The LDS Church and Learning How to be "Wise"

[_deacon blues]

I went to the "Sic" site and made a comment. Then I came back here and read some really brilliant, thought provoking stuff. May I suggest some that you share your comments on "Sic et Non"? Dr. Peterson or the Midgley guy might respond rudely, but then again, they might not.

[_Gadianton]

The suggestions of empathy and humility as primary components to wisdom are interesting ones. I don't think BYU will become a beacon of empathy or humility any time soon. Of course, the writers of the blog post might disagree. One counter-argument would be that BYU is home to many return missionaries. Missionaries have materials such as the missionary guide which tell the missionary to "show empathy" in certain situations in order to close the sale. Of course, they don't put it that cynically. They say: show empathy -> spirit enters -> spirit closes the sale.

So even feelings are anticipated and codified into the mechanistic LDS ethical package. To answer Dr. Scratch's question, "pre-rational" is not a-rational. Humility and empathy are a-rational. Pre-rational is the budding stage of rationality. And that's why stories and rituals wrapped around tropes favorable to the Brethren's way of seeing things are so important to tell children. Wise men are those who have been properly indoctrinated by the Brethren, who have been "taught in their youth" "morally exemplary stories" such as those found in the Book of Mormon. I mean, that's the message we're prompted toward but that's not called out explicitly, right? We need children who are taught stories, and LDS inc. has a unique book of scripture that is all stories.

[_Kishkumen]

The suggestions of empathy and humility as primary components to wisdom are interesting ones. I don't think BYU will become a beacon of empathy or humility any time soon.

Agreed.

[_Kishkumen]

Sternberg wrote...

"What I argue is that intelligence that’s not modulated and moderated by creativity, common sense and wisdom is not such a positive thing to have. What it leads to is people who are very good at advancing themselves, often at other people’s expense. We may not just be selecting the wrong people, we may be developing an incomplete set of skills—and we need to look at things that will make the world a better place."

I read this a few times, and have no idea what he is saying? wouldn't common sense and wisdom be a attribute? It is almost like he is asserting a type affirmative action?

Hey, Markk. What he is saying is that intelligence in and of itself is not necessarily a good thing. One must add to intelligence other attributes, such as creativity, common sense, and wisdom. Only this constellation of attributes, possessed and exercised together, can advance a humane civilization. Intelligence, exercised without these other attributes, enables the shrewd and heartless to advance their selfish interests, but it does not advance the human community as a whole. Unfortunately, we are living in a time when the sort of lopsided approach he is criticizing typifies developed and developing civilizations. One might argue that this author is essentially critiquing the world he saw around him. I don't think it would be far from the truth to suggest that the 1980s saw a tipping point in the admixture in positions of power and influence of people possessing shortsighted self-advancement that was nevertheless seen by many to be an unassailable virtue.

Naturally, there is much one could say to pick apart this statement, but I think that there is something of value in what Sternberg is saying.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Markk:

Yes, what Kishkumen said. I think you agree with Sternberg, as indicated by the examples you gave from your own experience--e.g., the architect that is very "technically" or "book smart," but who seems to lack in other areas.

[_Symmachus]

I think you mistranslated that, professor. If you read the original Greek more carefully, you'll see that the only teacher that remains is surfing...If I had to use one word for the source of true ethical wisdom is, it would be empathy.

I can't help but point out that the word "empathy" contains within it the idea of suffering inherent in the Greek word from which it derives (pathos).

Anyway, why the hell should an architect be wiser or more ethical than an electrician? People expect far too much out of mass education as long as that system is geared towards job training and has future employment as its primary goal.

What about a more humanistic education?

