The Wisdom Project
Why not try to live wisely?
To be a philosopher, writes Thoreau, is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates. On those terms, my project for the coming year is that I want to (try to) become a philosopher.
But what does it mean to live wisely?
I’ve got an answer but only at a rather abstract level.
My working hypothesis is that to live wisely is to give everything its proper place.
Means?
Well, for example, is my relationship with my kids more important than responding to a comment on LinkedIn? Yes, of course it is. And that relative importance should be reflected in what I do - if Anaya wants to go on a walk with me, and I put her off because I want to write comments on LinkedIn, then I’ve done something wrong. I’ve put something less important ahead of something more important.
Here’s another example. People sometimes think that truly wise people don’t care about money. Well, maybe, but I think a more accurate description is that they don’t care about money qua money. I bet they really care about taking care of their families or not starving and stuff like that. And to give everything its proper place means that I should care about money - just in direct proportion to its importance.
That's what it means (I currently think) to live wisely - it means to treat everything as it deserves to be treated, honour everything as it deserves to be honoured, value everything as it ought to be valued.
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Ah, but how to decide what is valuable? Who gets to say that this thing is more valuable than that thing?
That’s quite easy, to be honest. I do.
It’s unavoidable. Moment by moment, in everything I do, in everything I choose to give my attention to, I am unavoidably expressing a view about value - I act as if one thing is more important than another thing. That is simply what it means to make choices, and we are making choices in every moment.
So, yeah. I get to say that this thing is more valuable than that thing. Even if I don’t want to, I still say it. And the same is true of you too, of course.
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Let’s be clear, though. We get to say which things matter, and which matter more, but this doesn’t mean we get it right. We often get it wrong, and I think there are two important ways in which that happens.
Way 1: My average daily screen time is about 4 hours. Maybe about half an hour of this is spent on helpful things. The rest is just the usual - social media, oh I just remembered that thing about avocados let me google it, ah, right, that’s an interesting link, oh wait, I wonder how England are getting on in the cricket, ah, there’s a WhatsApp message, bang bang bang.
In this case, I know the relative importance of screen time spent researching avocados - it’s pretty low. I just have a hard time implementing that knowledge into my actions. The ancient philosophers called this type of error akrasia - weakness of will. We know what the wise thing to do is, but we somehow can’t bring ourselves to do it.
Way 2: Let’s call this the deathbed mistake. You know, when you’re 80 (if you’re lucky) and on your deathbed and you go, oh shit, I just spent my whole life being obsessed with avocados and completely ignored my wife and my kids and everyone who loved me. This is a mistake of judgment, a gap in knowledge.
My life, like pretty much everyone else’s, contains both types of mistakes. And trying to live wisely will mean trying to somehow address them.
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There is something important about living wisely that I feel like I haven’t captured yet. I’m struggling to find the words.
When I was 15 and walked into a bar, all I saw there were the women.
When a tiger is charging at you, you probably don’t notice the flower blooming.
The Inuit people allegedly have 57 words for snow or some such shit.
What’s the point? The point is that we experience the world differently depending on what matters to us. And I think that there is a way in which a wise person experiences the world. And I think that one central part of living wisely is trying to cultivate that way of experiencing the world.
I don’t know what that experience is - I’m not a wise person. I don’t live wisely. But I have a general idea, a feeling that gives me a direction.
At first, I wanted to say that a wise person experiences the joy and wonder and beauty of the world. And then I realised, no, I don’t actually think that. I think rather that a wise person experiences the world as it is. And yes, that includes joy and beauty, but it also includes despair and ugliness.
I think that is a basic condition of trying to live wisely - trying to experience the world as it is.
What is the world “as it is”?
Fucked if I know. At least, I’ve got no chance of describing it. And I have no theory that could explain it. But I have enough of a feeling and enough prior experience of slightly wiser experience to get started.
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So what’s the plan?
There is no plan.
I have an intention - I want to try to live according to the dictates of wisdom.
I have some perceptions and beliefs, some ideas about the context and the circumstances in which this life must take place.
I also know some things.
I know in my bones that this matters. I know that to give up on moral and spiritual ambition is to give up on life. And I know that I am not giving up.
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This is all quite heavy, huh? Maybe, maybe not. You tell me. I just wanted to say - things are good! I'm good! This project isn't some tragic attempt to optimize my life or improve myself. It's an expression of love.
It's love for the world and for everything it contains. It's love for Annika, for Rahi, for Anaya. It's love for my parents and my sister. It's love for the trees and the sky, for the lonely pensioner who comes every day to this cafe and drinks two bottles of beer and rings his kids and they only talk for a few seconds and then they have to go. It's love for myself, for this entangled mess of beauty and pain, for this curious collection of atoms that have somehow coalesced into an Indian man putting up flashing Reindeer lights on a suburban Austrian street.
I want to live in ways that express that love, in ways that honour what the love is responding to. I want to live a life that is as real as I can allow it to be, a life in which everything is allowed, into which everything enters, a life in which death is real and suffering is given its place at the family table.