Wisdom and Intelligence
A fascinating article by Paul Graham: Is It Worth Being Wise?
Another sign we may have to choose between intelligence and wisdom is how different their recipes are. Wisdom seems to come largely from curing childish qualities, and intelligence largely from cultivating them.
I agree there’s a trade-off, but I also believe it’s necessary to seek for as much intelligence and wisdom as we can.
The key is in Graham’s choice of the word “curing,” which implies something very like eliminating, and I believe is the wrong word. In fact, all domestic animals, including humans, tend towards neoteny, the carrying of childish qualities into adulthood. For humans, there’s then the matter of overcoming, but not curing, the childish qualities.
The difference between curing and overcoming is that, when we’ve done the latter, the quality overcome remains within our repertoire–we can turn it on or off. We can choose, based on context, whether to allow the quality in question to express itself.
The person whose sexuality is “turned on” either all the time or randomly is a ghastly thing to contemplate. Equally ghastly, though, it the idea of someone who has “cured” their sexuality.
Wisdom is, I believe, precisely the capacity to wield one’s capacities by choice and not by inward compulsion.