Our Missing Virtue

Everyone wants to be wise, but what is wisdom? Why do we have so little of it? Why doesn't wisdom make one so popular anymore?

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Today we're going to be talking about our missing virtue in our society, which explains almost all of our modern ills. Now that sounds like a big claim, and uh but I'm going to try and substantiate it here today on this episode of the Common Christendom podcast, so thank you for tuning in. The virtue we're going to be talking about today is wisdom. Now that seems like a little bit uh of an oversimplification. Oh, of course, if everyone was more wise, we'd have a better society. Um but it goes a little bit deeper than that. What do I mean by wisdom? Well, for the purpose of this uh uh this discussion, I'm going to define wisdom as follows. Many people would think that wisdom is knowing what to do, and that's part of it. Um it's it's not uh less than that, but it is more than that. And for the purpose of this discussion, I'm going to tell you that wisdom is not just knowing what to do, but it's knowing when to do. Wisdom is not just knowing what to do, it's knowing when to do it. Now, a good example of this is, in my opinion, the game of chess, which I've been trying to learn this year, and doing terrible terri and and uh finding terribly difficult to improve in a meaningful way. Um in chess, uh it's a complicated game, it's a logical but complicated game, but in chess there are a lot of idioms. There are a lot of little sayings that stew chess students get taught in order to remember what to do. And there are many of these uh idioms, uh sort of proverbs, it might be a more accurate term to use. There's many of them. Uh castle early and often. Develop your knights before your bishops. Uh don't push pawns on the side that your king is on. Uh or past pawns must be pushed. Or there's a lot of pawn ones, it seems. Rooks belong behind past pawns. There are so many of these little proverbs, so because it is such a complicated game, um, chess distill the the masters of chess distill these things into proverbs to make them easy to remember and easy to play the game, and that's why there's so many of them. If uh if you're getting attacked on the flank, counter-attack in the center, there's so many of them, and I kinda cannot even name them all here. Um that but if you know all of the proverbs, then playing chess must be easy because you simply follow the proverbs. Well, um, unfortunately, and as I've learned, it's not that it's not that easy. It's not that easy. Um one of these proverbs is one I said before, rooks belong behind past pawns. If you don't know the game of chess, or perhaps you only have a rudimentary understanding, you might know that if you uh if you send your pawn all the way to the other end of the board, to your opponent's end of the board, when you get to that final square, you get to promote the pawn. You get to take your pawn off the board and put a better piece on top, usually a queen. You get to turn your pawn into a queen. It's called promoting. Uh, and a past pawn simply means a pawn that doesn't have an enemy pawn standing in front of it, so it means that it's got a clear view straight to the end of the board. Now, this proverb was uh coined by a chess master from Germany called Sigmund. Sigmund Siegbert Tarash from Germany. Now he was also a chess teacher and he had a s he had many students. One of his students became quite disgruntled and sent him a letter, and in the letter it said, What's going on, uh Master Tarash? I had this game which I've enclosed, and you'll see that I put my rook behind the past pawn and I lost the game. What's going on? I followed your proverb. And Tarash said to him in a letter back, he said, I should actually amend the proverb. It should say, Rooks belong behind past pawns when that's the correct thing to do. Which is kind of a bit tongue-in-cheek, isn't it? But the greater truth that he's revealing is that the difficult thing in chess is not remembering all the proverbs. I'm at this very moment rated about 700 on chess.com, which is not which is not really that high in the grand scheme of things. And I've been able to tell you all of these proverbs. I've been able to tell and I could rem even if I could remember remember more if I put my mind to it. Yet the difficult part is knowing which proverb to use and when, because sometimes you need to use one and sometimes you need to use the other. Sometimes they contradict each other, and that is the difficult part is knowing which one to use at the correct time, and knowing uh knowing what road to take. Now we all know this, I think. I think in deep down we know this. Um is it likely that you are going to call up your wise friend to know what to do when it's an easy decision? We've all had moments like that in our life. We don't know what to do, so we call on someone with wisdom to help us. Do we do that for a difficult decision? Or an easy decision? The easy decisions, you know, am I gonna have uh waffles or pancakes for breakfast? Well, I like pancakes so much better. So I'm gonna have pancakes. You don't need to call a call a wise friend for that. No, you just make the decision, but when it's a difficult decision, when it's a really difficult decision, which girl should I marry? Where should I decide to live? What church should I go to? These are difficult decisions, and these are the decisions that we call up wise people in our life to ask for advice. Now, this is the reason that I feel comfortable in any sense talking about the subject of wisdom with any confidence, is because you don't you you can know it when you see it. You don't necessarily need to be wise yourself to see that wisdom is valuable or see what wisdom is. I can see that wisdom is making those is knowing what to do, not just knowing what to do, but knowing when to do, knowing when to use the proverb, knowing when to make the decision, knowing which decision to make. Um and I don't necessarily need to be good at it myself to be able to talk about it. That's why I feel comfortable talking about it. So wisdom is not isn't knowing what to do, it's knowing when to do. To go back to chess. Don't push pawns on the side that your king is on. Well, uh, there might be some situations when you do need to do that. Develop your knights before your bishops. There might be some positions where you need to develop your bishop before your knight. It's about wisdom of knowing which proverb to take. So that's how I'm going to define wisdom. We can also use the age the age old adage knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that