WILL UNWOUND #662: “Weekend Meditation – Wisdom”
January 21, 2012Before librarians went down the twin rabbit holes of information and entertainment, there was a traditional school of thought in American librarianship (it had died out completely by the end of the 1960s) that libraries were repositories of wisdom. To take it a step further, libraries had the potential not just to inform, entertain, and educate, but to build character. Indeed, children’s collections were often oriented around the notion of moral formation. That’s why you could find a difficult classic like Pilgrim’s Progress not only in the adult stacks but in the children’s collection as well. In fact, if you read enough biographies of 18th, 19th, and early 20th century “great” men (eg. Washington, Lincoln, Carnegie) you will discover they they have one thing in common – Pilgrim’s Progress was part of their boyhood reading.
The theme of wisdom was certainly built into the architecture of many 19th and early 20th century libraries. In fact many resembled Gothic cathedrals. Their high ceilings, ornate trim work, and grandiose designs spoke to a higher purpose. These institutions were dedicated to the notion that wisdom was transferrable from author to reader.
Today such a notion is not only scoffed at but openly attacked as being at best elitist and at worst oppressive. Whose wisdom the modern librarian wants to know are you trying to purvey in your library? The Judeo-Christian tradition? If so you are not only violating the separation of church and state but you are disrespecting every other religious tradition from Wiccan to Islam. How about Homer, Shakespeare, and Dickens? Aha, now you are dredging up the Western canon of dead, white males…the very books that worked to enslave women and people of color. Maybe you’d like to offer up Darwin, Einstein, and Hawking as your models of scientific wisdom, but beware the evangelicals who will tell you there is more to human existence than mere molecules.
Wisdom like beauty and morality is now in the eye of the beholder. We live in an age of relativism. There are no absolutes. There is no set of central truths. Everyone is the center of his or her own universe. If you don’t believe that click on Fritter, I’m sorry…I mean Twitter. Is there a God? Only if the concept works for you. If not, don’t worry about it. It’s how you feel and how you think that is important. Go with what works for you, not with what someone says should work for you.
Relativism gets very interesting when it comes to library collection development. Are certain books superior to other books? The prevailing answer seems to be no. Thus Tom Sawyer is no better or worse than Diary of a Wimpy Kid. And spending your time watching Hamlet is no better or worse than watching the latest episode of The Khardashians. The patron determines value. Use determines value. Popularity determines value. Balance and quality are all subjective to the tastes of the individual.
Okay, I get all that. I don’t buy it, but I get it and I respect it as a legitimate point of view. What I wonder, though, is if the word “wisdom” still means something…anything …or is it one of those elitist, old fashioned terms, that has become completely irrelevant today.
Question of the day: Name a book that has imparted wisdom to you.
For me the answer is twofold. The Gospel of John is the “wisest” book I have ever read, and Siddhartha is the wisest non scriptural book I have ever read. One book speaks directly to the celestial soul; the other speaks directly to the earthbound soul.
Your turn.
As it so happens, I have spent the afternoon reading by the fire. And I’m about to name the book that I’ve been reading, which has indeed imparted wisdom to me. However, I know that by doing that–naming this book–I am venturing down a rabbit hole–a rabbit hole where the scornful lurk at the bottom . My experience with librarians–mostly academic librarians–has taught me that there is an elitist attitude when it comes to defining which works of literature are worthy of inspiring, educating, or imparting…as in wisdom. If you are inspired, educated, or enlightened by the classics or by something so esoteric that it is recognized by only an elite few, well then, you are sufficiently wise. If, however, you are inspired, educated, or enlightened by a best seller, well, then, you are embarrassingly bourgeois. God help you if you are inspired by an Oprah book club selection.
I have been reading Expecting Adam by Martha Beck. It is but one of many books that have spoken to me on a variety of levels. Thanks for such a thoughtful post.
I, too, have read Expecting Adam. Although written in a very easy-to-read style, it definitely imparts wisdom!
I also think the Wimpy Kid books inspire wisdom if you can stop your gut-wrenching laughter long enough to think about it.
