The Death of Wisdom The Rise of Folly: Why We Must Care

By Dr. Arnold O. Thompson

"Wisdom is riding on a passenger train of time on a collision course with destiny, and we are all in for the ride. This book is about wisdom riding on this train."

These words, as part of the introduction of the book, set the specific context and overall challenge and purpose for this book. Here, wisdom is likened to a lady riding on the train of civilization past prominence in a social, political, and spiritual direction. But the book argues in recent times, she has been forced to ride in the back of the train. Her wisdom of the ages is despised, and her steady influences of the ages are ignored.

Now we live in a vast field of folly. How do we find our way out? How do we see her, hear her, and love her again? This is the story of this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638742517

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The Death of Wisdom The Rise of Folly

Why We Must Care

Dr. Arnold O. Thompson

Copyright © 2021 by Dr. Arnold O. Thompson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

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Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, ® NIV ® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc., unless otherwise noted.

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

To Rabbi Modi who took the time to share with me his knowledge and perspective of his people on the meaning of wisdom.

To Phyllis Beckford who asked me many difficult questions in the writing of this book: What is knowledge? What is intellect? What is wisdom? And what are the differences between them?

To my Mother who left me wise council in words and deeds; like mailing me an American dollar each month to help me in college. It was all she could. Many months it was all I had. The love and wisdom she gave in her days with me were priceless.

Introduction

There is wisdom in everything, but only the wise notice.

Doubtless you are the only people who matter, and wisdom will die with you!

—Job 12:1

A runaway train

Wisdom is not dead—not yet. But she is getting there. She is riding on a passenger train of time on a collision course with destiny, and we are all in for the ride. This book is about wisdom riding on this train. She is like an unwelcomed guest pulled, pushed, and placed to the back of the train. She once held prominence as adviser to kings and queens and commoners as well. Her advice and counsel brought peace, hope, and prosperity to many. When she flourishes, the people are blessed; even nature rejoices.

Now they say the train is moving too fast; they say her old rules are too restrictive for modern life; they say her values are out of touch with everyday emerging rights and changing individual claims. They say her values and freedom do not mix.

This is the prevailing notion: even as the train now travels through technological tunnels so advanced and controlling, they lay bare any pretentions of perceived individual freedom, values, or privacy values of travelers. With her assistance, time was always filled with potential and hope. Now with her at the back of the train, it is like riding tracks into a black hole of civilization.

Figure 1. All aboard!

She is dying for being dismissed at the back of the train in a car believed to be filled with misguided old notions that good moms and dads always wanted to instill in their children. All now in the back of the train. The teachings of God, love and forgiveness, mercy and grace, family values are all stacked in the last car of the train. The prominent drivers of the train—technology, money, raw power, and greed—are rotting in the cab of neglect, and no one knows where they are leading us on the tracks of folly.

Wisdom cried out from the back of the train, You cannot end in the right place if you travel on the wrong tracks. This book is about checking the tracks, asking the right questions, seeking the right answers, and checking on alternative courses. This defends against those traveling on the front cars with delight and deceptions of power, popularity, and pleasure—traveling just for the ride. They are blinded by their power and privilege and the belief that they own the cars and the links to everyone on the tracks. They are indifferent to any others further back on the train. Wisdom says this is folly, for everyone on this train will crash together with the wrong conductor for being on the wrong tracks. This book is about who we allow to conduct the train—wisdom or folly? Good or evil? Technology values or human values? Truth or falsehood?

The wisdom we study in this book—riding the back of this imaginary train of civilization—is being weakened each day we fail to follow her ways. Yet she is never old. She is never outdated. She could not be. She was on this train before anyone stepped in. Indeed, the wisest book ever written said she created the train: I, wisdom, was with the Lord when He began His work long before he made anything (Prov. 8:22 NCV). By wisdom, the LORD laid the earth’s foundations, by understanding He set the heavens in place (3:19). This is the space and time where this book begins.

Wisdom’s fire

Another perspective to view wisdom is to see her like fire. First, it takes a spark to start one. It is a powerful energy force but dormant without something to ignite it. In this kinetic process on which humans have depended since time began is this simple reality: it takes a fire to start a fire. This is one fundamental of wisdom as well. It takes wisdom to acquire wisdom. One needs some fundamental level of wisdom to know wisdom. It may even start at a level of desire. That is, if one lacks wisdom but desires it and seeks it, one will find it. Secondly, in finding wisdom once ignited like fire, one would find a desire to know more. It is like it is said of God that he is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29).

