Older but not Wiser

There are reasons why older is not necessarily wiser. You’re never more open to new experience than when you’re twenty. After that, the need to make money, the fear of having no work, the demands of children, the sense that the world is moving in strange new directions, the appearance of unfamiliar forms of expression that inevitably seem less wonderful than the ones that changed your life when you were twenty cause the aperture to slowly narrow.

By fifty, the obvious fact of your own decline is easily mistaken for an intimation of the world’s. And, since there’s never a shortage of evidence that things are, indeed, worse than they used to be, it’s incredibly satisfying to indulge the idea, and easy to confuse it with a veteran’s seasoned judgment.

George Packer, writing in The New Yorker

Knowing our Limits & Tolerating those who Disagree

If we truely want to know, it sometimes means recognizing when we don't know. -David Dunning

Your voice

Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar. -Edward R. Murrow

the path to wisdom

The story is told of a wise man who was asked by a student the best way to gain knowledge. He lead the student to a river, where he plunged the young man’s head beneath the surface. He struggled to free himself, but the wise man kept his head submerged. Finally, after much effort, the youth was able to break free and emerge from the water. The wise man asked, “When you thought you were drowning, what one thing did you want most of all?” Still gasping for breath, the man explained, “I wanted air!” The philosopher commented, “When you want knowledge as much as you wanted air, then you will get it!”

Stephen Goforth