to continue to add to its debt? Will not those obligations, combined with tighter regulations and higher taxes, cause interest rates to rise and negatively impact future economic growth? Did not the Federal Reserve decision to keep Fed Funds below two percent for fifty-one of the last fifty-six quarters discourage savings and encourage asset speculation?

 

An absence of wisdom defines our nation. Has it been wise to leave our southern border essentially open? Was it wise to weaponize the FBI and the Justice Department to combat political enemies? Has it been wise for media – both traditional and social – to suppress news that does not comply with political ideologies, like the Hunter Biden Laptop story? Is it wise to test people for Covid who enter the U.S. from China, but not test those, including ones from China, who illegally cross into the U.S. from Mexico?

 

Political wisdom is rare, for most politicians are focused on the next election. But our schools, universities, and news outlets should be founts of practical wisdom, for their concern should be the molding of people to think freely and independently, not to create puppets spewing back ideologies. Our nation depends on an educated and informed citizen. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers Sam Gamgee speaks to Frodo Baggins: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no telling where you might be swept off to.” Every day we step out our doors, and when foolishness leads the world becomes dangerous. We must ensure that we are intellectually and emotionally prepared, so that our democratic republic survives attacks, from both without and within. 

 

We live in a time of extraordinary technological change, especially in the fields of communication and social media, giving us little time to reflect and absorb. Thirty-five years ago, in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature, Professor Asimov was quoted: “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society can gather wisdom.” Today the world is changing even faster than it was in 1988. However, over two hundred years ago, in Literary Remains, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote, “Common sense, in an uncommon degree, is what the world calls wisdom.” Wise words. So, we don’t have to be Solomons, Aristotles, or Coleridges. We should be both curious and cautious; we should read and question; we should reason, and we should take time away from our devices to quietly think. 

 

Where has wisdom gone? Into the vapors of political correctness? Perhaps. The common-sensical wisdom which I mourn is more natural than its contrived woke replacement. My wish for 2023 is to see its return – something to consider as 2023 unfolds.