Yet another perspective is illustrated in the popular verbal comeback: It takes one to know one. The same is true of wisdom. It takes someone wise to know, seek, experience, and see the value of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the starting point of wisdom (Prov. 9:10). As these words of King Solomon declared, we must start at the right place. Then we can discover wisdom in everyone and everything around us, even that which is beyond us in our universe. There is wisdom there as well if we pause to look up.

The theme of this book is wisdom is everywhere, but only the wise see it. She is always looking at us. She sees everything and everyone long before surveillance cameras and artificial intelligence. But there is nothing artificial about her. She is real, like a fire in each of us, if only we are wise enough to ignite her. She is as real as the air if only we understand we need her not only to breathe but to be alive. She is as real as the sky that hangs over us and gives us space to grow and achieve our potential. She is as real as fishes in the sea to teach us humility, reminding us of the vast depth of knowledge we do not know; but she does. She is as real as you and me.

Everything we see today, even what we consider advanced, she has seen it all. No matter how weighty the past, it cannot bring her down. The future, no matter what lies ahead, is never a surprise. She was the spark, the fire of our universe. She is the fire that burns in each one to desire more than just existence. She is wisdom. Listen to her scream for love, goodness, and grace in you and me.

I contend in this book (among other important reasons) wisdom is dying because she is being ignored. She has been faithful to show us lessons from time and places, from kingdoms long vanished from the land, but their wise lessons from generations past remain. They left us a stockpile of legacy wisdom there in the historical rubbles of time. But we are bent on ignoring her warnings today. The value of history is only in the lessons it leaves us—in the ones we learn. History is no value to us if we do not learn from it. And if we do not, we leave nothing to the next generation. This is the heart of this book. It is at the heart of "why we must care," which is both a question and a quest of this book.

Propagandas of Our Times

Truth on the chopping block

Not since Pontius Pilate’s famous rhetorical question, What is truth? (John 18:38) has the concept of truth been so maligned in high places. Wisdom—she is like a magnificent great eagle who once scaled the heavens. But now her caretakers, each of us collectively, by omission or commission have plucked her wings. It is like leaving her to die on the landscape of our times. We now question truth’s existence. And for those who yet believe she exists, it poses an additional question—where can we find her? Is there truth or is there not? That is the prevailing question of our generation. Past generations have questioned this for ages—what is truth? How can it be found?

Now there is a significant shift: the question is whether truth even exists at all. A question that leads not to action but to attrition; not to progress but procrastination. So the question now is, why bother? If wisdom is anything, it is the pursuit for truth. Not to believe she exists is like an intellectual and moral death sentence. It is just a matter of time for delusion and folly to triumph.

Like in an information prison camp as big as this world, loudspeakers spread unavoidable messages to a captive audience. Selected soundwaves grab attention from every quarter of the world. Wisdom listens. She heard an attempted answer to Pilate’s long time passing: "Truth is not truth" said by someone in the powerful public space to the world. Wisdom often heard it in the halls of the intellectually curious and even participated. Like an umpire establishes worthy rules of debate and intellectual inquiries of even the question of what truth is and how we know it, from time immemorial, human hearts burn with a quest to know. But now, in this time, a shift from the wisdom winds to a dark side—a side not to pursue the wisdom of truth but to conclude to the world it no longer exists in objective reality.

It is now what anyone and every institution thinks it is: the wisdom of the long valuable search and rigorous struggle in every facet of life. It is a study for truth, suddenly officially no longer necessary, that we are called from high places to believe. What’s left is a hallow empty shell cracking to be noticed, speaking to be heard in a world where truth is no longer believed to exist. When the question What is truth? is no longer rigorously pursued, poverty of the soul ensues; folly fills up empty spaces of the minds and hearts. Wisdom walks the streets alone, like a homeless lady, for she has no place to go, no hearts to stir, no minds to develop, no wayward ways to correct, no intellect to inspire, no spirit to dream. When truth or the pursuit of truth dies within the heart and mind of anyone, wisdom dies with it. It is the reason why we must care.

Figure 2. Alternative facts or alternative tracks?

Alternative facts or tracks?

From the back of the train moving rapidly on the tracks of civilization, wisdom saw a bold graffiti. She was taken back wondering what it meant. Two words that smack wisdom in the face. Two words that defy her, if not logic itself. She is not amused. She could not be. She had traversed the history of discourse and reality and found no place where facts and alternative facts could sit down together for a logical meal. She said, Any alternative to what is known to be cannot be the same thing. Wisdom dies when common sense is forced underground, like six feet under in our times. This book is about that.

