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The Wisdom Well

Thoughts about the human condition

I once knew a man who, unhappy in his wealth, decided to become a street philanthropist. Having converted his assets to cash he went into the city searching for souls to share his riches. By the time he found his first recipient he discovered that his wallet, and his quest for happiness, had been lifted.

I come upon a painting titled Evil, a dark disk on a white field. As I ponder the piece I wonder if it is a sooty solid suspended against a pallid backdrop, or is it a dark place seen through the hole in a snowy sheet? Does the circle's edge define a black object or a murky void? Perception vacillates between two realities. Which is background and which is foreground? Is evil the canvas or the paint?

I have known people who thought life was more a journey than a hike. They thought that the destination rather than the path was the purpose. Led by impulse, intuition, or instinct, they only wanted to get some place. But like a mirage, the destination never got closer, and they missed much of the scenery along the way.

Our beliefs are currency. We spend them on truths, invest them in reason, and donate them to speculation. We buy houses of sanity, sustenance of hope, and jewels of joy. When the seller of these wares is a sage you are enlightened. When he is a charlatan you are hoodwinked. A skeptic is a wealthy miser.

Over the long course of human history there have been only two fellowships, "we" and "they." Everyone seems to have belonged to the former even though the latter was indisputably much larger. On many occasions the "we" group was quite small, in some cases two or fewer. But invariably that exclusive membership was superior in wits and will.

A mob is a monster. Its temper is ugly and it roars a beastly noise. The thing moves on many feet looking for prey, then strikes with mindless savagery. With countless arms it wrecks and razes, reels and ruins. The creature has no brain. The only way to stop it is to tear it apart, to sever it into its cowardly components.

Money and influence are as much the tools of war as men and munitions. Board rooms and back rooms can be the battlefield as well as land, sea and air. Fortunes and egos are casualties as are soldiers and sovereignties. In every case the contest is for control. And invariably, when it is all over, in any arena, the victors savor their glory while the vanquished plot their revenge.

The mind is a prisoner of the head. We think it is free, yet it is confined for life. Death is the only door. When we pass through it, will we find some ethereal immortality, or the oblivion from where we came?

I once believed a mature society should be a meadow coming alive in the warmth of the morning sun. Poverty and ignorance should have been mere mushrooms on the land that by day's end would shrivel and disappear. Instead they were intractable thistles rooted in the soil, and, like hardy weeds, flowered in the field the whole season.