tomato does not belong in a fruit salad. Now that we've discussed our definition of wisdom that we're going to be using for this show, and it's not a full or complete or exhaustive definition. I may be only one of the blind men clutching at the elephant, as it were, but it's a definition we're going to be using for uh our uh show today. So hold that in your mind and let us begin. A sports commentator once called Tiger Woods the artist, and and he called him an artist and an engineer. Seems a bit strange, doesn't it? He called him an artist and an engineer, and I saw a fan run YouTube channel. He had, inspired by this quote, he'd done a a set of two uh Tiger Woods highlight videos on his YouTube channel. One called Tiger the Artist, and the other called Tiger the Engineer. And I've seen both of these videos, they're quite fun. And it's just clips of Tiger through his career, different things he's done at different tournaments, little uh clips of him playing. Now, Tiger the Artist, you click on that video, and the kinds of clips that are in that video are these shots of him playing beautiful golf. It's shots of him hitting the perfect drive down the fairway, you know, hitting it 300 metres, or that's no, that's that's too much. You know, it's you know, hitting it almost 300 metres down the down the fairway, making it look easy, making it look elegant. You know, hitting his hitting a difficult a difficult uh approach shot with maybe even his four iron foot five iron or his four iron and landing at two feet outside the flay, and it was just beautiful shots that for us mortals we hit almost never. I don't think I'm ever gonna get the ball inside two feet with a five iron in my life. And just making them look so easy, so elegant, so beautiful, his swing just looks amazing in this video of the clips called Tiger the Artist. There is another video, however, the the companion video called Tiger the Engineer. And these aren't the same kind of clips. It's not him making it look easy, piping it down the fairway. It's oh no, Tiger has hit it into the bunker, into the trees, into the rough, and we don't know what he's going to do. It seems unrecoverable. Triple bogey is all but guaranteed on this hole unless there is a miracle. And that's what Tiger the Engineer was about. It was about shots that looked like they would be impossible, yet somehow, in his golf genius, somehow Tiger managed to get the ball to go a certain way. He managed to get just the right amount of loft, of power, of spin, of whatever it is onto the ball to get it into a hittable. He managed to bend the ball around the trees, he managed to choke down on the club and rocket the ball along the ground, out of the rough, through threading the needle, through the trees. These were not pretty shots. They were in fact very ugly shots, very ugly swings. You know, he would, you know, be behind the trees in the bunker, and he would, you know, he'd have to hit this mega, mega fade, almost like really cut across the ball, and you know, it looks like he's gonna break his back. It doesn't look like a uh pretty swing at all. He looks like he's gonna break his back or fall over after he's hit it, but he he but he managed to get that that spin on the ball, he managed to cut it round the trees, he managed to get it through the rough and get it into a playable position and salvage the par that he needed to salvage. And these are this is Tiger the engineer. I think it's just a good illustration of two sides of a coin that we all know, that we all understand exists, and we all know very well indeed, the practical and the aesthetical, the beautiful and the practical. Um I think we if you've ever uh heard anyone from the construction industry uh uh speak, they know that there is a tension between the artist and the engineer. The architect wants the building to look a certain way, the structural engineer needs it to be held up, and those two things come into conflict. Uh very often. Uh there's a little joke, you know, engineers have a joke they make about art architects. Oh, how is how does he suppose the building is going to stand up? Well, he thinks it's going to go on sky hooks, which is saying, you know, there's no pillars, there's no whatever holding up. He's going to hook it onto the sky, and that's going to hold the building up. Um, you know, in my profession, which is the design of uh uh plumbing services, um, we get this all the time. The architect, he knows that rain is a thing. He puts a bit he puts a roof on the building, but he doesn't really give a thought to how the rain is gonna get from his roof gutter to the you know, to the road, to the creek. He doesn't care about it. We we say, oh, he wants to wi-fi the water. The water's gonna collect in the gutter and then we're gonna wi-fi it from here to there. He doesn't want to see a stormwater pipe on his building because it's not pretty. Um and this is the this is the constant tension. That's a tension we all know. These these uh these uh kind of dialectics uh there's many of them. It's not just artists and engineer, but there is, you know, there's a thing called the Warrior Poet Society, um, uh of men trying to cultivate not only their practical, their aggressive side of themselves, but also the side capable of beauty, capable, capable of romance, you know. Um it's and even our Lord in Revelation, the lion and the lamb, the two sides of the coin. I think we all understand this. And how is it that we can unite these things? Because we all know that you can't have too much of one or the other. We all understand that, but how do you unite these two things to be um to be uh to have to go well with you? Um people think it's moderation, just the right amount of of artistry, just the right amount of engineering, and we'll be golden. We'll be golden, no. That's not how it works. I'm gonna show you how it works. And I should say also that it's not just the artist that can run wild, but it is the engineer too. The architect can run wild, but the engineer can. Look at the can't look at any any road bridge that you've seen constructed in the last uh sort of 40 years, it looks ugly. It looks terribly, terribly ugly. Or any build any, you know, sort of warehouses, they're not designed by architects to be pretty, but they look ugly. They crush the spirit. You know, public infrastructure, so much concrete. No thought given to the human spirit, to the to the person who's gonna be using it or looking at it. It just looks brutal. You know, it just looks it just looks crushing because they've not given a thought to the aesthetical, that only how it's going to be