I have been thinking about wisdom and time.
– That sounds pretentious.
Quite the opposite! The pursuit of timeless wisdom is pretentious. I am trying to think radical humility in the face of our own finite minds.
– Empty words! Odious blabber! If we try to think ourselves outside our own time, we are implicitly assuming the vantage point of eternity, and that is impossible.
You are the one thinking too theoretically, if you allow me to echo Hegel here.
– Hegel’s echo IS Hegel
I am serious. The practical wisdom I mean is that… it is difficult to formulate… we can learn to entrust future generations with our current ideals, and trust that they will improve upon them, rather than rushing to realize them in our own lifetime.
– For example?
We don’t need to reach Mars in our lifetime. Russia doesn’t need to become a democracy in the first half of the 21th century. The take-off or exponential leap of AI doesn’t have to happen in 2027.
– Festina lente?
Our culture is a permanent gold rush of ideas. Whoever comes first.
– Sure! That’s what keeps life interesting! Why would you want to ‘elongate’ the era of inferior technology?
Externalities. The ideas might be golden, but we can no longer keep track of the arsenic leeching into the ground.
– Spare me your metaphors, writer. The only thing that can solve the problems of acceleration is more acceleration.
I refuse to believe that. Our present generation has the responsibility to lay the foundations of something we can’t quite comprehend yet. We are on the construction site of a new tower of Babel, and our leaders are only thinking about the prestigious top floors.
– Cut it with the metaphors already. Our so-called leaders want to have historical relevance.
Precisely! They haven’t fully embraced the fact that future leaders will be even more historically relevant. The only way they can guarantee their own relevance is by sabotaging their own project.
– Sabotaging the Mars mission, Great-Russia and the advent of strong AI?
Yes.
[Shrugs]
– I think it’s bonkers but I’ll keep your silly psychoanalysis in mind, so I know who to call, when the time comes.
When the wisdom comes.
Short dialogues #2: on wisdom and time