One of my esteemed Greek teachers lost nearly all his relatives to Nazis in the Holocaust when they set their targets on the Lithuanian Jews. This was very early in the war, before the likes of Goethe-quoting Eichmann brought efficiency, design, and STEM expertise to the slaughter of human beings. It was a chaos of blood and bullets, flesh and terror. As he told me this (which he got from his father, who survived), he inveighed against the idea that a humanist education had any inherent moral value. Apparently, he later learned somehow, one of the officers leading the Einsatzgruppen had been a Dante scholar before the war. It was the illiterate peasants in the Lithuanian countryside who sheltered some of his family.

I take his point, on the other hand I don't see better alternatives. Reading Dante is not a cure for mass or individual psychopathy or murderous impulses, but I am not aware of a better regime for exposure to ethical problems and hypothetical solutions than a humanistic education: philosophy, literature, languages, history, art, music, mathematics, science (at least divorced from from an employment motive).

I suppose all of those things can, but not necessarily will, cultivate empathy to the extent that they involve imagining the lives of other human beings and animals, even the nature of objects. Perhaps that will bring a kind of wisdom, and in making a point like this Analytics shows me how empathy, wisdom, and ethics intersect:

If you begin to understand the way the world really works, and you begin to understand what everybody else's experience is really like, you are at least beginning to understand what the nature of the ethical problem actually is.

But also agree with Gad, that empathy, as well as humility, is basically non-rational. How can those be the basis of the application of rationality to ethics, then? Perhaps we can reason from ethical postulates ("virtues") that are based on empathy, but I think that is what most people do anyway. If we are going to implement that in the education curriculum and systematize it, though, someone will have to lay out clearly what those ethical postulates must be, and any line of reasoning that might undermine those postulates will have to be cast out of heaven: "A (wo)man can believe (s)he wants in this course on the ethical reasoning, but s(he) is not free to express it."

I'm not a philosopher, so I ask for your empathy in straightening out my crooked thoughts.

[_Markk]

Sternberg wrote...

"What I argue is that intelligence that’s not modulated and moderated by creativity, common sense and wisdom is not such a positive thing to have. What it leads to is people who are very good at advancing themselves, often at other people’s expense. We may not just be selecting the wrong people, we may be developing an incomplete set of skills—and we need to look at things that will make the world a better place."

I read this a few times, and have no idea what he is saying? wouldn't common sense and wisdom be a attribute? It is almost like he is asserting a type affirmative action?

Hey, Markk. What he is saying is that intelligence in and of itself is not necessarily a good thing. One must add to intelligence other attributes, such as creativity, common sense, and wisdom. Only this constellation of attributes, possessed and exercised together, can advance a humane civilization. Intelligence, exercised without these other attributes, enables the shrewd and heartless to advance their selfish interests, but it does not advance the human community as a whole. Unfortunately, we are living in a time when the sort of lopsided approach he is criticizing typifies developed and developing civilizations. One might argue that this author is essentially critiquing the world he saw around him. I don't think it would be far from the truth to suggest that the 1980s saw a tipping point in the admixture in positions of power and influence of people possessing shortsighted self-advancement that was nevertheless seen by many to be an unassailable virtue.

Naturally, there is much one could say to pick apart this statement, but I think that there is something of value in what Sternberg is saying.

Yeah I see it now.

I had a long commute today and I was thinking about "wisdom"...and how we gain wisdom. I think know for me, what wisdom I do have comes most often from experience, not something that I was taught, and then I say... "oh I get it."

But, and this will sound a little hypocritical...things I have learned and would see it now as being wisdom, often comes from a past teaching...and at some point later, it clicks, but again most often from a mistake (experience).

I hope that makes sense...sorry if it is scattered.

Now taking that to teaching, how does one teach wisdom, even if it does not manifest until later on in our lives? And in teaching, what is the baseline for wisdom...BYU's baseline would certainly be different than Berkley?

I have to drive to North Hollywood tomorrow, about a 2 hour drive...I will have to think this out.

Real quick...one way to teach intelligence/wisdom...the way I seem to learn.

