Wisdom can be mysterious, it comes from experience and is mostly recognized in hindsight. I hear people say that young people cannot be wise, they can only be smart.
I think this is true to a great degree, because young people often lack this expanded experience needed to achieve wisdom.
Consider conventional wisdom, those time-tested nuggets of advice that often get touted as common sense.
Take the age-old proverb, "early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." sounds sensible, right? But common sense isn't always common practice, especially for young people.
How many of us actually prioritize a good night's sleep over that extra episode of our favorite show or mindlessly scrolling through social media a bit more?
This disconnect between knowing and doing highlights a key limitation of conventional wisdom.
What's Conventional Wisdom?
One could define conventional wisdom as the collective "knowledge" that forms the bedrock of our assumptions and experiences about the world. It's the wisdom of the collective, gleaned from experience and tradition for generations.
At first, it's a bit natural to scoff at its predictability and boringness like I did, but this kind of wisdom offers a valuable safety net of sorts, in that it provides a foundation of common sense principles that guide us through life's everyday situations.
For instance, the time tested wisdom to "look before you leap" ingrates caution and helps us avoid needless risks.
And when navigating a new social setting, conventional wisdom might advise us to smile, make eye contact, and introduce ourselves.
These simple guidelines can help us avoid awkward blunders and make a positive first impression.
In my view, it is akin to a safety net when we're first learning to ride a bike or learning to swim. True, it probably will not guarantee us a smooth sailing, but it catches us when we falter, preventing major wipeouts.
The trouble is, crowds or the collective aren't always the brightest bulbs in the chandelier. These time worn adages are products of their time and do not always account for the ever evolving changes of the modern world.
The Limitations of the Collective Mind
Conventional wisdom often treats "common sense" as an absolute truth, failing to consider that common sense is shaped by the times.
Meaning, what worked for our grandparents might not apply in our fast-paced, tech-driven world. A good example is the age-old advice to "get a college degree to secure a good job." A valuable concept in the past, but doesn't hold the same weight in today's job market.
My main issue with conventional wisdom is that over time it stifles creativity and independent thinking. Since, it discourages us from questioning the status quo and venturing off the beaten path.
If we had to default to conventional wisdom most of the time on many of the things we do, then we might never have seen revolutionary inventions like the personal computer or the Internet.
This is why it's important and necessary to develop a healthy dose of skepticism and independent thinking alongside an appreciation for the foundational knowledge conventional wisdom provides.
Without that, conventional wisdom runs the risk of breeding a stale kind of common sense, out of touch with the ever evolving world we live in.
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