held up, the raw strength, the engineering of it. So both sides can run wild. How do we reconcile them? Is it moderation? Is it just having the right amount of artistry, the right amount of engineering? Well, I'm going to tell you that no, it's actually not. It's actually not moderation, it's something different. So holding that in your mind as well, to explain this, I'm going to tell you two little stories, two little vignettes to explain what I'm talking about. And the first one was me walking through South Bank here in sunny Brizy. Uh I was doing a few errands. I had it had some things I needed to do in the city. It was a Saturday, so I decided that after I was done, I don't get this chance very often. I don't work in the city or anything like that. I wanted to visit the art gallery. I've had for a while. So I thought, let's take this chance, and I'm gonna visit the art gallery, then I'm gonna go home. So I did. I walked uh, you know, through uh QUT, over the Goodwill Bridge, through, you know, through the Arbour, South Bank Arbor, on the way to the art gallery, and I passed through the uh past uh next to rather the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. And I couldn't help I couldn't help but notice the something strange about the plays and shows that were being advertised on the side of the building on the billboards. What I noticed is that they were all terribly odd and terribly strange. There was some normal looking ones, but most of them were very odd, very strange. Almost this kind of, you know, there was some sort of LGBT aboriginal interpretive dance show, you know, there were some sort of, you know, Shakespeare gone, gay and modern, and it wasn't just some sort of like I'm not just it wasn't just about the kind of woke politics, which is uh, you know, which I detest, obviously, but it wasn't just about that. It was just about that these artists had seemed to have run wild in their kind of artistry, they'd gone too far, they'd run off, run wild and gone too far, and let their kind of artistic intuiting and feeling go so far that it had just descended into gobbledygook, into mess, into something that who would want to see it. This is just drivel. The artist has given up on being attached to reality and just spewed his raw feeling and raw intuition onto the page and it's gone too far, he's run too far, has the artist. And I found that very interesting. I thought, how does this art get made? Because who was going to see this? It's just lame. It's just lame and and un it seems unattractive. So I found that very interesting. Um it seems that the artists had run wild. Now, engineers can run wild too. Let's think of an example of this sort of engineering side of the of the coin. Let me tell you another vignette. I think we all know of an unfortunate trade called the public health expert idea. Think of a public health expert. What are you thinking of? I'm thinking of someone in a lab coat, you know, with glasses on TV, maybe a Karen on uh, you know, from some sort of university department. That's what I'm thinking of. Um public health experts aren't interested in artistic uh endeavors. They're they're interested in the numbers, in the percentages, in the studies, in the raw information and data that we can use to uh get the public to be more healthy. Uh one thing that public health people are responsible for was um it used to be before the OOs, you know, in the 1980s, it was, I would say, is the kind of high watermark of cigarette smoking in Australia and and um in many other places too. Um and P and the public health experts saw like, hey, maybe it's not good that kids are smoking darries at 13, 14 years old, and then smoking darries uh into their 20s and into their rather into their adulthood. And all of a sudden, this kid who started smoking darries at 14, he's now 34, he smokes a pack a day, he wants to quit, but he's been smoking a pack a day for 20 years. His brain did its biggest formation, sort of, you know, biggest development while he was using this drug every day. There's no way that he's gonna be able to quit. He is hooked on these things, these things for life. He's hooked for life and they can be very harmful. Um, this is not good. We as public health experts think that perhaps we should give a thought for children who are being exposed to this particular way of using this drug that is very addictive and can be very harmful when you are addicted to using it everywhere. Um I think that's reasonable. I think it's reasonable that uh people, you know, aren't, you know, having a bunger next to the kids' playground at Westfield completely indoors, blowing smoke everywhere. I I think that's reasonable. And I think everybody thinks that's reasonable. I think uh I think that you, you know, I think it is reasonable that even the law requires that you don't um, you know, smoke a darry in your car with three kids in the back with the windows rolled up. I think that's good and decent and fair and reasonable. And I think public health can take a lot of credit, can take a lot of credit for the health benefits that have come from that. Now here's the thing. Can public health experts run too far? Of course. Because once they were done with that, they said, oh, well, you know, any any cigarette smoking is harmful. Yes, that's definitely that's definitely true. But what's next there? Oh, well, all tobacco use is harmful. Oh, well, you can't you can't smoke cigars or pipes because they're safer. Those are harmful too. We need to get rid of all smoking. We need the government to go on an all-out war against all tobacco use for all time. We need to get rid of it. And while you're at it, you know what else is you know what else is really harmful? Alcohol. You know? Any one drop is harmful. It does and what no amount of drinking in moderation is safe. It is only poison for your liver, for your brain. We need to get rid of it. We need to make it more expensive so you can't buy as much. Because alcohol is really bad for you. We need to eradicate it. We need to get rid of it, because we're public health experts. This the data is undeniable, the harm is undeniable, we need to get rid of it. I would say that the public health expert has run wild, and indeed I would even uh fail to mention uh certain uh public health activities that took place at the start of this decade of the 2020s. The public health ran wild. They did have nobody, like the artist at QPAC, they had nobody to tell them that they're going too far, that they're running wild, they're running off the chain. You know, because they're saying things like, you know what? You you had a rough week