There were three men assigned to dig a well, but were given only two shovels. Two men started digging while the other gave instructions...when the well was dug about 8 feet deep, one of the men in the hole turned to the other and said..."why are we doing all the digging, while he is up top telling us what to do?" the other man said "I don't know, I will go find out?"

So climbing out of the well he approaches the other man and says "why are we doing all the digging while you just stand up here and tell us what to do?" the other man looked at him and said " because I have intelligence!" Holding his hand in front of a near by tree he said "hit my hand as hard as you can." So the man swung as hard as he could and just before his fist was to hit the other mans hand, the other man pulled his hand away and the mans fist hit the tree causing much pain. The other man said again..."that is intelligence."

So the man went back down into the well and his friend asked..."what did you find out." The man said "he is up top because he has intelligence." His friend asked "whats intelligence?" The man said "I will show you." So putting his hand in front of his face he said..."hit my hand as hard as you can!"

Not sure what it has to do with the article, but there is a lesson in their somewhere.

[_Symmachus]

Now taking that to teaching, how does one teach wisdom, even if it does not manifest until later on in our lives? And in teaching, what is the baseline for wisdom...BYU's baseline would certainly be different than Berkley?

You put it much more succinctly than I did, but that's the point I was trying to make.

[_Analytics]

Anyway, why the hell should an architect be wiser or more ethical than an electrician? People expect far too much out of mass education as long as that system is geared towards job training and has future employment as its primary goal.

This reminds me of a scene from Samuel Butler's classic, The Way of All Flesh. Ernest Pontifex is the hero. Taking place in mid-19th Century England, Ernest is a very intelligent young man going through a top-notch education intended to take him in his father's footsteps into the clergy. Despite his sincere efforts, the social conditioning isn't 100% effective and he becomes ripe for a faith crisis. At some point he finds himself mingling with the masses and gets into a discussion with an uneducated blacksmith who points out several patently obvious absurdities in the Bible that had never really registered with Ernest beforehand. It illustrates how Ernest had been using his intelligence and education to perform mental gymnastics, not to get at the truth.

What about a more humanistic education?

Your esteemed Greek teacher has a fascinating perspective. Does a purely humanistic education have inherent moral value?

It makes me wonder if a broad liberal education goes beyond a mere humanistic one. My daughter’s surfing class comes to mind. There are many moral issues surrounding surfing. Is surfing bad for the environment? Is surfing culture derogatory towards women and minorities? Is it disrespectful of the Polynesians who invented it and considered it something of a religious exercise? In this course, they are being immersed in surfing. In addition to reading a stack of books about different aspects of surfing history and culture, they are also going to watch a dozen movies with surfing themes. This is all in happening under the purview of an extremely liberal college where moral outrage about political correctness, cultural appropriation, environmentalism, and elitism are givens.

But is just reading about it enough to really grasp the moral issues? No. The syllabus describes the course objective as being something elusive and difficult. Yes, they have to have the intellectual, disembodied activities of going through the literature and writing essays about it. But just as importantly, the objective includes the fully embodied activity of being at the beach, in the water, on surf boards, actually surfing. If they work hard and are very lucky, they will literally catch a wave, become totally emerged in the physical experience, lose their reflective self-consciousness, and achieve flow. Unless you actually achieve that, perhaps you can’t really understand surfing and the moral questions that surround it.

So maybe it isn’t quite enough to read the classics from our perches in the ivory tower. Maybe a full liberal education includes getting out into the real world and interacting with our own bodies and the environment around us. Maybe in addition to reading we need learn how to have the discipline to learn to play a musical instrument or sport well. And interact with other people from different cultures in their own spaces and environments.

[_RockSlider]

So the article proposes that Mormon Scholars Testify are "smart fools" and that Dan and his testifiers are part of the problem, not the solution.

From the article

Wisdom is about using your abilities and knowledge not just for your own selfish ends and for people like you. It’s about using them to help achieve a common good by balancing your own interests with other people’s and with high-order interests through the infusion of positive ethical values.

my emphasis added.