What Makes True Wisdom?

Occasionally I'll get an email from someone who's read something of mine. The writer, offended by my advocacy for gay equality, for instance, or my ridiculing of Biblical prophecy or conspiracy theories or tax protestors, or my support for unfettered free speech, will reprimand me for my permissiveness or narrow-mindedness (whichever applies) and suggest that I go and listen to Rush Limbaugh or Dennis Prager or some such person for a week or a month or whatever, because that'll set me straight. What a condescending thing to tell someone.

For one thing, I didn't come by my outlook lightly. I didn't have my morality dictated to me by a preacher or out of an ancient religious text, nor do I take my lead from some partisan blowhard on the radio or on television. I've actually thought about most of this stuff, and I believe what I believe because it makes sense to me. To suggest that all I need to be persuaded otherwise is to listen to someone with the opposite point of view is insulting; to suggest that all I need is to listen to someone like Limbaugh or Prager is beyond insulting to the outskirts of "fightin' words!"

That anybody turns to Rush Limbaugh for wisdom is still astonishing to me. I used to listen to him regularly as a teenager, but by the time I was an adult and capable of really comprehending what the guy was saying, it was clear to me that he was saying nothing at all. He offers opinions and analyses across a wide range of politics and culture, but lacks any relevant expertise that would lend credence to his philosophies, and most of what he says is neither wise nor informed by reason, despite his frequent pretensions to the contrary. He's a supremely confident guy with a sharp enough wit, so he's able to sound initially like he knows what he's talking about when in reality he's no more of an authority than you or I.

Plus he's an enormous hypocrite who spent years on the radio denouncing drug use and addiction, only to become an addict himself to prescription painkillers, which probably also had something to do with the onset of his much-publicized deafness a few years back. Just an educated guess on my part. Anyway, depending on him for political guidance is about as prudent as waiting for Oprah to tell you what to read.

Dennis Prager is a similar animal, but unique. He's a more dignified, less buffoonish version of Rush. He makes more of an effort to stay above the fray, appear intellectual and thoughtful. At first he might strike you as the sort of fellow you'd listen to if you wanted a reasonable, well considered position from the conservative end of things.

Then Prager will say something stupendously foolish and nonsensical-like allowing Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison to take his oath of office with his hand on a Koran instead of a Bible would undermine the Constitution-which should force you to rethink your previous opinion of him. Prager might not be a clownish caricature like Limbaugh, but behind his carefully tended façade of dignity and sagacity, he's just as much a boob as Rush, or Sean Hannity, or Glenn Beck or any other hack political windbag you can name. I don't give the slightest weight to what they have to say.

So if I don't listen to them, who do I listen to? Or is there just no talking to me? There are people (other than my close friends and family) whose opinions do have a lot of pull with me. There are even a few who could get me to reexamine my own beliefs merely by disagreeing with me. None of them are on the radio, nor on television (at least not anymore). They aren't anywhere known to me, come to think of it-the most recent of them has been dead for over ten years. I'll tell you who they are, but first let me get to why I afford them such respect.

There are certain things I believe true wisdom ought to possess. The first of those is compassion. I don't think there can be a nobler virtue than compassion-for our fellow human beings, for the Earth, for the universe itself. Christians often buttress their beliefs by citing this or that passage of the Bible, quoting the supposed words of Jesus in support of whatever happens to be their pet cause; but there are no words of Jesus greater than those in Matthew 25:40, when he tells his followers, "As you have done it to the least of my brethren, you have done it to me." If we're serious about loving and honoring God, how can there be a better way than by working to achieve happiness for ourselves and our fellow people in our shared world? If there's not a God in the universe, the importance of compassion is nonetheless retained. It's the seed from which grows all good things of mankind.

The second is an indifference to religion. I happen to believe in God, and it's mainly for that reason I don't give the least bit of credence to large segments of the Bible or the Koran or most other holy books. They all contain some measure of wisdom, which is obscured and diluted by much larger portions of proselytizing, violence, and mythology. Religion is coincidentally the home of truth from time to time, but I don't think it's ever the source of truth. Plus it seems to me that if religion were a real source of truth, it would diminish the wisdom of men and women who come at things from a decidedly unreligious, atheistic or agnostic point of view. I might disagree with Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris about the existence of God, but they are brilliant writers with important and interesting things to say, and their denial of God and ambivalence toward religion is not a hindrance, but a great asset in identifying and expressing the truth.

The third is morality, and by that I mean true morality, not the bigoted, arbitrary morality of religion. True morality comes from a balance of compassion and respect for individual liberty. Fundamentalist Muslim men force the women in their families to wear oppressive body-obscuring robes and head-coverings because their faith has them believe displays of the female body to anyone but a husband are profane and indecent. The practice is cruel and robs Muslim women of their freedom and natural right to social equality, so by what warped reckoning can it be considered moral? Homosexuality, especially male homosexuality, is viewed with disgust by the conservative followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but what is it that these religions object to? The fault isn't with the practice of homosexuality, which involving consenting adults is morally no different from heterosexuality; it's with those who are prejudiced against it for whatever religious or cultural reason, and believe the personal offense they feel justifies oppression, marginalization, and discrimination. There's a lot of immorality in the debate over gay rights, but it's on the side of those fighting against liberty, not those struggling for it.

The fourth (because not everything comes in threes) is reason. Wisdom can't exist apart from reason; it'd be like expecting a fish to survive without water. Reason to me is a recognition and acceptance of reality. Unreasonable views are those that deny reality in favor of delusion. It's unreasonable to believe the Sun revolves around the Earth, since that's demonstrably false. It's unreasonable to believe the Earth is only a few thousand years old when the last several hundred years of science have indicated that it is ancient on the order of billions of years, and that the larger universe is at least two or three times older still. But I don't think a reasonable position has to be undeniably true. For example, I think it's perfectly reasonable at this point to believe there's life elsewhere in the universe; there's not a shred of evidence for it, but when you consider the uncharted vastness of space and the plethora of stars found to have planets, just in the tiny patch of sky humans have been able to examine, it doesn't strike me as far-out at all to bet on there being other inhabited worlds out there somewhere. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

There's more than those four, but they're the big ones that occurred to me as I sat writing this. So which voices in our dissonant culture do I find worth listening to? Whose outlooks and philosophies do I think contain the four aspects of wisdom and truth I went through up there?

There are three that come to mind, but they certainly aren't the only ones. They all also happen to be white men of European decent, but please take that as a comment on my own ignorance, not the superiority of one group of people over another. Truth is indifferent to tribe or gender.

The three men I'm thinking of are Carl Sagan, Thomas Paine and Voltaire. Next to any one of them, pretenders like Limbaugh or Prager don't even cast a shadow.