“Where shall wisdom be found?”
This question forms the title to a probing book by literary critic Harold Bloom that seeks to investigate where humankind may find the fundamental answers to life’s fundamental challenges.
The two entrenched political parties today search for a leader of the country, to be leading the nation by the end of this year, after national elections.
And of fundamental import is this question: who among the many who desire to serve in power has cultivated themselves to lead with a wisdom that inspires the nation’s energy?
For there is a lack of energy in the nation, where people exist in a state of apathy, unable to rise to their full potential.
For that energy of inspired living to propel us forward, the society demands wisdom. Where is this wisdom found? Who among our leaders embrace wisdom?
Wisdom has a lot to do with words, apart from the action of policies, plans and programmes. Wisdom forms the backbone of relationship building, and so a leader builds the nation into a healthy relationship with itself, and among its members.
Our history seems tattered with strife and public acrimony. Our leaders seem to have led without wisdom. And the absence of wisdom leaves only foolishness.
The state of Georgetown, the face of the country, stands as a derelict symbol of the foolish leadership we have endured for so long.
Many other symbols paint a picture of a nation under the influence of foolish leadership: flooding – despite the reasons; poor industrial relations that harm the labour sector; widespread chronic poverty; ethnic tensions; political strife in Parliament; embarrassing state media operation; endemic corruption at all levels of the society; pervasive organized crime. We seem unable to deal with these terrible obstacles.
Bloom notes in his book that a person reads to gain wisdom. He is talking about deep reading of literature, the kind of message Dr Ian McDonald writes so often about in his Sunday Stabroek column.
McDonald has exhorted this nation to be a reading, a literature people, for over two decades, Sunday after Sunday.
We cannot say that we do not have among us the voices of those pointing us to the exercise of wisdom. Yet, in 2011, after over four decades of independence, have we gained a wisdom to lead ourselves as a nation?
We may blame colonial Britain and the corresponding US foreign policy interests for cementing the deep divisions in our society that plague us today.
This idea of dichotomy is philosophical. So wherever we look in the world we would see divisions. Even in Britain the political system is split between Labour and Conservatives. In the US it’s the Democrats and the Republicans.
The world is moving away from this thinking, that everything rests on the idea of the dichotomy of good versus evil.
With E. O. Wilson’s book called ‘Consilience’, we see an embrace of the idea that walls of divisions that create opposites, that foster dichotomy and division, must be broken down. East and West must come together as one, as does North and South. Wilson’s book celebrates the rising fusion of all knowledge fields, away from specialized departmentalization, into a “unifying of all knowledge fields”, as he terms the new era.
The idea got further traction recently with Ray Kurzweil’s book called ‘Singularity Is Near’. This book comes out of the technology icon’s work at Singularity University in the US, where Google, Amazon. com, Microsoft, the US government and several high profile partners have joined hands to innovate on social structures.
I say all that to make a strong note that the world is going through a fundamental shift, a profound transformation of paradigm. And if we as a 21st century society desire to lift ourselves from our pitiful state, we must embrace wisdom, because it is propelling the global village forward. We cannot afford to continuously be left back.
As a former British colony, we stand blessed: we are English-speaking and of a Western mindset as a society. Therefore, we have the tools to stand on the shoulders of the wise men and women of history, who teach us. The writings are easily available to us, even in our education system.
For Bloom, wisdom lies in the literature of mankind that has endured the test of time. These writings flow from the thoughts of great minds.
Many of them we studied in school as mere text books, but forgot as just school stuff. Bloom shows how these insights into the human condition gleaned from these writings can profoundly influence practical day to day living.
Although his book aims to encourage the average person to read literature and seek wisdom for personal growth, his insight applies especially to leaders in society.
As we fine-tune our democratic process to produce a leader of the nation, a President, for the next five years, let us realize that the important value we should look for in a leader is wisdom.
We want a President who cultivates his or her character and understands that his or her defining role is to stand up for us as one people and one nation, and to guide us into one destiny with words of wisdom speaking energy and life to the nation.
We do not want a President who takes to the national media to defend personal choices. We do not want a President who dictates views to citizens. We do not want a President who stands outside the spotlight of Parliament but sits with majestic pomp at the head of the table at Cabinet.
We want a President who stands in parliament and listens, who cultivates relationships of value and fruitful discourse, and who desires to bring the nation together as a synthetic whole.
Such a President would be a blessing to us as a people.
As a society stooped and bowed under the oppressive weight of primary concerns, we may scorn any idea that we need to seek wisdom.
But Northrup Frye, the late Canadian literary critic, wrote about the concerns that drive our lives. He put wisdom as an “ultimate concern”, as opposed to the primary concerns of daily survival and secondary concerns of such things as economic security and entertainment.
Our society should reach beyond our struggles for the primary concerns of survival to embrace the ultimate concern of wisdom. For, as Bloom suggests, wisdom is the foundation upon which a society strives.
Many have thankfully raised their hand in willingness to grasp power and be our President.
We as citizens should embark on this crucial scrutiny of their hearts: which one has cultivated wisdom? Which one speaks words of relationship building to knit the society into a social mosaic of Guyaneseness?
Where shall our wisdom be found? Let us first look for it in the President who would guide us as a nation into the future, inspiring us to live to our full potential with energy and innovative creativity.
