First Draft-18/08/17, 1140. 8th Writing.
I have been partaking in argument free August (don’t know if that’s an actual thing). The struggle is real, but I’m kind of learning how to pose my arguments more as a question rather than a statement. I think that is good, as it allows the conversation to grow and doesn’t shut down the opposing party’s opinions, which quite frankly they can give up on very quickly if you attack them. But yes, it is tempting to argue with people still and I have had to mentally remove myself from the conversation a couple of times. With this topic, I had to physically remove myself from the room (mainly because I was under the influence of the old devil’s piss).
We were talking about how important first-hand experience is and how much you learn from it. One of the bros said, ‘you must experience something yourself to know it’s true’, more or less. The whole, you can lead the horse to the water but can’t make it drink debacle (you can tell someone something but they don’t know it’s true till they try it). Then I started thinking about how this could be incorrect. You MUST, experience something to know it’s true. I really don’t know about that, and bear in mind he was pissed as well and loves a wee argument too, so it may not be exactly what he meant, but let’s take it as it is because it is a valid perspective. Sure, once you experience something, it wipes out any prior doubt you had. It leaves you with a bias perspective and a sense of ‘certainty’, for lack of a better word. But does that mean that you require first-hand experience to validate a perspective? I don’t think that is the case with everything. If someone recommends not to do something, surely that impacts your decision-making process, right? Especially if they have experience in the area. Some areas are difficult to give an opinion on, as they are situational, e.g. love. I think this is where the power of his argument shines through. 100 people could tell you the same thing about love, yet you still cannot take that as proof. The beauty of love, I suppose, is its subjective nature. The flip side to that coin is, maybe you should listen to what those 100 people say and consider it. At the end of the day, they have experienced it themselves and might have gathered some useful intel on their journey. So, it becomes a bit of a paradox. Experience trumps another’s opinion, but one’s experience is their opinion. Or something like that, does that make sense? It’s an ambiguous conversation, because it is opinion based, but I will dig deeper to try and share both sides.
The way I see it is, it boils down a simple, yet impossible question; what is more powerful, wisdom or knowledge? I like to say you are wise from your experience, you have learnt it yourself, in the real world. Sometimes it is a gift, other’s, it is a long arduous road. Whereas, as form of incorporated knowledge could be someone who chooses not to experience the parts of life that have been deemed ‘unworthy’ from those who have experience in the matter. Once they gain the knowledge, they use it to their advantage in the decision-making process, if ya catching my flow. So, which has more power? Well, if you use these terms, it almost seems stubborn to just disregard those 100-people consistently sharing a piece of information. Shouldn’t we take in as much information as we can and use it to our advantage? Is that not what our species does? That is our culture, that is how we develop. We learn the ins and outs of the culture we are entrenched in, then we try to improve it, by learning from the voices of those before us. We delete the norms they had in place that were damaging the culture, we keep what was useful and we fix their mistakes. All with the ultimate goal of making the best possible society for the next generation and giving them the means to go through the same process. It’s the big bad cultural cycle. Sometimes we fuck up and delete something from the archives that we should have kept. Sometimes we think up crazy ideas, that sound great in theory, but in the real world, they just are not practical (Communism is a good example of that). So, I think this battle between wisdom and knowledge can almost be linked to the battle that we have seen from the beginning of time, Nature (Wisdom) vs Culture (Knowledge). Like I said, it’s on the fence and I think that’s how it should be. Nature represents wisdom, because we feel a natural inclination that something is not right here and needs to be tended to, aka our intuition. Culture represents knowledge, because it is culture that gives us all the information, all the norms that we know, the basis of life. Balance is the key. They complement each other, the hard part is knowing how to get the balance just right Goldilocks. Overall, I think I lean more to the knowledge side (in terms of what’s more powerful), but I don’t think it is practical in every situation.
Another way to look at the debacle is Book smart vs street wise. Is it better to be an expert on literature and live with your head in the books? Learning everything that is available in the libraries from those that predecease us? You get to know the human species, as a whole, mighty well with this method. Every horror, every triumph, every failure, every success. It’s necessary to be somewhat read I believe. E.g. knowing about the 20th century (and the ones before it, although the closer=more relevant) and its horrors is important so we can do our best to ensure we don’t blindly fall into those same traps. Whereas being street wise is extremely useful. We are such a social species, we need human interaction (literally, in the case of infants). Knowing how to handle ourselves in this world is very important. There are so many different views on how this should be done, just look at the multitude of religions. It is another ambiguous topic, how we should conduct ourselves in this world. It can be compared to a chess board, there are rules we all must follow (or you get punished), but there are endless ways in which you can navigate the board. So, I suppose in this instance you could view the two combatants as science (knowledge) vs religion (wisdom). Matter (knowledge) vs what matters (wisdom). When I think about it this way, I lean more to the religion side. I believe how we conduct ourselves in this world is more important than habituating our world from the beginning of time, in terms of practicality. Once again though, I do not believe one can conduct themselves in this world correctly without certain knowledge of the world. Science is an extremely useful tool and can solve a lot of problems for us, just as anything else that you can learn from book dwelling. It just comes back to that idea of balance. One cannot be without the other, can it?
I really cannot decide which is more powerful. It’s just that I got pissed off only one side of the argument was coming to light in that moment, with the other side left out in the dark (which fucks me off in general, both sides should always have a voice). So, I wanted to stick up for the weaker position, because I believe the argument is just as strong. And fuck I reckon I would have won hahaha. Arrogant cunt right? The people I was with were not as disagreeable, seems to help in the argumenta realm. But that’s what I am trying to learn; winning is not everything. It is ok to lose, even when you are right and they are wrong. It reminds me of customer service, the customer is always right, even when they aren’t. I just fuckin hate losing, so, fuck! Liiife.
I think I could write more on this, but I don’t really know what I have already said, so it might be something I revisit once I have read it over and what not. For now, that will do. Just watched Once upon a time in the West, it was ok. Western movies are not bad, the stand offs are intense, but also just build ups to that final shoot out. Old school movies are pretty funny, predictable, but fun. I like the music they use: reoccurring themes, setting a particular scene, character tunes, it’s so simplistic, but it does the job, a mighty fine one a that. Anyways, clocking out, 0019, I’ll leave you with a nice quote.
“The power of knowledge is only as powerful as your wisdom.” lol that’s pretty shit, here’s one from online that’s pretty tasty…
“Knowledge without wisdom is like water in the sand” (The water is useless)
Adios amigo