and you want to have a a Marlboro goal to take the edge off. That's harmful. Don't do it. Just be depressed. You know, oh, you want to celebrate this wedding and have you know have five drinks, ten drinks. Don't probably not ten drinks, it's a it's a bit that's a bit much. Then you might feel a bit crappy in the morning, but you had this wonderful time, you have this wonderful memories. No, that's harmful. You're harming yourself. Oh, you've had a rough week and you want to have one one or two wines with dinner on Thursday night because it's been a long week. You that's harmful. No amount is safe. This is bad. We need to get rid of it. Public health has run too far, they've run wild. What are we to do? Because we know that art is valuable, we know that public health is valuable, but how are we to rein these things in? I've heard people say that it's about moderation. It's about moderation. We need to we need just the right amount of artistry and just the right amount of public health. I'm here to say no. That's actually not the answer. It sounds good, but it's actually not the moderation is actually not the answer. What's the answer? Well, let me finish one of my stories. Once I passed QPAC and I got to the art gallery, I had a great time and I looked at several pictures. But one of the pictures I looked at was called Cristo Risugente. I don't think I'm saying that right, but it's Italian, I believe, for the risen Christ. It's a painting from 1555 by Tinoretto. Tinoretto, I think he's more like a one-name guy, I think, like Madonna, I think. Um I don't know if he has a second name. I think maybe that's kind of like a uh like a pseudonym for his art or whatever. But the picture, the risen Christ depicts a a figure of Christ rising from the grave. And I sat down on the little couch, I spent maybe five minutes looking at this this painting. And it's quite big, first of all, which is quite striking, which was which was um, but it was beautiful, it was beautiful, and I I like the colours, I like the uh I like the the way they play with each other, but the more I looked at the painting, the more I noticed, you know. In the middle is the figure of Christ rising from the grave. He the light is on him, it's almost like he's radiating light out from him. In one hand he holds this ginormous banner, a ginormous war banner, banner, uh think the the plaque said the banner of salvation, you know. And below his feet are the Roman soldiers cowering in fear at uh at the awesome sight that they're seeing. Um and they they uh they look in fear, they don't know what's going on. And the more I looked at it, like the more I realized that wow, everything about this painting is saying something like the Christ figure is risen with the war banner, he showing that you know that he's risen in great power and majesty, and he's come to take dominion, he's got this great big war banner, but he's looking down, descending to look down on the on the cowering Roman soldiers, but instead of a warlike uh demeanor, it's almost like he he it's almost like he looks at them tenderly, and in fact, his other hand that's not holding the banner extends the sign of benediction down to the Roman soldiers while they're carrying in fear, he gives the sign of peace to them, understanding that yes, Christ has been given all power, yet in his mercy he extends peace to us, and in fact everyone can may partake in the peace of Christ if they would only submit to him and believe in him for the remission of their sins, and and none of this is written down, none of this is written down, uh, but everything that I've just said is said with the picture. Everything, every detail about this picture says something about its subject. In this case, I think it says good things, obviously. Um, and for that reason I said I love this painting, not just because of the colours, the beautiful yellows and blues of the sky and the way they play with the deep red of the banner, I think is wonderful. Yet I think this is a work of art that says something, says many, many things. Everything about it says something. So why is this paint piece of art wonderful? While the art I saw what before I walked into the art gallery had just the artists running wild with their own intuitions and our misguided intuitions. Well, also on the plaque of the painting I read that in the Baroque period, we don't know for sure, but it's almost certain that this uh that this painting was used as an altarpiece in a church. It's almost certain that this painting was commissioned by the church. That means that it's almost certain that um Tinaretto received some sort of money or advance to be able to cover his living expenses while he painted this painting, and then it was given to the to the church. He his patron in that sense was the church, and this um was often how art worked um in the in the pre-modern world. Um you a a wealthy person who had not the time nor the skill to execute art would use their money to sponsor artists to create beautiful art. Um and what's kind of the go here? Um why who was we know who the patron for this painting, the risen Christ, is who is the patron for the gay aboriginal interpretive dance play that I saw on the way in? The patron's the government. The government is giving money to these people to make this art. So why is one good and one's not? Here's the difference. The government is going to give you money to do art and you can do whatever you want. The government wouldn't dream of saying you need to make a certain type of art or I'm gonna restrict your, you know, this is art is too political and you need to turn it down. They're never gonna say that. You can do whatever you want. The artist gets the money, he can run wild and do whatever he wants. On the other hand, the patronage system of the Baroque period and after, is your patron would be a wealthy man or a ruler, and you didn't it's not to say that always that the ruler had some sort of conditions imposed on you about what you had to paint. Obviously, in the case of uh the risen Christ, they want the probably, most likely, church said we need an we want an altar piece and we want a picture of Jesus on an altar piece, can you paint it for us? But in many other circumstances, it wasn't like that. It was just that, oh, I love your art, I'm giving you a year's wages. Can you go and make this piece of art? This is how a lot of great classical music was made. You know, a lot of uh, you know, Beethoven's great symphonies would have been patronized by wealthy people, wealthy rulers. And so you aren't gonna make some sort of revolutionary, not like kind of as in new, but kind of