socrates - Eric Attica

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about.

In my culture, knowing is a virtue. It’s a symbol of power to know things (presidents and professors and CEOs are expected to be in the know), and an embarrassment to be ignorant.

Have you ever pretended to know something, or have seen something? I’ve said I’ve seen Psych, even though I’ve only seen two episodes all the way through, and I’ve definitely pretended to know the story of Orpheus in Greek mythology. What if I asked you right now why the sky is blue? Do you know? Would you pretend to know?

As a scholar-in-training, it’s my job to know things. But I can only learn things if I admit I don’t know them. Yesterday I realized that I really don’t know how rivers work. Where does the water actually come from? Why doesn’t the water run out? Why is it easier to grow things around rivers? Dumb questions—anyway, I found and read an article for grades 5–12 about how rivers work, and now I think I understand the world a little better.

It’s the ancient question: Why was Socrates wise? The prophetess says there is no man wiser than he, and Socrates decides to try find a wiser person in order to test her words. “I know that I have no wisdom, small or great,” he says. He talks to all occupations of society and discovers that that they are all less wise than they think they are, and realizes that he his wise not because his wisdom is great, but because he accurately knows that he knows nothing.

Ignorance may not be a virtue, but being honest about one’s ignorance is. What do you think? Have you asked any “dumb questions” lately?

Not What You Do, But Who You Are

Socrates once said (in Plato’s Phaedrus) that there are two kinds of people:

“…if their compositions are based on knowledge of the truth, and they can defend or prove them, when they are put to the test, by spoken arguments, which leave their writings poor in comparison of them, then they are...worthy of a higher name, befitting the serious pursuit of their life… Wise, I may not call them; for that is a great name which belongs to God alone; lovers of wisdom or philosophers is their modest and befitting title… And he who cannot rise above his own compilations and compositions, which he has been long patching, and piecing, adding some and taking away some, may be justly called poet or speech-maker or law-maker.”

In other words, to the true lover of wisdom, it’s more important to understand what is true than to produce great things–because only in that understanding can one produce the greatest things.

During the last couple months, I haven’t been especially productive at “piecing together my compositions”–I haven’t produced anything particularly beautiful or noteworthy. But I have been learning, living, exploring, and experiencing as much as possible, and if Socrates is right, then the good character that I’m trying to get is much more valuable than any physical thing I ever compose. After all, very few people are ever remembered for making great literature, music, or art. What people are remembered for is being a good parent, or spouse, or teacher, or friend.

Tl;dr: I’ll always be working on some composition or another. But it’s the person you become, not what you leave behind, that really means something. ∎