Amongst the threats to the survival of wisdom as a public virtue are truth decay, fake news, filtered news bubbles, disrespecting otherness, intellectual narrowness, information gluttony, self proclaimed personal expertise, disqualifying the expertise of others we disagree with, culturally encouraged pursuit of self interest, political polarisation, refusal to question long held assumptions, erasure of ethical road signs, reductionis mockery of virtue, and intermingled with each of these, the rapid deterioration of a publicly agreed standard of social discourse and speech ethics.
More on this in due course. For now, these words:
"When a stupid man talks, contention follows;his words provoke blows. The tongue of a stupid person is his undoing; his lips put lives in jeopardy. (Prov 18.6-7)
"When pride comes in, in comes contempt; but wisdom goes hand in hand with modesty. Integrity is a guide for the upright; the perfidious are ruined by their own duplicity…By the blessing of the upright a city is raised to greatness, but the words of the wicked tear it down." (11.2,3,11)
Leave a Reply