like left revolutionary, politically revolutionary piece of art, because your patron is a ruler, and he's not gonna accept that. You know, you're not gonna make your painting something super duper socially transgressive, because the ruler who's your patron, he doesn't want you know his population to get all topsy-turvy. He wants order because he's a ruler. These things are implicit, and these things mean that if you do something super transgressive or if you do something super crazy, probably you're gonna lose that patron and you're gonna lose a source of kind of money. We see that these artists, whether they were painters, musicians, whatever they were, these artists didn't run wild back then because it's almost as if the patron was the reigning in of the artist. You know, uh the wild race horse, you know, the wild riot sorry, rather the the the wild horse running around in the wilderness, is untamed, is un but we put the bit and bridle on the the wild horse, and he and he runs in the race, he runs in a straight line, he achieves greatness. It's almost like a sort of symbiotic relationship. The artist had this raw intuiting, raw feeling, raw expression, yet the patron acted, whether explicitly or implicitly, as the reigning in, as as the as the bit and bridle on the artist, and that's not oppressive. I know it might sound oppressive to our modern ears, but this relationship produced the and I was gonna say some of the, but no, this relationship produced the most beautiful art that the human race has ever made. It produced the most beautiful music that the human race has ever made. This relationship produced true greatness, the reigning in of the artist by the patron, implicitly or explicitly. So what was it? Was it actually moderation that reigned in these artists? No, it was something else, it was the patron. Maybe it was wisdom that reigned him in. Let's think about the public health expert. Let's think about, you know, nerds run the world, it seems. Is that good? I don't I don't really think so. Imagine for a second, like how do you refute a nerd? How do nerds get refuted? If they're so smart, surely they're really popular at school, because you just tell everyone the facts. No, I think if you're a nerd and you're at school, you tell everyone the facts, you get whacked in the head by a bully because you're a nerd. You know, is that bad? Maybe in and of it, maybe on the face of it. Let's say you throw a dinner party and you invite someone over and you say, Oh, please come to my dinner party. If you'd like to bring something, please bring a fruit salad. And you the the guy comes to your house, he says, Oh, good to see you, uh, let's have dinner, and he brings his fruit salad, and you get you get to dessert time, you bring out the fruit salad, and the fruit salad has tomatoes in it. What is going on? Tomatoes do not belong in a fruit salad. And you say as much to your guest, what's going on? There's tomatoes in this fruit salad. That's gross. And this friend is a nerd. He says, What are you talking about? Tomato is a fruit. And this is a fruit salad. I do not understand what the problem is. And you say, Well, it just it's just not right, it doesn't work. You say, Well, is a tomato a fruit? Do you deny that? And you you can't help but say, Well, no, I don't deny that. It's a tomato, it has seeds, it's technically a fruit. Okay, well, is this a f called a fruit salad? Well, I can't deny that either. It is called a fruit salad. So what's the problem? But you know there's a problem. But this is the thing. Can you argue with this nerdy guy? No, you can't actually argue with him. You'll never win the argument because you actually don't have an argument. Tomato is a fruit, and it is a fruit salad. What's the solution here? You slap him in the nose. That's what bullies did to nerds. You don't you you you give him a whack in the nose and he gets a nose bleed, and then he doesn't do it again. These things are not can't be argued away. And so what am I trying to get at here? It takes someone who's out of the coin, out of the artist and engineer coin to use wisdom to know when we need to use which. It takes a wise ruler, it takes a kind of second archetype, the artist the engineer, it takes a king to have wisdom to know when to do what. It takes wisdom to know that tomato doesn't belong in a fruit salad. It takes wisdom to know what kind of art, you know, what kind of themes need to be represented. And it takes wisdom uh to not have to have moderation, but to know when to do which takes wisdom. It's not actually about moderation, which I think is a little bit um a little bit different, I think, to to what a lot of people think. Now, how can we apply this principle of wisdom in our lives? Well, let's think about something let's think about wisdom. We spoke of it before is that wisdom is not used, you don't call up your wise friend to dec uh to ask him what to do when it's an easy decision. You call up your wise friend to ask him what to do when it's a difficult decision. Easy decisions you make on yourself. I do this too, like I'm I'm not necessarily a wise guy. I'd say probably I'm actually uh a little bit uh a little bit silly. When I've got a difficult decision, I ring up my wise friend to ask him what to do, or my dad or my mum, or whoever I'm thinking of that might be able to be have some wisdom to help me in this situation. That is to say, wisdom is only used uh under uncertainty, or should I say probably less poorly, wisdom shines under uncertainty. It is the situations where you don't know what to do, when there's a fork in the road and you don't know which to take, that wisdom truly shines. That's when wisdom is truly necessary. Now, what does this imply? It implies that always, if there if wisdom is used un under uncertainty, that means that it's uncertain. You'd think that would be obvious. That means that some people aren't gonna like the result. When you're trying to use wisdom effectively, if there's a fork in the road, half of the party thinks we should go one way and half of says the other, but the person who has the wisdom needs to decide which, which means he's upsetting after people. And this is another implication is that wisdom requires the authority and the power to decide which wise choice to make. And if you combine those two things, you get not necessarily love and popularity, but you have the potential for a lot of upsetting to go on. You have the power to make the choice and the wisdom to choose it. Some people are gonna disagree with your choice and they're not going to like it. Now, this takes us to sort of application. We're gonna talk about