Do you want to be right or happy ?

Sitting around with a group of people discussing the challenges of communication in relationships when one person offered an insight that I really liked:

"You can be right or you can be happy."

Can't you be both? 

One person suggested: "If I'm right, then I am happy."

"Ah, but if you think you are right, reason surely tells you that you may be mistaken. Right ? So your happiness is not assured."

Turns out that Voltaire has wrestled with this question in a thought-story which is produced in its entirety below.

What is truth?

La Vérité sortant du puits armée de son martinet pour châtier l'humanité

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1896)

   

• The truth is very often not knowable
      
• The truth is that many beliefs are formed without knowledge
     
• The truth is that people claiming to know the truth are generally deluded
     
• The truth is that a fiction can be powerful (think placebo, nocebo, etc.)
     
• The truth is that truth may not be a supreme virtue
     
• The truth is that what works, practical wisdom, may be all that matters

Sharing wisdom: reflections on the road to the country for old men

M.C. Escher

Not everyone is lucky enough to journey into the "country for old men" (and women). And even among those who are lucky enough to reach old-age, not all learn as much from the journey as they might. Some arrive at the destination having missed the journey.

Growing old is inevitable, growing up is optional.

Is practical wisdom valuable?

Even in a society which is increasingly technical and technological, there is some sense that wisdom is a worthy goal, a knowledge worth attaining. Adapting the words of Aristotle in Nichomacean Ethics only a little, we can see that his observation applies still today:

"Although the young may be experts in geometry and mathematics [and technology and computers] and similar sorts of knowledge, they nonetheless lack practical wisdom. Such wisdom is gained from experience which the young do not possess, for experience is the fruit of years." (adapted from Nichomachean Ethics 1142a).

So even while we may rely on our children, our grand-children or both to help us download apps to our mobile phone, to show us how to connect our "smart" television to Netflix and how to stream music through Spotify to our tablet and other devices, there is still a place for wisdom.