I think I’m anachronistic because I still think public libraries have to use the ideal of obtaining some items for their collections that might indeed foster wisdom in an individual simply by inspiring individuals to learn more about either whatever subject or subjects they are interested in to being with or, and better still, to inspire them to what to know more about subjects they wouldn’t have thought to read up on if they hadn’t stumbled across a reference to said subject in a public library.
Since I’ve been working on my MLIS for the past year I haven’t really read much that didn’t relate to the classes I’ve been taking. So my answer, as to what I’ve found to be an enlightening book, is going to be a book I read when I was working on my Bachelors Degree; and it is called “In Search of Gold and Self: Renaissance and Reformation Thought” by Donald J. Wilcox and it is basically is a history of the Renaissance and Reformation era and it offers illumination on why Western Society is what it is today.
Once a history major, always a history major!
On the popular books front I’ve been reading the Walter Isaacson bio of Steve Jobs in little pieces and it is very interesting; and last year I did manage to find time to get through Adam Hochschild’s book “To End All Wars” which offers a fascinating social history of the World War I era.
Wisdom is seldom found in books in my opinion, occasionally it can be found in people, even more seldom it can be imparted and rarer than that learned.
If put up against a wall at gunpoint – I’d probably chose Psalms. In general I find the new testament trashy, conflicted and shoddily written, the Koran is slightly better as literature. Each to their own.
Pilgrim’s Progress was inflicted on me in middle school – I abhorred it and it is one of the few books on the planet I’d not miss if every copy vanished by spontaneous combustion or teleportation to hell.
I’m surprised you are not talking about the book banning by the Tucson School district Will. Very surprised.
Super easy question, Mr. Manley. Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach imparted more wisdom than a passel of college professors could ever do. From this book I learned:
-to keep trying to improve myself;
-to be true to myself;
-that I can forgive a person even if I don’t forgive an act;
-that teaching is an act of love;
-and, above all else, that the ability to love (not necessarily romantic love) is the most important skill.
I still think libraries are repositories of wisdom. I teach college students information literacy skills. Our archive contains materials both from a former POTUS and a Newbery Award winner. Besides, there’s a lot of truth and wisdom in fiction.
Interesting. The Book of Luke brought me to faith in Christ. Luke was well educated, professional and wrote well. He also took careful note of the women around Jesus, which had previously been a stumbling point for me with regards to Christianity.
Kathleen Norris’ A Cloister Walk then helped me reconcile religious tradition to a faith-filled life, that they were not mutually exclusive.
And, as an adult, I’ve found the Chronicles of Narnia, all of them, to be very, very wise.
Excellent choices. Luke’s gospel goes more to the heart of Christian truth than any other book in the Bible, with Matthew’s gospel next.
And John’s, in my humble opinion, teaches true, pure and practical love, the very nature of God.
In the Bible, the book of Matthew. A book I found very wise was Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
On the spiritual side, Frederick Buechner’s little gem, “Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC” has been a profoundly wise book that I have gone back to many times.
“Type Talk”, by Otto Kroeger and Janet Theusen, taught me more about myself than any other book I have read.
When we depose God from our lives, the front-runner for the throne is naturally, ourselves. It took me many decades to realize I wasn’t suited to the top spot, and in fact, was making a poor job of it. Five years of Bible study later, I realize the Bible is full of wisdom. But, for me, its best to “mine its gems” in a group.
I’d argue that the almighty Market has deposed God in our society. It inspires fervent, unquestioning devotion and severe punishment for those who reject accepted capitalist dogma.
So many! I’ll just mention an older coming-of-age story THE FINISHING SCHOOL by Gail Godwin where one of the characters offers this:
“Death is not the enemy. Age is not the enemy….what we ought to fear is the kind of death that happens in life. It can happen at any time. You’re going along, and then, at some point, you congeal. You’re not fluid anymore….That’s the enemy.”
The library supplies tools for the person seeking wisdom – and tools for everyone else. The tools being ideas, from all traditions. It is up to the seeker to find what wisdom they may.
As for me, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass has been a tremendous source. But good ol’ Charlie Brown has lots to say too. I like Joseph Campbell, but he’s not the easiest read. You just never know where an amazing thought is going to come from.