kind of application for church and state, but let's talk about uh application uh in uh in the state. I've been learning a lot about America uh and about the founding of America. I read I read uh Paul Johnson History of the American People, I enjoyed that, but I I really enjoyed uh Walter Isaacson's biography of Benjamin Franklin. Uh I thought it was it was a little bit long, but it was really good. It was really good, and the audiobook reader on Spotify, Nelson Runger, was amazing. He had a voice for every different character, which I thought some of them were kind of comical, and yeah, I loved it. But so I've learned a little bit, not a lot, but a little bit about America and its founding. America decided that they had perceived or otherwise been under the tyranny of the king. They and they had been treated unjustly. The king had made decisions and they didn't like those decisions. They thought they were unjust and oppressive, so that they were gonna start a revolution and have their own country and rule themselves. I think most people understand this part of the story. Now, it came time that they won the Revolutionary War and they had to basically create a political system from from scratch, essentially. And so, what did America do to uh create a government? They didn't want a king explicitly, they didn't want a king because they didn't want someone to enforce tyrannical decisions on them anymore. So they wrote this constitution, they created this system of government where essentially the power is is spread as thinly as possible over as many people and institutions as possible in the hope that, because of fallen human nature, that a tyrant wouldn't be able to arise because the power was so diffused. In one sense, the at that time they perceived the English system was that power was spread like butter, like a chunk of butter on the person of the king, and what they wanted to do was they wanted to spread power thinly like veggie might across the entire uh slice of bread of the American uh political experiment. They didn't want the state to be encapsulated in the person of the king, they explicitly didn't want that. And so they created the separation of powers, the idea that some of the power is given to the president, and he has power over certain things. Some of the power is given to the Congress to do certain things, some of the power is given to the court to do certain things, and they have they have different lanes which they are to stay in, different uh realms of authority, and in this way a tyrant can't arise, power can't be abused because it is spread so thinly. Now, this was the American experiment. They essentially decided that having wisdom, and they wouldn't put it like this, but this is the way I'm saying it, they didn't they they they were willing to do away with wisdom because they didn't want to have uh they they didn't want to have power concentrated, so in that sense they got rid of concentrated power, but at the same time they are willing to give up wisdom. Because as we discussed, wisdom shines under uncertainty. So to have wisdom happen, you need someone who has the authority to make the decision, make the wise decision. Now, in that sense, what are you going to do in instead? Well, the clue is they already have they have a constitution. England, uh and rather Great Britain, they kind of have a constitution, but not in the same way that America or Australia have a constitution. In America and Australia's case, uh people got together to draft the constitution, to draw, you know, because America didn't have a constitution, or rather, you know, in the Australia's case, we were under, we were colonies of the United Kingdom, so we had the space and the you know the freedom to draft the constitution, decide collectively what should be in it, debate it, create it, and then ratify it. Uh in Britain it's not the case. The Constitution is far more a more complex and more long-storied evolution of their political system, an evolution of their uh conventions and political uh institutions. In in one sense, um, you know, we know who the first prime minister of Australia is, his name is Edmund Barton, because in our Constitution it specifies the office of Prime Minister. Whereas in England we don't really know who the first prime minister was because the role of prime minister wasn't wasn't, you know, created as in the Constitution, there will be an officer of the Pri of the Prime Minister. In England, it's more the case that the Prime when we finally call someone a Prime Minister, it's less that we're creating an office, but it's more that we're giving a name for an office that has evolved naturally. It's it it it was the English Constitution was created like that. And in in that sense, that the um the it was kind of a process of the person of the state, the king, the kind of power being slowly uh devolved to others as time went on. But I digress. They didn't want that, they wanted power to be spread, but in the in that sense they got rid of wisdom along with it. And so if you've got no wisdom, how are you going to have any decisions made? Well, the answer is the Constitution, essentially. We have to make all the decisions now, we have to think of all the contingencies now, so that we will have a law, a written law for everything, for every situation that might come up. And in that sense, America became less a government of wisdom, power and wisdom, it became a government of the letter, became almost, you could say, a legalistic uh government. There must be a law for everything. Um, a law will be created in in the Congress and passed, but who decides if it's unlawful? Well, the Supreme Court does, but how do they decide it? They look at the Constitution and the original law of the land, the constitution, and compare this law to the constitution to see if it's constitutional or not. In that sense, it all comes down to these letters on the page. Everything we will know what to do because of the law that is written. And in that sense, you have to make laws to govern everything. You have to make laws to um to uh create a sort of managerialism where there is a procedure for everything, there's a law for everything. How many times have you heard the average punter say we need some common sense in politics? Well, the average punter unfortunately doesn't understand modern politics. Common sense does not exist. Is that because everyone is unsensible? Well, they might be, but rather it's because there is no room for common sense. There is no one person with the power to enforce the common sense. Everything is a law, everything is by the letter, and everything