Listening all day to philosophers, or hearing their arguments is to a small extent encouraging and engaging, however, it really disheartens me. This is not their fault, it is just that I find that my GIANT and NOTEWORTHY ideas have already been discovered, and expanded upon for nearly 2000 years.
Today I broke a curse. It said “You have to ‘fit in’ in order to be successful.”
I feel like a Sophist, a Pharisee, a joke, like someone who wants to be heard and paid to expound ‘my wisdom’ to all the starved and helpless fools around me.
Though I agree, and am beginning to understand what Socrates said about being wiser than others on the basis that he could admit that he did not know what he did not know, instead of speaking of what he was not certain of. I want to practice that. I admire the humility and strength in such a disposition.
Now I hear Paul saying to me that “though a man have all wisdom, and not love…”. Truly what he is implying is what I am after. To know Wisdom in Love. I want Wisdom to be the bed I sleep in, and Love to be the light by which I see everything, to borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis.
While I do seem to glean knowledge from the School of Balances and Comparisons, the School of Paying Attention, the School of Hard Knocks, and the School of Truth and Reconciliation, many that have gone before me seem to have already been there. I catch the scent of the gold of a vast explanation, only coming upon it do I find that many feet have trod there before me. The novelty of them is not the idea in itself (they have existed for ages, if they are not eternal by nature), but how I relate to it. My relationship with the idea is what gives particular flavor, meaning, and novelty.
Would these ideas not be new to those who have never heard of them before? Is not everything new to a baby? We foolish ones have much to learn. Why do I love Wisdom? Do I? Truly it adds sorrow to a man’s life. The best kind of sorrow, to be sure.
If I am a fool, and the man next to me is wise, I then have much to learn. However, if the man next to me is a fool, and I am wise, there is nothing he can teach me. If the latter is true, I may as well not have ears to listen to any who dare challenge my massive intellect. No, they shall bow and devote their precious hours to glean the chaff that is comprehendible to them, left over from the glorious fruit of my wisdom. Sadly, and very happily also that is not the case. There is something to be learned even from someone so disposed.
The words of today are not the words they used then, though the thoughts remain the same.
Paper Discourse 