Wisdom and Madness

“Cleverness is not wisdom.”
                     – Euripides,  The Bacchæ 405 BC

In 2016 in this blog-space, our former PMO colleague and good friend Michael Madden wrote a piece entitled Will Humankind Be the Cause of its Own Destruction? The content was a somber exploration of topics hinted at in the title. Several of us rolled our eyes and said, “Wow Michael, that’s a bit heavy for our friendly little blog.” My take on it was more practical. I was in the queue to write the blog post right after his.

I remember silently stewing, thinking, “Geez, this is going to be a tough act to follow, I better keep it light, thanks Captain Buzzkill.” Or I might have actually even said that out loud to Michael. His cube was right next to mine back then. It’s coming back to me now; I did bark those words at him through our shared cube wall.

In hindsight, maybe Michael was onto something. Recent events in this country and around the world are beyond troubling. As if two and half years of pandemic wasn’t enough, the hits just keep on coming. Putin wages a brutal war of attrition while rather successfully banking on the short attention span of the West. Lake Mead has dried up and in England, it is 106 degrees Fahrenheit as I write this, but climate change deniers deny on. The ongoing matter of school shootings literally brings me near to tears just thinking about it. Michael has shown us something at the very least: Never doubt the dire foresight of an Irishman.

I wish I possessed the cognitive dissonance needed now to “keep it light”, maybe write about what I bought on Prime Day. Fear and loathing propel me elsewhere. I am not one of these phone-junkie doom-scrollers, though. I read the BBC for 10-20 minutes on most but not every day. Information, the quantity and frequency of it, is not the source of my worry. It’s the subsequent desire to make sense of the world. Where to find wisdom in the midst of all the madness.

Lacking any one person today who might help, I often look for insight by reading quotes from accomplished people of the past. Writers, philosophers, scientists, important leaders throughout history have seen, endured, and processed more than any of us mired in the present. Over the years, I’ve collected quotes in a few scattered Word docs as I came across them while reading. They offer a bit of clarity, sometimes even inspiration.

In this post, I thought I might share a few of these quotes with you, dear readers, in the hope one or two might resonate.

The Unknown

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.”
                     – Voltaire

“The Edge, there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”
                     – Hunter S. Thompson

“Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But there is no doubt in my mind that the lion belongs with it even if he cannot reveal himself to the eye all at once because of his huge dimension. We see him only the way a louse sitting upon him would.”
                     – Albert Einstein

Change

“Desperation is the raw material of drastic change.”
                     – William S. Burroughs, The Western Lands 1987

“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
                    – James Baldwin, As Much Truth As One Can Bear 1962

The Modern World

“The great problem facing modern man is that, that the means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live.”
                     – Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.”
                     – Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity 1949

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
                     – Albert Einstein

Resilience

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.”
                     – Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“Early in life, I learned that all life is a purposeful struggle”
                     – Deacon Jones

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along”. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
                     – Eleanor Roosevelt

And I wouldn’t be me if I did not leave you with these parting words from the great man himself.

“Here’s to 1942, here’s to a year of toil—a year of struggle and peril, and a long step forward towards victory. May we all come through safe and with honour.”
                     – Winston Churchill, New Year’s toast, January 1, 1942

If you have a favorite quote that carries you through difficult, confusing days, please do me and our community the favor of sharing it in the comments.