is interpreted by the court. There is no room for common sense because for someone to enforce common sense, they need to have the power to do it. And we don't have that in our modern government. In that sense, managerialism was inevitable. It's sort of this Talmudic understanding of the law that lawmakers, law enforcement, nobody can ever use discretion, common sense, or even our special word, wisdom, to decide what's just and what's to do. Rather, we they have to rely on the written law, and if there's a mistake, it doesn't matter because we have at the start of America, and this kind of democracy is spread all over the world, is that we cannot have wisdom because we don't have anyone who's authorized to carry wisdom out. It must be by the letter. And this kind of takes us to kind of applications for uh for we've talked about applications for state. What about applications for church? I don't think that this issue is that the church is free of it either. Um I think that we live in a time where, rightly, we don't want to be legalistic. You know, we don't want to be and we're children of the Reformation in not just in Australia, in the Anglosphere. In America, in the United Kingdom. We don't want to be legalistic. We don't want to be like the medieval Catholic Church at its worst and create doctrines out of thin air that aren't in the Bible because we said so, to create uh practices of you know of raising funds out of thin air because we feel like it. We don't want to do that. We want it to be based in we want our doctrine to be based in the Bible. We don't want to have a purgatory. Where is that in the Bible? It's not. Uh what rather we need is we need to uh derive our doctrines from the Bible itself, because that's God's word, it's our foundation. So in that sense, we kind of have a natural we kind of have a natural aversion to going further than the text prescribes. But can this go too far? And I'm here to tell you that yes, it can go too far. Just as we have managerialism in government where there's a procedure for everything, there is a law for everything, there's a regulation for everything, and common sense is logically impossible in the managerial system. We kind of have let the same thing happen to Christian morality. We have we have we want to have a sort of Talmudic Christianity, and when I say Talmudic, what do I mean? I mean in Judaism they have a set of books called the Talmud, which is essentially commentaries from various rabbis over the years. The idea of the Talmud is that the Torah is kind of not enough. We need a specification for everything, we need a judgment on everything. You know, I, you know, whereas we might say, you know, oh, am I allowed to um you know, Judaism doesn't have the Sermon on the Mount, so we would say uh it says thou shalt not commit adultery, but are we allowed to uh you know uh go to the strip club and look, don't touch? Uh Christianity would say no, Jesus gave us the principle that what's the heart of the command? He says, if you look at a woman lustfully, you've committed adultery in your heart. Whereas, and I am not speaking for Judaism because I actually don't know uh what the law is in Judaism, is that if you took a literal approach, took a literal not going beyond the text approach, and you didn't have the sermon on the account, you would say, Well, by all means, let a thousand strippers bloom. Like, let's go. I'm only looking, I'm not committing adultery, I've got my clothes on, it's all good. In that way, you have to use wisdom to know that the principle of the law is that no, you shouldn't be doing that. And I think in this way, we want a Talmudic understanding of biblical morality, which we're to eliminate wisdom in the sense that um I'm getting going around in circles a little bit here. It's getting a little bit late in the in the afternoon, I'm ready for my nap. But the Talmud essentially is this big book of a prescription for every single situation. Am I allowed to do this on the Sabbath? Am I allowed to do that on the Sabbath? Am I allowed to do this? Am I allowed to do that? And there's almost a prescription for every single thing, and that's why the book is so long. It's actually several volumes, probably over 20 volumes, of writings of rabbis. And you know, it's almost like, you know, you don't need to use wisdom because whatever happens in your day, you just look it up. It's almost like a medieval chat GPT. You know, instead of using wisdom to decide what I'm gonna do, I'm just gonna ask my AI companion here, and he's gonna tell me what's the right thing to do. So, in that sense, that's how we want it in Christianity, too. We want to say, oh, well, we don't want to go beyond what's written. And that's a good impulse. But we go to the point where, you know, you might say, you might say something, I'm trying to think of an issue that's current these days. Um how should I put it rather, I'm not gonna find an issue because I I don't want to, you know, comment on theology so much on on a political show. But it's kind of the vibe is more is less of let's read the Bible and live our lives in light of it as a foundation. It's more let's do whatever we want, but only limiting ourselves to things that the Bible explicitly says. That's the vibe I'm getting. In that sense, you could say, oh, is it wise to to do for for ages and ages we would say, is it is it wise for um people who are engaged to be married to go on a uh two-week holiday by themselves staying in the same hotel room? Does the Bible say that Does the Bible say that engaged people can't stay in the same hotel room? No, it doesn't say that. But every Christian, apart from really kind of not very switched on ones, would say that it's pretty mundane. This isn't controversial. No, unmarried, unmarried young people of opposite sexes, they shouldn't be staying in the same hotel room overnight. That's not a good idea. The Bible doesn't say that. Yet we're okay with saying that's not a good idea. It's and what would be the words we would use? It's unwise. Do we use a bit of wisdom? And I think we're getting to a place where probably even less and less people would say that that's actually a problem in the first place. That people would say, Oh, it's fine if they stay in the hot same hotel room. And in that sense, it's almost as if we need a Bible verse for everything, you know? Uh I might say, you know, I some I would say, like, I say that my I tell my family, honey, I'm telling you and the kids, everyone in this household must wipe after taking a dump. And someone yelled from out of the window, he said, Where's that what's a chapter and verse for that?

