From Clever and Menial to Wise and Meaningful

Our current modern society -- I think we went directly from industrial to incomprehensible -- can best be described as clever and menial.  In order to keep the whole "economy" rolling, our schools produce clever graduates and most jobs are menial in nature.  Schools are designed to produce the technocrats described in John Ralston Saul's Voltaire's Bastards.  (If you are looking for an explanation of the current administration's modus operandi, look no further.)

We need the mindfulness described by John Kabat-Zinn in Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness.  However, like many solutions, mindfulness ends up being applied as a balm to help us deal with the realities of our fast and furious -- and incomprehensible -- society.

We need to change those realities.  We need a society that produces an environment that utilizes technology as a tool rather than something that controls our lives.  We need a society that allows us to move from clever and menial to wise and meaningful.  A society that encourages comprehensive analysis rather than the "fair and balanced" drivel of today's media.  (When I listen to NPR, I feel as if I am trapped in a traction-less time warp.)

We also need a society that is loaded with compassion.  Today's society has produced a mind-boggling host of problems.  Obesity, hearing loss, ADD, mental illness and an inability to confront reality are just a few.  What we need is a school and a society that produces students that are a combination of a monk/nun and Thomas Jefferson.

The vision is of a school -- and a society -- that is operated as a spa.  Create a school that provides an education in the art of living, rather than the art of cleverness.  Students will learn to master some form of an art and/or science while learning how we got to this problem-laden point in history.  While a degree will be granted after four years, students could remain in the "working scholarship" arrangement indefinitely.  (A bit of a warning here.  Comprehensive learning can be addictive.)  Guests at the spa can participate in all of the educational activities or they can simply get a breather from the pollution of contemporary society.

Preferably, it should produce a way to store wealth.  The current system is vulnerable in this area and many retirees will ultimately lose much of their savings as the result of highly inflated values in the current technocrat-driven investment system.  The system is propped up by a bizarre system of incentives that disproportionately benefits those who are most clever.

It's time to go beyond clever.

Matt   

Comments

[Della]

My handy dandy old dictionary provides further elaboration on the words wise and clever. Interestingly enough, the base of the word wise is weid (to see, know). In latin it is videre (vision).

Clever in english is cliver, replacing the earlier deliver in literary english. Its base is to cleave (hence, discern, as in a skill) either directly or via claw, hand. In the sense "adroit with the hand".

So the former truly is about overall intuition while the latter translates into much more specific or manual skills (and it's not much of a stretch to menial from there).