Wisdom comes with age.
I’m not just saying this because I feel…well, older…of late, but rather because we’ve already discovered this. There’s not only a time-honored tradition of, but a natural order to, learning from those older than us, those with more experience in life. That, after all, is the promise of apprenticeships, still required in many professions.
We’ve stopped rewarding this, though. Education has replaced experience and deference to elders as the point of recognition in the professional world, and post-modern philosophical relativism has replaced listening to experience in the personal realm. Thus, we have people in their 20’s with MBAs managing people in their 50’s who have been in their profession since they were 18, and a perspective that there can be no higher truth than what one sees in the moment.
The end result, I’ve come to see, is an immature culture, and this is nowhere more evident than our politics. A mature person displays careful use of language, but we use our language instead to incite conflict, resentment, and hate for personal gain. Instead of finding common ground, we paint those with diverging opinions from our own as the enemy. We take no care with our words, and thus our words consume us.
“for we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a mature man who is also able to control his whole body…And consider ships: though very large and driven by fierce winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So too, though the tongue is a small part of the body, it boasts great things. Consider how large a forest a small fire ignites. And the tongue is a fire. The tongue, a world of unrighteousness, is placed among the parts of our bodies; it pollutes the whole body, sets the course of life on fire, and is set on fire by hell.” James 3:2, 4-6, HCSB
I think that we don’t have to look around much to see the course of our lives set on fire at this point. There is power in words, but we don’t recognize that power, because we are immature. Our immaturity breeds a disrespect for our language, and the cycle continues. Language is so much more powerful than military force or laws, because language brings both of these into being.
“War is what happens when language fails.” Margaret Atwood
Our language as a culture is the result of our maturity, or rather lack thereof. We would do well to grow up a bit before we continue speaking.