CLEVER PEOPLE

"Learning is experiencing- everything else is just information" Albert Einstein


Many years ago, a peer in the House of Lords referred to another as having been “educated beyond his intelligence”. After much reflection it occurred to me that this phenomenon was in fact far more widespread and certainly not restricted to that venerable institution.

Now I realise that the peer had not got it quite right. What he really meant was that the other gentleman was “educated beyond his wisdom”. And this certainly is a feature of modern society in general. Particularly since the World Wars but probably since the advent of modern industrialisation and possibly since Adam made that fateful goof, we have emphasised and concentrated our efforts on cleverness at the expense of wisdom. We have created generations of clever but foolish people.


"It wasn't the apple on the tree that caused the sin, it was the "pair" under it" anon

This process can be seen in all spheres of human endeavour. Lets take a few examples-

Housing and post- war “planning” : this is widely accepted as having been a sensible process to have gone through in order to mitigate the worst effects of ribbon development and “uncontrolled” development of green field sites. Yet, what have we created- huge featureless swathes of dull housing estates enough to depress any soul, connected by tarmac ribbons to massive industrial estates and plastic supermarkets.
The issue in this example is not that planning in itself is a bad thing- we would certainly have had much environmental destruction without these limitations on builders and developers. The planning “idea” is probably a good one but we have been clever rather than wise in our management of the process. It is one thing to stop a destructive influence- and quite another to devise a more creative alternative.
One only has to stay in some of our less spoilt towns and villages to get a sense of what we have lost elsewhere. But even here we realise that these communities too have had their hearts ripped out by decades of poor planning. The tourist loves to visit those quaint little places untouched by supermarkets and motorways- but all too often these places are shells without a soul. There is rarely enough local employment, the shops have all but gone and people stay there rather than live there.

But perhaps we are starting to see the error in our ways. Now that every town has its supermarket we are restricting in-town stores, although we are still creating hypermarkets on the fringes. And government is trying to encourage community enterprise and community spirit through help for the voluntary and environmental sectors. We are having to help to create that very infrastructure of support and help which our lifestyle has all but destroyed. The community sector has itself become a growth industry – it is having to pick up the pieces and mend the souls of the victims of modern society.

What about health? Aren’t we living longer and more healthy lives than we were in the past? Well- yes and no. We seem to be living longer and we don’t hear so much about those awful diseases that once afflicted us. Why then is the media permanently obsessed about the state of the Health Service; about lack of money for “basic” health facilities; not enough nurses, not enough doctors. And one has the feeling that if everyone were to be really healthy- the economy would collapse- such is the size of the health industry.
We certainly are being very clever in the medicine department. Multiple heart by-pass operations without anaesthetic; key-hole operations; wonder drugs (!); vaccines against anything and of course genetic engineering. Its difficult not to be wowed by this impressive performance. We are on a roller-coaster of medicinal techno-science. Medical scientists are on a massive spending spree funded by the pharmaceutical industry.

But is this all resulting in healthier people? And how are we measuring health?
We have unfortunately come to see health as the absence of disease- rather than a positive state of being. Measured in terms of lack of disease perhaps we are “healthier”. But this is little comfort for the depressed, the overweight, the lethargic, the insomniac and the inactive who crowd medical centre waiting rooms. How often are people told that their feeling of “illness”, of being unwell, is in their minds- there are no medical signs.

Seen in a broader context it appears that we have exchanged a lot of those acute, life-threatening diseases for a whole raft of chronic, debilitating illnesses which allow us to operate and live, but at a far from optimal level. Many of us are firing only on 2 or 3 cylinders. The medical establishment is not yet clever enough to measure mental and emotional health- perhaps that is a blessing! And until we start to see health and illness in a much more holistic manner we are going to be chasing our tails looking for that illusive state and the illness industry will continue to reap ever larger profits at our expense. 

TRAVEL and MOBILITY
Human response to travel and transport again illustrates the precedence of cleverness over wisdom. The world now has a transport infrastructure which allows the richer minority to travel long distances at high speed and at relatively little immediate financial cost. Mobility is the buzzword that matters. If one is mobile, the world is at your fingertips. And yet now we see that this mobility is stifling, choking us- literally. Asthma and other respiratory illnesses are rising rapidly as a result of widespread air pollution and death or serious injury from car accidents is now a common phenomenon.

So why have our decision makers concentrated so much energy on facilitating mobility for everyone to everywhere? Does unlimited mobility result in greater well-being?

Again, the scientists and technologists have to be given their due- their achievements are truly impressive- Concorde, motorways, undersea tunnels…… But the ultimate achievement- space travel perhaps makes us question how this journey can end and what can we gain from it on a meaningful level. As a society we have failed to put the issue of mobility and human transport into a wider context. We have assumed that travel per se is a good thing and staying put has become loaded with negative resonances.
Looking at a mundane example we can see how facilitated mass travel has, in other ways restricted our life. A couple of decades ago, every town had its hardware shop, often within walking distance- selling DiY, cookery and household items and these could often provide practical advice on a multitude of subjects. Then the hypermarket arrived. Now, to purchase a screw or piece of wood means a car journey to the nearest mega store, parking and walking miles across swathes of tarmac and concrete and, hopefully finding that over packaged item which is only dispensed in quantities suited to the retailer. Gone is the human contact, the helpful advice, the local service and local employment and local variety