“You just never know where an amazing thought is going to come from.”
Very true.
Will wrote, “Wisdom like beauty and morality is now in the eye of the beholder. We live in an age of relativism. There are no absolutes. There is no set of central truths. Everyone is the center of his or her own universe.”
Well, with some hesitation, let me resurrect the ghost of Marshall McLuhan and suggest that this is a sterling example of the medium being the message. Once you graduate from kindergarten story hour, the book in nearly all contexts is no longer a communal or shared experience. It is a private one between you and your author, who positions every solitary reader at the center of a singular textual universe. Comparing and contrasting those private experiences and universes forms the basis of the much of English class and afterwards, the modern book club.
Compounding this was the rise of the novel, a form that values only the subjectivity of protagonist and reader, as the most prized kind of written expression in the western world, and the die was cast for the rise of the self-centered universe.
Your choice of valued texts supports this process: works that encourage a private, personal relationship with your particular deity or your subjective experience of the sacred.
If you are serious about escaping the self-centered universe, drop the fiction and religion. Read anthropology, sociology, urban studies, and any other well-documented nonfiction about how groups, communities, and cultures function, rather than works that promote isolated subjective individual experience as the only possible lens through which to understand the world.
Otherwise, it is nonsensical to complain about a cultural process in one paragraph and endorse it in the next.
Interesting. We should not leave history off your list.
Oh, and how then to explain Oprah’s Book Club?
Using the only available Reply button, which will place my answer above rather than below your question, see paragraph two:
“Comparing and contrasting those private experiences and universes forms the basis of the much of English class and afterwards, the modern book club.”
I include Oprah in that category.
Sorry about taking the reply button, didn’t realize that would happen.
I sure wish I could get Oprah’s attendance at our little local book club. Seriously though, she’s moved national thought looking at books in her ‘club’. And made some new truth as well. I hardly think it’s fair to compare it to most book clubs.
This is always my answer, but The Once and Future King is my ultimate wisdom book (including its published-separately final chapter, The Book of Merlyn). Every time I read it I find something new. As a kid it made me wonder about science (especially natural science), world history, and philosophy; as an adult it has inspired me to consider everything from body image and self-esteem to the different forms love takes to various systems of government. It gave me a lifelong love of Arthur stories and other mythology, and it made me want to be a writer.
Another is the aptly named Wisdom Sits in Places, by Keith Basso. Amazing book which gave me ways to describe how I feel about land and place and language.
I love The Once and Future King. Thanks for the reminder to start another reading soon.
Thoughtful posts all. Thanks for starting us off Will. For me, The book of Job is something I find wisdom in as I do in Ephesians, Galatians, II Peter and II Timothy. Although there are those who find my choice odd, I’ve often turned to Bonehoffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison as well.
And, dare I say it? Lessons of Wisdom are to be found in the Harry Potter series. One can also learn much from Spoon River Anthology.
I agree about the Harry Potter series offering wisdom. You can tell the author is familiar with the Power of Myth as Harry is certainly most like the hero Campbell describes as being a repeating theme down through the ages.
Yup, one of many reasons why the Harry Potter books (as well as, in my opinion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) will remain as classics–along with masterful world-creation, memorable characters, and thumping good stories–is that they deal with the great questions of life, the questions that don’t necessarily bestow, but evoke and call for wisdom.
I have found Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and the sequel Home to be at the top of my list regarding wisdom. They are full of family, forgiveness, and faith – those things that require the most wisdom for me.
I may be peculiar, but I cannot think of a book that I “received” wisdom from. I can think of books I’ve gathered knowledge from or have informed me of things, but I really don’t see wisdom coming from something I’ve read.
As for the rest of your post, I’ll keep my opinion to myself.
Mortimer Adler’s Four Goods of the Mind are, in ascending order: information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. (See also Eliot’s “Where is the knowledge we have lost in information …” etc.) I read books to gain knowledge and/or to appreciate the artistry of the writing. The more I read, the more understanding I have, but wisdom …? Surely that is to be achieved (rarely) not garnered from books.
