Wisdom is not optional.

Introduction

People know where to go to find information. But when we ask a more profound question—where do you go for wisdom?—the answer is less forthcoming. For most of us, in fact, our response is simple: I don’t know. People grab from here and there in an autodidactic and often fragmentary fashion which carries a tremendous capacity to exacerbate bullshit and self-deception. The need for wisdom—to live with creative connection in a deep and enlivening way—is too strong to be left behind. Wisdom is the antidote to the self-deception, division, and disconnection that we are currently faced with in our world. So, the question remains, how do we proceed?

Rationalism and Its Discontents

It is my contention that much of our conscious thought, even in the realm of philosophy, is not purely rational but is significantly driven by instinct. Just as we have come to understand that genetics involves more than merely the external features inherited at birth, we must similarly recognize that what we often call ‘rational’ thinking is not simply a product of logical processes. Rather, our thoughts are deeply influenced by unconscious drives which can be likened to forces that subtly steer the course of our reasoning. In fact, a philosopher’s conscious reasoning (and in a broad sense, we are all philosophers) is frequently shaped by underlying instincts, guiding their thoughts in particular directions that may appear unwieldy or inconsistent. Beneath the surface of logical reasoning lie deeply ingrained values—such as the belief that certainty is superior to uncertainty, or that self preservation is always preferable to death. (Did Cato not commit suicide rather than beg for Caesar’s pardon?) These values may not represent objective truths but rather they are survival mechanisms—beliefs which produce certainty regardless of their actual validity.

Indeed, some people continue to believe in so-called “immediate certainties,” such as the statements “I think” or “I will,” assuming these expressions reflect direct access to the true nature of reality. However, the notion of “immediate certainty” is inherently contradictory. When we assert “I think,” we are making several underlying assumptions: that there is a distinct “I,” that thinking is a deliberate action, and that we have a clear understanding of what thinking entails. In truth, we do not possess immediate knowledge of these concepts; rather, we rely on familiar frameworks to make sense of our experiences. Logicians often presuppose that thinking is an action we control, yet thoughts frequently arise spontaneously, independent of our will. The claim that “I” think is thus based on an assumption, and even the idea that “someone” thinks represents an interpretive layer imposed on the cognitive process.

One of the reasons people often view philosophers with skepticism is not only due to their potential for error or naiveté but also because of their lack of self-honesty. Philosophers frequently present their ideas as the result of purely logical reasoning, yet their starting points often rest on personal biases or pre-existing beliefs. Rather than engaging in a neutral inquiry, they build complex arguments to defend these biases. What is troubling is the reluctance of many philosophers to acknowledge this, as they disguise their biases as “truths.” Consider, for example, Kant’s “categorical imperative” or Spinoza’s intricate mathematical formulations. While these systems appear robust, upon closer examination, one can detect the philosopher’s own personal fears and vulnerabilities subtly embedded within the logic.

It seems unlikely, then, that the pursuit of pure knowledge is the primary driver of philosophical inquiry. Instead, deeper instincts use knowledge as a tool to achieve their true aims. If we examine the basic instincts that govern human nature, we observe that each instinct seeks to dominate and position itself as the ultimate source of life and meaning. Indeed, the time has come to reconsider the foundational axioms of our scientific worldview. The prominent materialistic viewpoint, epitomized by phrases such as ‘we're just a bunch of neurons firing in sequence’, has emerged as the default stance for the scientifically educated. But what are the true motives lying behind such a statement? This raises an important philosophical question, “How are synthetic judgments a-priori possible?” Which leads to another question, “Why are belief in such judgments necessary?”—in effect, it is time we should understand that such judgements spoken by our mouth are false judgments. In fact, synthetic judgements spoken a priori should not “be possible” at all; we have no right to them; in our mouths they are nothing but false statements.

The Divided Brain

In these times especially, truth is a pressing question for all of us; it is no longer sufficient for the topic to be left in the hands of academic philosophers alone. This is true in part because our beliefs about truth not only help define the world around us, but indeed make us who we are. No single overarching theory of truth can encompass everything we would wish of it, and hence it is inevitable that ‘truth’ is never objectively understood, but this does not invalidate such attempts. We can at least point to what is unlikely to be the case, and in doing so indicate a more reasonable path to pursue. And if our aim is to freshly redefine reality through the lens of cognitive science, we must begin with the nature of truth, for each brain hemisphere is likely to have a different approach to truth itself, as they do to everything else.