The wisdom of my mom would say, Tell a lie, and like feathers cast in the wind, it travels far and wide, and you cannot collect them again. So speak the truth, boy. You never have to worry where they travel. I learned she moves slow at times, the wisdom of truth, but straight even in the wind. No matter how hard it blows, wisdom and truth can sustain character for a lifetime.

Facts are stubborn things. Like wisdom, they stand alone in the arena of reality. They exist with no substitute or equal. They are like the earth’s sun positioned uniquely and dynamically in the universe. To even assume that facts with alternative facts exist is like saying the alternative light is light. It can only be darkness, not light. To assume an alternative to the very nature of truth is to assume the impossible. The alternative to facts could not be facts, only lies. Just as the alternative to light cannot be light, only darkness.

The wisdom ignored is the notion that nothing in this world can stand on its own feet, that everything needs to be supported to exist. So do facts need alternative facts to then produce something factual? Does love needs alternative love to be pure love and mercy and so on into a pit of folly? Alternative facts seek to establish the notion on its face of lies. For any alternative to the stuff of facts leads only in one and only one logical direction. Such logic and official communication and notion is a direct attack on wisdom. She dies a slow death from such uncommon wounds.

Fake news

The modern notion of fake news pushed by powerful political officials is dangerous. I explore such notions here. Fake news is not a political ploy. It is not a campaign strategy. Although it might be used in such ways, at its core, it is much more sinister than that. My point of its danger can be illustrated with the story of the boy who had such fun in his village crying wolf. It was all fun and games until one day when real wolves showed up. He cried and cried Wolf! but no one listened; no one ran for cover; no one was prepared; no one believed; and no one was safe when the wolves came to town.

There are those who cry fake news like the boy who cried wolf with all his heart but could not save his village from hungry wolves because the tables were turned. This time, warnings and direction and vital information for the people’s survival were real, but no one listened, no one believed, no one prepared, and no one was safe when the real danger showed up. All the people were defenseless and unable to distinguish between real and false alarms. This is the fundamental danger with those who play games with the notion of fake news, especially with the nation’s people—it is a dangerous political and social game.

From the prairies and mountains of Africa when the drumbeats send their rhythm to the people across the land, to be understood could mean to be alive. When the sirens sounded in many places across Europe in those days of war, the same was true. It was so from ancient days when news was carried by bullhorns and later by trumpeters—watchmen on the fortified walls—protectors of the realm. Critical news has a long history from ancient times connected to clarity and reliability of communication. It is even more important today when news of our national interest comes to us from such varied sources and especially the most powerful media center in the world. Uncertain sounds create uncertain times.

Wisdom—she calls out in our electronic streets, valleys, and mountains and asks, "If the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle? (1 Cor. 14:8; emphasis mine) This is the folly of crying wolf. This is the dangerous notion of fake news."

Knowledge entropy

Let me be honest. There is a tendency to look back through the rich tunnel of history and see what is generally referred to as a worn-out cliché: the good old days. But despite that, the case presented in this book is to make that very point so that the wise will stand up and care. For with all the intelligent technologies—the massive flood of knowledge available from every corner of this connected world, like the mythical Borg in Star Trek, connected and influence by the collective, this may well be dubbed as the Age of Folly.

This is an age when knowledge crescendo creates an entropy of ignorance, an age when the passengers realize too late their need of wisdom above all else. An age like the efficiency of nuclear-powered energy pitted against the dangerous waste it creates, like new, digitally powered technologies (robotic, AI, privacy, individualism-crashing technologies), except the fallout from waste is not simply hazardous to humans, but the waste of such advance technologies is human themselves—as much as 40 percent of human work and workers in the next fifteen years. All this while wisdom is tied up at the back of the train with no time to consider her input. The train is out of the station, and it is picking up too much speed to be bothered. Because wisdom—to think of her, to consider her, to listen to her—is to slow this train down. Those conductors of the train say it may be too late. Human waste and work disposal have become the waste product of our nuclear-powered technologies—entropy.

