On an episode of Leave it to Beaver (I don’t know which), Wally asks his dad about some problem (I don’t even remember the problem). Wally says to his dad, more or less, “I thought you would have read some book on the subject.” You have to give me some slack here, but I believe Ward Cleaver says something to the effect that there isn’t such a book or that he doesn’t know of such a book. Or maybe, he just says, “No.” It’s a snippet of a video replay that I saw yet a smaller snippet of when I went through the kitchen to get a cup of coffee, so I’m guessing the context.
Two things come to mind: 1) How could there be any topic not covered in some book? and 2) How could anyone be expected to have read something on every topic? Maybe one more. How have we, after thousands of years of thinking and writing about human problems, have so little wisdom that our problems remain, cycling through generations as though each one has no connection to the past?
That our problems do recycle is an indication that no utopia is ever possible and that proposed political and social panaceas are always flawed. All (Yes, all) utopian solutions to human problems generate their own problems because people can be unpredictable and arbitrary. There are just too many variables for anyone to control. Breakdowns can even occur for unknown reasons and through seemingly motiveless behaviors. If such variety didn’t exist, then none of us would watch a detective story on TV or read a mystery novel. Those basic plots that Christopher Booker wrote about in Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories* would be limited to just seven stories and no more if we excluded the variations that individuals and environments (fictional or nonfictional) impose on those plots.
Even if Ward Cleaver had read a book on whatever problem for which Wally sought a solution, chances are that the book did not cover the nuances of the boy’s situation. And that’s the reason that all approaches to every problem need to be based on creativity. Old solutions don’t always work. New solutions to old problems are possible, but in a world stuck in a library of those old solutions, getting people to try something different, something that seems doomed to failure on the basis of the old solutions, is difficult.
Our libraries have failed us not because they contain no wisdom, but rather because the wisdom they contain isn’t applicable to each generation. Every generation has to write its own book, but unfortunately, having written it, the generation passes from the living to the dead, leaving another tome that the succeeding generation either fails to read or finds inapplicable.
And so, we go on seeking wisdom. We ask our elders. We ask what our elders learned. We seek hard and fast written solutions, and we end up struggling to write our version of the story, to complete the plot with variations we understand but the next generation will fail to understand. Seems as though even people with library cards can’t benefit from the storehouse of “wisdom” all previous generations have generously provided. It also seems as though every generation is somewhat illiterate with regard to books covering topics and circumstances (plots?) that involve recurrent problems.
Apparently, even the “great” thinkers fail in conveying their wisdom. Why? Two reasons. First, they might pose general solutions, and second, they might offer examples foreign to the mindset of the next generation.** But don’t let any of this stop you from writing that next book of solutions. Maybe the tail end of your generation, if not the beginning of the next, will profit from your wisdom--if they are both literate and inclined to visit your library.
*2004. If Booker’s approach is Freudian, it makes another point. A Freudian would accept that some past experience can affect the present (though some cigars are just cigars). The variations of the seven basic plots include metaplots, and most of us would probably say our motivations are a mix, a complex, and that such complexity defines the nature of individuality and an individual’s problems.
** Take the complexity of social media and the human “problems” associated with them as examples. If there are “problems” associated with social media, is it because nothing (i.e., no wisdom) was in place to provide preemptive solutions? Or is it because prior to the evolution of the problems, the generation facing them was illiterate to the potential solutions offered by past generations?
Two things come to mind: 1) How could there be any topic not covered in some book? and 2) How could anyone be expected to have read something on every topic? Maybe one more. How have we, after thousands of years of thinking and writing about human problems, have so little wisdom that our problems remain, cycling through generations as though each one has no connection to the past?
That our problems do recycle is an indication that no utopia is ever possible and that proposed political and social panaceas are always flawed. All (Yes, all) utopian solutions to human problems generate their own problems because people can be unpredictable and arbitrary. There are just too many variables for anyone to control. Breakdowns can even occur for unknown reasons and through seemingly motiveless behaviors. If such variety didn’t exist, then none of us would watch a detective story on TV or read a mystery novel. Those basic plots that Christopher Booker wrote about in Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories* would be limited to just seven stories and no more if we excluded the variations that individuals and environments (fictional or nonfictional) impose on those plots.
Even if Ward Cleaver had read a book on whatever problem for which Wally sought a solution, chances are that the book did not cover the nuances of the boy’s situation. And that’s the reason that all approaches to every problem need to be based on creativity. Old solutions don’t always work. New solutions to old problems are possible, but in a world stuck in a library of those old solutions, getting people to try something different, something that seems doomed to failure on the basis of the old solutions, is difficult.
Our libraries have failed us not because they contain no wisdom, but rather because the wisdom they contain isn’t applicable to each generation. Every generation has to write its own book, but unfortunately, having written it, the generation passes from the living to the dead, leaving another tome that the succeeding generation either fails to read or finds inapplicable.
And so, we go on seeking wisdom. We ask our elders. We ask what our elders learned. We seek hard and fast written solutions, and we end up struggling to write our version of the story, to complete the plot with variations we understand but the next generation will fail to understand. Seems as though even people with library cards can’t benefit from the storehouse of “wisdom” all previous generations have generously provided. It also seems as though every generation is somewhat illiterate with regard to books covering topics and circumstances (plots?) that involve recurrent problems.
Apparently, even the “great” thinkers fail in conveying their wisdom. Why? Two reasons. First, they might pose general solutions, and second, they might offer examples foreign to the mindset of the next generation.** But don’t let any of this stop you from writing that next book of solutions. Maybe the tail end of your generation, if not the beginning of the next, will profit from your wisdom--if they are both literate and inclined to visit your library.
*2004. If Booker’s approach is Freudian, it makes another point. A Freudian would accept that some past experience can affect the present (though some cigars are just cigars). The variations of the seven basic plots include metaplots, and most of us would probably say our motivations are a mix, a complex, and that such complexity defines the nature of individuality and an individual’s problems.
** Take the complexity of social media and the human “problems” associated with them as examples. If there are “problems” associated with social media, is it because nothing (i.e., no wisdom) was in place to provide preemptive solutions? Or is it because prior to the evolution of the problems, the generation facing them was illiterate to the potential solutions offered by past generations?
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