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.”
Wisdom in Community
Month: June 2025
The Wisdom of Fun Home in the Age of AI
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.
Reading for Wisdom in the Age of AI
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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
In Praise of Hard Work
Photos: Vintage Classics, Picador, Signet Classics, Penguin Classics, Penguin Classics, Harper Perennial
Continue reading “In Praise of Hard Work”Wisdom, like the pursuit of truth more generally, demands hard work.
Reading for Wisdom Today
Portions of this post first appeared in Inside Higher Ed and are reprinted here with permission
Photo: Love Books Review
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.
Let This Book Give You Heart
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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
Pillars of Salt
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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.
The Wisdom to Know the Difference
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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
Serenity and Acceptance
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Continue reading “Serenity and Acceptance”Wisdom and happiness have long been associated with a certain serenity—an acceptance of one’s life and one’s self, in all their beauties, limitations, and imperfections.
A Lovely Thing Done Together
Photo: Afrocentric Confessions
Continue reading “A Lovely Thing Done Together”Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created.
Toni Morrison, “The Nobel Lecture in Literature”