Peter Starr on Wisdom and Culture
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Continue reading “Wisdom Matters: Reading Literature for a Wiser World”Some moments in human history are clearly wiser than others. In politics, and in social life more generally, ours seems strikingly unwise.
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Continue reading “Epilogue: AI Reads Me”You are an academic writing a critique of the conception of wisdom outlined in Peter Starr’s blog at Wiscult.com. What are the principal shortcoming of this conception and how would you suggest rectifying them?
Continue reading “Wisdom in Community”In short, what Alison Bechdel says of the essentialist/anti-essentialist debate applies to wisdom as well: “Clearly, [we] need to rethink this thing.”
Continue reading “The Wisdom of Fun Home in the Age of AI”If wisdom requires that we not take ourselves too seriously “as the center of everything,” then it is appropriate to ask whether the absence of self-mockery in both the generative AI essays and our work as literary critics does not mean that they, and we, fall short of wisdom as Bechdel sees it.
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Continue reading “Reading for Wisdom in the Age of AI”The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Isaac Asimov, Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations
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Continue reading “In Praise of Hard Work”Wisdom, like the pursuit of truth more generally, demands hard work.
Portions of this post first appeared in Inside Higher Ed and are reprinted here with permission
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Continue reading “Reading for Wisdom Today”Cultivating intellectual humility initiates a virtuous circle, the result of which is a greater capacity for wisdom in all its dimensions.
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Continue reading “Let This Book Give You Heart”Lastly, if you should ever doubt that a series of dry words in a government document can shatter spirits and demolish lives, let this book erase that doubt. Conversely, if you should be of the conviction that we are powerless to change those dry words, let this book give you heart.
Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman
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Continue reading “Pillars of Salt”In Vonnegut, that which survives being proofed by satire, as Billy Pilgrim is so mercilessly in Slaughterhouse Five, becomes both human and wise.
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Continue reading “The Wisdom to Know the Difference”God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Reinhold Niebuhr, Serenity Prayer