Thoreau on high discipline & infinite leisure

"It is worth the while to apply what wisdom one has to the conduct of his life surely. I find my self oftenest wise in little things & foolish in great ones. That I may accomplish some particular petty affair well i live my whole life coarsely. A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste no less in life than in housekeeping. keep the time -- observe the hours of the universe - not of the cars. What are 3 score years & ten hurriedly & coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure, in which your life in coincident with the life of the Universe. We live too fast & coarsely just as we eat too fast & do not know the true savor of our food. We consult our will & understanding and the expectations of men - not our genius. I can impose upon myself tasks which will crush me for life and prevent all expansion - & this I am but too inclined to do. One moment of life costs many hours, - hours not of business but of preparation and invitation. yet the man who does not betake himself at once & desperately to sawing wood is called a loafer - though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven - all the while which shall surely be opened to him - That aim in life is highest which requires the highest & finest discipline. How much - What infinite leisure it requires - as of a lifetime, to appreciate a single phenomenon! You must camp down beside it as for life - having reaching your land of promise & give yourself wholly to it.

Thoreau, Henry David. [28 December 1852, Journal 5: 412] (1999) "Uncommon Learning: Henry David Thoreau on Education" ed. Martin Bickman. New York: Mariner.

The Skill/Wisdom Gap

Deep wisdom about the meaning of the 21st century will be essential. A serious problem of our time is the gap between skill and wisdom. Science and technology are accelerating furiously, but wisdom is not. We are brilliant at creating new technology, but are not wise in learning how to cope with it. To succeed in today's world, people will need intricate skills in narrowly specialized areas. Skills need detailed, narrowly focused study of subjects that are rapidly increasing in complexity, whereas wisdom needs the synthesis of diverse ideas. Wisdom requires judgement, reflection about beliefs and thinking about events in terms of how they might be different.

Today, deep reflection about our future circumstances is eclipsed by a frenzy of ever more complex techniques and gadgets and preoccupation with how to increase shareholder value. The skill/wisdom gap is made greater because skills offer the ways to get wealthy. Society's best brains are saturated with immediate issues that become ever more complex, rather than reflecting on why we are doing this and what the long-term consequences will be.

University education today is much more pressured than when I was at university. The curricula have become overstuffed, the subject matter intensely complex and the examinations frequent and demanding. The student sticks to the curriculum and can deal with little else. The professors stick to their discipline; they are judged by the papers they publish in the professional journal of that discipline. Most areas of education have almost no interdisciplinary scholarship. As disciplines become deeper and more complex, the brilliance expended on them is formidable, but we don't think much about its consequences or what impact it has in other areas. In specialized areas, computers will become vastly more intelligent than people, but such intelligence is not human wisdom. As computers become more intelligent, with intense self-improvement of non-human intelligence, the skill/wisdom gap will widen at a furious rate.

We have vast numbers of experts on how to make the train work better and faster, but almost nobody is concerned with where the train is headed or whether we'll like its destination.

Wisdom is essential and comes from the synthesis of a large amount of knowledge and experience that may take much of a lifetime to acquire. Not everyone can handle such synthesis. We must ask where the broad wisdom about the future will come from. The answer is, we must set out consciously to develop it. Wisdom, like advanced civilization, will come when we learn to relax. Our best brains need to stop chasing the most highly paid careers, the fastest boats and the smartest country clubs. A mature society should exhibit deep respect for deep wisdom.

We need to set out very consciously to foster and nurture the wisdom that the 21st century will require. This should be a task for our greatest universities.

Martin, James (2006) The Meaning of the 21st Century: A Vital Blueprint for ensuring our Future. London: Transworld. (pp. 292, 293).

Header sketch by Jonathan Chambers.