Even the best of medication has sides effects and in some cases death. This is an age when knowledge has increased exponentially more than any other age or periods in human recorded history. It is like a grand gift to humanity for this era. What we do with it—or more profound, what it will do to us is yet to be determined. It can be looked back upon as a time when humanity lost its collective minds and souls to the god of technology like the god of Baal in Elijah’s times. Their gods send them no fire on the altars they erected and serve (1 Kgs. 18). It is the same notion Jesus conveyed to his times when he said: The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the people of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom; and now a greater than Solomon is here" (Matt. 12:42).

What would the Queen of the South say to our generation? Would she condemn us as well? For in the glory days of wisdom, she was sought after like a deer drawn to sweet waters for dear life. She traveled in time past freely among the people of the land. In plenty and in want, she was welcomed; she was cherished. Kings and paupers alike sought after her. Those who knew her well-flourished as wise ones in the community, respected and honored for their council—called upon in critical time. She was like old oak trees standing tall in the forest of life, giving welcomed shade and sustenance like springs in the desert.

Children were raised by her proverbs and sayings that stuck like pollen on young flowers, drifting in the winds of time, yet growing strong from her timely directions. Communities sought after her from among their elders, fathers, and prophets who held her dear and precious. They handed her down from ancient of times, like DNA of mind, heart, and soul. The rich tradition of wisdom handed down like genetic gold is gone. It has been replaced by digital code and coding—an empty shell of what once was when we neglect her.

Where have all the wise ones gone?

Where are the wise ones gone that loved her, who imparted her living life force from generation to generation, like strings of pearls valued beyond measure? I will explore such questions here. Is a question to the wise enough to spark inquiry? Where is she now? Who, by her laws, gave birth to nations, kept them strong and enduring until they rejected her, cast her aside, faced their own demise by doing so? Where is she who settled major conflicts, chartered treaties for peace, worked across the isles, worked across nations, restricted weapons of war, rejecting folly and fear, and pursued peace? Where is she who in the souls of leaders stood up for justice, rescued slaves, fought for the fatherless, motherless, friendless, the weak, the poor, the suffering ones, and the children?

Where are the wise followers, those who champion her cause? Where is she who sang from mountaintops and valleys of love between brothers and sisters, songs of freedom and justice for all? Where are the leaders who loved her selfless guidance, direction, and moral choices? Where are they for whom character was of utmost concern and integrity indispensable?

She is not dead, but she has been dying slowly in our modern world for some time now. As wisdom goes, so goes the people. So goes nations. If we allow her to die, everything of value dies with her. It is the reason we must care. For if you plant sweet grapes, you will not get sour ones.

A fight against folly

This book is about the rise of folly in its various representations and what to do about it. It is an argument to care about wisdom in our world, about keeping her alive before we are all lost in our own folly. It is about she who once was cherished, loved, and held in high esteem and is now relegated to the background of civil order, character, and discourse. In her place, folly, like a chameleon, is passed as wit, lies like clowns masquerading as truth, ugliness in behavior dignified by power and fame—a new normal based on old lies.

Folly rises to the top of the hill as civic wisdom languishes at the bottom. Lies in our civil discourse and character now masquerade as political wisdom when she has been long since rejected. She is now like a lonely lady with torch in hand standing tall in the middle of a river, hardly noticed by those who travel by. Her ideals once held in high esteem are a welcome to the tired and tested masses. She now seems like a ghost in a river of lost memories.

Expediency now takes her place, her ideals lost, her warm invitations now lost in time. Barriers and walls of ignorance and folly rise like a dangerous flood for lack of her good foundation. She is forgotten as the river of modern culture and civilization flows away from her. Talk is no longer cheap. She is as good as dead: Where there is no vision, the people perish (Prov. 29:18). Where there is no wisdom, there can be no vision. It is why wisdom calls us to care.

A written witness to wisdom

This book is a cry and a call to wisdom. It is a call to all and especially leaders of every kind to seek after her and embrace her, see that she is talked about in our schools, welcomed in our institutions of higher learning, guarded in our various institutions and given a hearing in our casual conversations. The goal is that she be once again acknowledged in the land and the season of her reign be again visited upon us. Here I shall make a rigorous attempt in chapter 1 to further describe her. For I believe to understand her is to gain her wisdom and learn her value.

I will try to disclose some deceptions that hide her face from ours, showing what she is not, with an attempt to describe further who she is. I will take a further look at wisdom from a more insightful or intellectual consideration of the nature of wisdom. I present in this book a creative graphic model as a workable tool of understanding wisdom, for she is not simple. She demands serious study and contemplation. She is like searching for rare