THE VICE LIKE PRESSURES THAT SQUEEZE OUT WISDOM TODAY

 

In a heavily administered world where decisions are guided by numbers and increasingly by AI, we hear less about the need for wisdom in our common life. Knowledge is considered more important. The more we know, the better our decisions. But knowing things does not bestow wisdom. So, what exactly is wisdom?

 

Our faith says it is a gift from God. When he was starting out as king of Israel, Solomon asked God for the gift of wisdom to guide his leadership and he became synonymous with it: we still talk about the wisdom of Solomon. And in the letter of James, the author says that God gives wisdom to all who ask for it in faith. There are no limits to it; we can be as greedy as we like in asking for it, because God has more than enough for everyone.

 

Wisdom is grounded in knowing God. It can’t be defined, like many of the things of God, but it has something to do with the capacity to make decision and judgments and to choose courses of action that are rooted in the character of God. When we speak wisely, we share the family likeness of God himself. Wisdom is needed for long-term planning and for immediate conversations and everything in between. In the best of outcomes it is written throughout like a stick of Blackpool rock.

 

Yet there are some vice-like pressures that squeeze wisdom out today. Here are three.

 

We have too much information in our lives. We generate as much information every ten minutes as the first ten thousand generations of humanity combined. It hits us daily like a tsunami and what makes it especially hard to handle is it doesn’t come to us in order of priority. The most important pieces of information are buried among trivia and we may not even get to the vital stuff because our interest is sapped just by browsing what the algorithm has decided we should see. We now consume more than twenty times the information we did a decade ago. That really messes with our judgment. For those who need to stay connected, there are no easy answers, though sometimes just turning off the tap occasionally can go a long way.

 

The second way that wisdom is squeezed is how quick decision making is extolled over slow in life. If we take quick action, we look decisive and in control. Other people relax because we are dealing with problems that might otherwise grow. It’s true that we sometimes have to move with speed, but slow decision making allows space for wisdom, an encounter with God and for the unfolding of a situation that might become clearer with time. Facebook invented the phrase ‘move fast and break things’. There’s a touch of arrogance about that. This is the problem with moving fast all the time: we end up breaking things that shouldn’t be broken. Swift action is sometimes needed, but patience is also a gift from God that we neglect.

 

The third problem we face is that fewer conversations are had face to face anymore, especially in the workplace. As a result we have become less embodied. We learn to interpret the subtle facial expressions people make as we meet them in life. This helps us to relate well; we can see if there is a slight change in face, body posture or voice. When we relate digitally, these clues drop away, we are left grasping after people’s mood and start to misinterpret each other. I suspect this is one reason, among others, why the world is becoming an angrier place. We have de-incarnated our relationships, becoming disembodied in how we talk.

 

These three developments: copious information, speedy decision making and disembodied relationships are all components of Artificial Intelligence. AI is something of an idol for us, and it’s said we become like the things we worship. We should aspire to build a church where digital communication does not take over from face to face interaction, especially when we have to discuss difficult matters. The easy option is to hide behind a phone or a laptop. The godlier option is to look someone in the face and seek to resolve problems as a partner, not an adversary.

 

In meeting face to face, we see the image of God in the other person and the Holy Spirit meets us in the meeting of eyes. St Paul did not just say: be filled with the Holy Spirit. He also said: be imitators of me. We share God’s loving character with one another when we meet face to face, and that love is deeply contagious.