Everyone’s Owl, Goddess and Perspective

WISDOM ESSAY

Awareness, consciousness, common sense, knowledge, the big picture—these are all words that fit into the category of wisdom, no two are exactly alike and none can ultimately define wisdom. Sven Birkerts defines wisdom as “the knowing not of facts but of truths about human nature and the processes of life” (74). In his essay, “The Owl Has Flown,” he delves into the problem in today’s society: the vanishing act of wisdom by lethargy and faithlessness. But where Birkerts is mistaken is that wisdom is not obtained by copious amounts of study—that is the confusion of knowledge and its false impression of ‘awareness.’ Wisdom cannot be gained through intense reading or focused thinking, it is not defined simply by knowledge and cannot be forced to resemble knowledge, consciousness, common sense or awareness, because it is all the above. Wisdom is gained through experience and how one determines their actions henceforth.

Birkerts theory in a nut shell is defined by two things: lateral/vertical thinking and resonance. He describes lateral thinking as a definition of today’s society—we are the constant worker bee, buzzing to bits of information, shamelessly not retaining anything. Where as vertical thinking is how one gains insight through intense focus and resonance is the connecting or understanding of facts, in which, we may garner wisdom. This attained richness of resonance is done by the process of deep thinking through deep time. In essence, getting lost in a book and spending hours trying to figure out its connection to the ‘big picture,’ along with ones own connection to that picture.

Among the many broad claims made by Birkerts his most resounding claim is that today’s society lacks wisdom. Our owl has flown the coop and our goddess has thrown up her hands in disgust. But why would he make such a statement? Surely he does not believe he himself lacks wisdom, or does he? Birkerts begins on the idea that we read ‘too much,’ “That centrifugal tendency has of course escalated right into our present, prompted as much by the expansion of higher education and the demands of social and professional commerce as by the astronomical increase in the quantity of available print” (72). Higher education is supposed to make us read and gain knowledge, gather experience and, hopefully, graduate. This frontal attack on basic life intensifies his argument that we are lacking, not only his definition of wisdom, but we are wasting our valuable time on education as well. He continues: “…it may be time to ask how modification in our way of reading may impinge upon our mental life. For how we receive information bears vitally on the ways we experience and interpret reality” (72). Now he is attacking our mental stability because of the way we read. But how is this evidence that we are lacking wisdom?

The absence he mentions is related to the prolific access our populous has to printed materials: website, books, periodicals, and newspapers, even TV. One statement about reading and he now has to attack all of technology? He goes on to denote that superior access was once seen as worldliness yet now it is sold to the highest bidder among the masses (73). Tour Italy in three hours? Why not? However, Birkerts seems to weep for the lost ‘villager’ who spent time pouring over his worn almanac. He asks: “…which person is happier, or has more vital grip on experience?” (73). One may not be more wise because of that three hour Italy special, but that person could plan a trip and experience it and gain wisdom than he could ever acquire from a travel book on Italy. Therefore through that initial taste that individual may be on to something more than the common ‘villager’ would have never dreamed about. Birkerts deserves credit when delves into the exact seclusion of that villager does not necessarily mean “greater immersion into circumstance… [But that] the lack of perspective hobbles the mind” (73). And he discuss the idea that “when everything is happening everywhere, it gets harder to care about anything” (73). This is has a hollowing affect on any reader and this depletion of value is seen in the world today. Yet, one cannot care about everything with the intensity that Birkerts suggests; that is just unrealistic.

Further on in his essay he discusses that this loss of depth—the worlds forgetfulness of the ‘big picture’—is the primary case why we carry our broken souls to church or therapists to make our lives mean something again; all because we do not read too deeply? Apparently knowing the meaning of life directly equals wisdom and the world has missed that important memo. Not necessarily, Birkerts then states that this ‘awareness’ is what keeps us afloat, that the truly wise people among us are hidden and they do not share their wisdom—not because of his previously stated ‘embarrassment’ of knowledge—but because it is ‘part of their wisdom to do so.’ Well, Birkerts which is it? He bounces around from idea to idea that one would speculate he has not entered into “deep time” to gain “resonance” of his own theory.

Birkerts victimization of the written word and the worlds’ lack of discipline is the continuance of his claim that we’re missing wisdom and this is the basic snap-shot of this quote, he states:

“Wisdom has nothing to do with the gathering of facts—this is basic. Wisdom is seeing through facts, a penetration to the underlying laws and patterns. It relates the immediate to something larger—a context, yes, but also to a big picture that refers to [the] human endeavor… One must believe in the possibility of a comprehensible whole…—one needs the ends to know which means to use, and the means to know which ends are possible. And this assumption of ends is what we have lost” (75).

We have lost our sense of the infinite, the unexplainable. The loss of the ‘assumption’ qualifies that we are adrift, unable to gain purchase on what is stable and finite. Our blink of time that is our life is built into this ultimatum of either having wisdom or none. Of either reading deeply or ‘skimming.’ The idea that wisdom is the ‘seeing through of facts’ is agreeable. But fundamentally wisdom is not the assumptions one makes about their meaning of life or the obtained insight of years of study; a professor may be the expert in his field but one ounce of information to discredit his factual understanding of his topic would not be considered wisdom at all, but of broken knowledge once known as truth. This complete lack of marginal error in Birkerts study of wisdom is unacceptable.

In the end, the world can discover, even in the time of mass production materials, that wisdom and the ‘big picture’ idea can go hand in hand but is not required. Ones life can still have meaning even if they do not know the reason why they are on this earth and the longing for knowledge does not mean one will obtain wisdom as a product, that unlike distracting merchandise does not come in bulk purchase. Birkerts mistakes that the world is not black and white and one cannot limit the world to one aspect of time or thinking; wisdom is not clutched at or courted but fallen upon, wisdom is the generous mistake of knowledge and experience.