I found a lot of wisdom in Michael’s Meditations.
I’m in an academic library and the faculty hates anything that isn’t *serious*, so our best sellers are an easy and oft shot at target. Still keep them though, students like to read to relax occasionally! Me, I’ve always hated to read things that are supposed to be “good for me”. Really? Let me decide. Loved Harry Potter, struggling with Tolkien (but trying, really). Loved Shakespeare and Doyle and Dickens (well, most of Dickens), hated Pilgrim’s Progress and A Modest Proposal, liked Gulliver. Wisdom, dunno about that but I love to read and pick and choose what interests me. I avoid religious readings because I often end up mad or sad and there hasn’t been an Oprah book that has ever caught my attend. Does that mean they are bad? No, just not to my taste. I don’t like depressing or books that seek to tell a moral tale because often they are trying so hard they lose me, like before I’ve read 50 pages. I’m not a big fan of the best seller lists either, often that is where the books that try to hard (for me) live.
I decided once I was out of school that I would decide what to read and seldom even try something that someone says I “have to” read.
Wow! That’s a deep question! I really can’t think of any one book (or 2 books) that has given me any insight as far as wisdom is concerned but this made me remember one late night when I was watching “Between The Lines With Barry Kibrick”. He interviewed a woman named Daphne Rose Kingma who wrote a book called The Ten Things To Do When Your Life Falls Apart. While it sounds like yet another self-help book, what I found most interesting about her interpretation of people who experience setbacks in their lives is that it really is all about the journey. It is about getting up, dusting yourself off, and continuing on with your life. I considered the last decade (2000-2009) my lost decade. Besides my personal setbacks, I lost both of my parents (my mother in 2006 and my father in 2009). I also am beginning to feel like I can pursue some interests I have always had but, looking back, I realized my ideas seemed to be about 15 or 16 years before their time.
Certainly collection development in libraries is less, what could I say, hierarchical than it was a hundred years ago. There is much more of a consensus that entertainment and diversion can be part of our mission. That doesn’t mean, “Are certain books superior to other books? The prevailing answer seems to be no. Thus Tom Sawyer is no better or worse than Diary of a Wimpy Kid. And spending your time watching Hamlet is no better or worse than watching the latest episode of The Khardashians.” If you could be a fly on the wall in the back rooms of libraries, you’d probably drop that notion. Yes, many of our patrons want to know about and look at the Kardashians, and accordingly we get Kardashian stuff for them. That doesn’t mean the staff, be they katalogers, klerks, or kollection specialists, koo over every piece of dreck and fluff. We still know quality and try to supply it for those patrons who are looking for that (and who are sometimes the same patrons who are checking out Kardashian Konfidential or the Wimpy Kid).
A.E. and Michael, just above, separately have said something important about the difference between information and knowledge on the one hand and wisdom on the other, and how they can be gotten to. (I have purposely sidestepped understanding, which may be on the border–on the whole, though, I think understanding, like wisdom, demands something of the individual that can’t be put between covers, or inside a CD or DVD case or an electron stream.) Actually, the point they make explains why I have read so many books imbued with wisdom and yet have so little myself.
a book that has changed my life is “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle.Does it impart wisdom? not sure. But it imparted to me something i really, really needed to hear, and that made a great difference. I also received wisdom (or something like it) from his other book “A New Earth.” I wish I could get everyone I know to read these 2 books. A work of fiction that is both wise and entertaining is “The Host” by Stephenie Meyer. I agree with you that “Siddhartha” is life-changing; I went on to read everything else Hesse wrote.
Hello Unwinders….
I have entered into the MLS graduate student abyss…which means that my extracurricular time devoted to reading will be limited to MLS literature. However, two of my favorite book that I gained wisdom: The Dream Giver by Bruce Wilkinson and Malcom X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable. It is my belief that education, literacy, and critical thinking are powerful tools. These tools can never be taken from you. Our lives are a reflection of our experiences. Books have the capacity to shape who were are and motivate us to move to the next level. So I wholeheartedly disagree with anyone who says wisdom cannot be gained from books. In my youth, books served as a way to answer many questions that I grabbed with.