SPEAKER_00 49:44

I don't think that's in the Bible.

SPEAKER_01 49:46

And it's not in the Bible. The Bible doesn't say you need to wipe after taking a dump, but I'm using my wisdom to say that that is a good idea. You know, and I'd also I tell I'm toilet training, my oldest right now, but he's pretty much done, he's gotten pretty good. But uh, I say, you've got to wash your hands after you go to the toilet every single time. And someone might say, Where's the chapter and verse? And they also might say, Oh, well what's the what what's bad's gonna happen? You think you're gonna get like the bubonic plague if you don't wash your hands? And I and I would say no. You're not probably nothing bad is gonna happen if you don't wash your hands once. But it's just a good practice, it's just a wise practice to wash your hands after you go to the toilet. And I think in this sense, wisdom takes a bit of courage. Wisdom takes a bit of courage because someone might disagree. You know, if you do say that in our modern age, because I'm sure you can find some sort of liberal uh, you know, kind of liberty in Christian, and you would say, like, oh, I don't think engaged people should, you know, go and sleep in the same hotel room overnight. They might say, Oh, well, why do you think that? I did that, and it was fine. You know, they might disagree with you, they might even be angry with you. But in that sense, are we gonna should we get rid of wisdom? Should we get rid of wisdom for the sake of teasing people, pleasing people? Because as we've seen before, we won't be able to make wise decisions if we're afraid of pleasing everybody. Pleasing everybody is an antithesis to wisdom, in that sense that there's an application for church and state. And you know, and I'll share one kind of political, another political example before we finish. Another inspiration for me doing this episode was a discussion between um a Christian pastor about the constitution of America and a sort of m-secular Muslim journalist. And the Muslim journalist was kind of saying the Constitution is completely secular. You're saying that you think that America's a Christian nation. Where does it say that in the Constitution? And essentially, there's lots of good reasons to say, you know, that the founders, the founders were largely Christian, apart from a few of them, you know, the intention behind the Constitution, the First Amendment, was to allow, you know, it says that the Congress shall not um the Congress shall not require a test of faith of a certain religion for admission. The Congress shan't make a law making a state religion. And rightly, this Christian pastor saying, well, the reason they did that was because, you know, Virginia, the state of Virginia was Anglican and New England is Puritan. How are we gonna how is Anglican Virginia and Puritan New England gonna get along being in the same country? Well, we need we can let everybody have their own denomination in their state, but at the national level we accept all denominations. That was the intention. It's undeniable. This Muslim journalist was trying to deny it, which is ridiculous. But that's the intention. But does it specifically say that in the Constitution? No. No, it doesn't. And so in that sense, this really aggressive, annoying British Muslim guy who is just like such a like you know, I I thought to myself, you know what? Why are you arguing with this guy? Is this guy technically correct? This guy's like the the tomato in the fruit salad guy. Technically, he's correct. But what's the solution? Are we gonna throw out our America, and this is happening in Australia as well, I think, which is why we say we, are we gonna let these people tell us what to do and make our country into a Muslim or secular hellscape? Or are we gonna stand up and say no? Our fathers did found this country as a Christian country. Our fathers from Britain did come over to establish a home that was gonna be a Christian place. How do we argue that technically? You don't. But it's kind of like the nerd thing. You don't combat them by arguing, you kind of just slap them in the nose, proverbially in this case. I don't know political violence. That's what made me think of it. Stop arguing with these people. Know a nerd when you see one, and stop arguing. And no and on the other s on the other side of the equation, know an artist when you see one, because art is very deceptive in that way. It can be good and bad, but it really skips past the senses into the heart straight away. So if you see an artist and you say that's bad, and they say you're crimping my style, and that's not the right word, they say you're repressing me, you're oppressing my artistic flair, say yes, because you're being ridiculous. This gay Aboriginal interpretive dance is ridiculous, and it needs to stop. We need to use our wisdom. So, in that sense, we need to have wisdom to navigate our moral lives. The leaders of our country need to have wisdom, or indeed, we need a system of government which allows you to have wisdom. And I think that uh a lot of our present ills would be a lot easier to tackle. We need to stop arguing with nerds. That's so important. We need to stop arguing with anyway. A bit of a meandering one today, but I hope you've enjoyed uh the episode. Tell me what you think. Are you wise? Let me know in the comments. Uh, and uh thank you for listening, and I'll see you in the next one.