John Stuart Mill said in 1867: “Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.” Let his remarks serve as the context for what follows. 

It might seem strange for me to say, but evil derives from order; folly, from chaos. And also, strangely, the results of both can be the same.


Take the Russian invasion of Ukraine, call it Mr. Putin’s War, as an example of order. The man planned the war. The result? Injury, torture, destruction, and death perpetrated by Russians against Ukrainians. The latest example of this ordered evil as of this writing, is the massacre of civilians in a town near the Ukrainian capital. 


Take the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the crisis at the US border. The result? Injury, torture, destruction, and death perpetrated by human traffickers, drug cartels, MS-13 gang members, and individuals who rob and murder without compunction. Ask anyone who lives along the border about the chaos caused by the Biden Administration’s open border policy and refusal to maintain policies that had significantly diminished the border problems. Ask the once-free Afghanistan women who no longer have the freedom to go to schools, who have been subjected to restrictions reimposed by the Taliban, and who are subject to a tyrannical group that now has some 80 billion dollars worth of military equipment and developed properties left in the helter-skelter and unnecessarily hasty withdrawal of the US military, how the folly of the US government has harmed them.

I think of Mill's comment about "the means which he helps to supply" as applicable to my tax dollars that go to supply a government I believe to be in a state of foolish chaos and applicable to my gasoline dollars that might have supported the invasion of Ukraine when I unknowingly bought Russian oil. But I see myself and so many others as being impotent in the face of both evil and folly, neither of which we can stop. Take this blog as my "protest," to use the term Mill uses. 


The Putin Administration has purposefully precipitated a tragedy and forced the emigration of millions of Ukrainians. The Biden Administration simply refused to impose or maintain order that would have eliminated the chaos and the tragic conditions imposed on migrants and on the women of Afghanistan. The former is a manifestation of evil; the latter, a manifestation of the extremes of human folly.


Evil and Folly. The results are the same.

No matter how hard I try, I cannot wake up without unanswered questions that represent failings of a limited mental capacity, I suppose, or maybe failings of attitude or work ethic: Had I worked harder every day, I might have answers. I’m guessing there are people “out there” who wake content in their knowledge; I’m just not one of them. Yet, I have accumulated knowledge from life experiences and from study. My failing lies in a simple truism: Knowledge isn’t wisdom though it is probably wisdom’s chief predicate. Wisdom seems to be more than the sum of its parts.


I see the detachment between knowledge and wisdom when someone asks me for advice on a problem important to them, maybe a problem on “what’s the next step” or one on “how do I handle this situation.” And I find my shortcomings particularly bothersome when the problem involves emotions. I’m just not one of those who can, regardless of my empathy, advise on matters of the heart.


But maybe I’m not alone. Possibly, you, too, feel a bit inadequate when someone asks for advice on human interactions. Why you? Why not some guru? Those asking for advice often go away a bit dissatisfied, leaving the “advisor” recognizing limitations and that gap between knowledge and wisdom.


And what troubles me in the morning when I face a multitude of as yet unanswered questions about life and “stuff,” is that my only avenue to wisdom seem to lie in either analogy or logic.
The limitations of the former lie in the irrelevance of one situation to another. No two situations are precisely the same; that’s why “analogies limp.” And the limitations of the latter lie in the disconnect between rationality and emotion. Logic is great for problems that lend themselves to methodical thinking. Unfortunately, it usually has little relevance to emotional problems though cognitive psychologists and yield theory therapists might argue differently. Cognition works, I’ll grant, but only after the person seeking advice opens up to a particular methodology.


If I were to awake tomorrow morning with no unanswered questions, I shall have reached a state of wisdom. That condition is unreal, of course, but it suggests that I will always have a reason for waking.