During my lifetime (I’m 74 years old) I have seen the explosion of information in our society. When I was in high school, I was taught to do research in English classes—how to use books, how to include footnotes identifying sources in my term papers, and so on. And I found that while books had a lot of information, often the most recent information was in periodicals—academic/scientific journals and such. Now, even the magazines can’t keep up—the newest info is online. I don’t read printed newspapers anymore; I subscribed to a news magazine for some years, but a few years ago I dropped the print subscription for an online one; and now I have dropped even that, because they cannot keep up with the news on their website.
But information—or “knowledge” is one thing. The big question turns out to be, what will you do with it? How well can you use it? And if you goof up, what will the consequences be? Currently, our society is still working out the “unintended consequences” of the policies adopted to deal with the Coronavirus pandemic a few years ago—schoolchildren falling behind in learning, businesses that shut down and never re-opened, people with medical issues who were unable to get the care they needed until the mania was over, and more. And a major bit of the fallout that is still being dealt with is the loss of respect for the authorities as a result of all those consequences.
And this points to what may be a major deficit in our “Information Age”—we have so much knowledge, but we have a severe shortage of a related but different quality called “Wisdom.” What is “wisdom”? Looking online, I found this definition from the Cambridge English Dictionary: “The ability to use your knowledge and experience to make good decisions and judgments.” And how do we sort out what are the good decisions? By the consequences! How did things turn out? Did the decision prevent harm, or cause harm? Were the harms greater than the benefits?
Here’s something to consider: According to 19th-century American author Samuel Clemens (better known by his pen name Mark Twain), “Good judgement is the result of experience and experience is the result of bad judgement.”
I think part of our trouble with this “Information Age” is that so many of our people get into the academic world without much real-world experience. The academic track is that you major in a topic, but you also do take some general courses; then you take a master’s degree in a more limited topic, followed by a PhD in an even narrower topic. Then maybe on a university faculty the person focuses on an even smaller specialty. This is summed up in a line I saw years ago, that “An expert is a person who learns more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nearly nothing.” Yes, that is humorous; but it is also how you get people making medical decisions affecting an entire nation who have no clue what the effects will be from disrupting other fields like education and the economy.
But this problem applies to more than just the Covid issues of the last few years. In the business world, these days the big companies are mostly run by people who hold finance degrees; their predecessors were often engineers. This is why companies like Boeing are now getting into trouble, because the finance people are trained to cut costs, but they may not understand what should not be cut. In any line of business, there is a fine line between cost-efficiency and quality; if you go too far in one direction, you may lose in the other. If you have to overdo in one area, quality is usually the better choice; but a lot of the financial people don’t see that.
In a way, the big problem of our “Information Age” is that knowledge, by itself, tends to end up with a bunch of swelled heads. This is not a new problem; history is full of people who thought they were smarter than they really were. It’s even addressed in the Bible. For just one verse, I Corinthians 8:1 includes the words “Knowledge puffeth up…” (KJV; the NASB has “Knowledge makes arrogant”). If there is one thing I have learned in 74 years of living, it is that a lot of people in this world are not as smart as they think they are; in fact, anybody who thinks he is smart usually isn’t. And advanced degrees and high positions in government, education, or business do not automatically prove wisdom.
So, enjoy all the information we have available. Use it, but use it wisely. And be sure to keep a firm grip on your own humility. Try to be wise, not just knowledgeable.
Thank you Phil.