Today, I am consistently reminded of Lieutenant Kizhe, a story by the Soviet writer Yuri Tynyanov. Published in 1927, the tale concerns an error of transcription in an official list of the Imperial army, whereby the word poruchiki (lieutenants) is mistakenly conflated with a subsequent syllable zhe, seeming to refer to a certain poruchik, Kizhe. The resultant ‘Lieutenant Kizhe’ never existed. Despite this apparent drawback, Lieutenant Kizhe plays a starring role in subsequent military reports, rising through the ranks and earning renown for his dependability. Kizhe marries, fathers a child, is decorated for his bravery, and finally finds himself promoted by the Tsar to the rank of General. Mysteriously, when the Tsar demands to meet this human paragon, he cannot be located. Disparagingly, the Tsar, mutters, ‘Sic transit gloria mundi’, and accords him a state funeral. Meanwhile, a certain Lieutenant Sinyukhaev, erroneously declared deceased years prior, struggles fruitlessly to assert that, contrary to the received opinion, he is very much alive. By the end of Tynyanov’s story, Sinyukhaev is a vagabond roaming the vast highways of Russia, relying on the charity of strangers. 

In a modern society which, I fear, leaves us in thrall to the left hemisphere's way of thinking, this problem, that a piece of paper has become more important than the reality that it refers to, is endemic. The dominant culture has largely lost the understanding that the material world is not merely a collection of resources, but something that deeply infuses every aspect of value, including the spiritual; which permeates all probable aspects of the unconscious. Furthermore, our societal attempt to distance ourselves from religion has inadvertently led to its resurgence in a retrograde, violent fashion, demarcating it as potentially the final blow to Western civilization.

There is an ancient story of unknown origin that tells of a wise spiritual master who was the ruler of a small but prosperous domain, and who was known for his selfless devotion to his people. As his people flourished and grew in number, the bounds of this small domain spread; and with it the need to trust implicitly the emissaries he sent to ensure the safety of its ever more distant parts. It was not just that it was impossible for him personally to order all that needed to be dealt with: as he wisely saw, he needed to keep his distance from, and remain ignorant of, such concerns. And so he nurtured and trained carefully his emissaries, in order that they could be trusted. Eventually, however, his cleverest and most ambitious vizier, the one he most trusted to do his work, began to see himself as the master, and used his position to advance his own wealth and influence. He saw his master’s temperance and forbearance as weakness, not wisdom, and on his missions on the master’s behalf, adopted his mantle as his own – the emissary became contemptuous of his master. And so it came about that the master was usurped, the people were duped, the domain became a tyranny; and eventually it collapsed in ruins.

The meaning of this story I believe, in fact, helps us understand something taking place inside ourselves, inside our very brains, and has played out in the cultural history of the West, particularly over the last 500 years or so. Why I believe so forms the subject of this essay. I hold that, like the master and his ambassador in the story, though the cerebral hemispheres should co-operate, they have for some time been in a state of conflict. The subsequent battles between them are recorded in the history of philosophy, and played out in the seismic shifts that characterize the history of Western culture. At present the domain – our civilization – finds itself in the hands of the vizier, who, however gifted, is effectively an ambitious regional bureaucrat with his own interests at heart. Meanwhile the Master, the one whose wisdom gave the people peace and security, is led away in chains. The Master is betrayed by his emissary.

The Schism of Consciousness

No matter how hard they try, brain scientists and cognitive psychologists will never find a copy of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in the brain – or copies of words, pictures, grammatical rules or any other kinds of environmental stimuli. The human brain isn’t really empty, of course. But it does not contain most of the things people think it does – not even simple things such as ‘memories’. Our shoddy thinking about the brain has deep historical roots, but the invention of computers in the 1940s got us especially confused. For more than half a century now, psychologists, linguists, neuroscientists and other experts on human behaviour have been asserting that the human brain works like a computer.

To see how vacuous this metaphor is, consider the brains of babies. Thanks to evolution, human neonates, like all other mammals, enter the world ready to engage with it. A baby’s vision is blurry but focuses on faces, quickly identifying its mother. It prefers voices over other sounds and can distinguish basic speech patterns. We are undoubtedly wired for social connections. A healthy newborn also has more than a dozen reflexes—automatic responses vital for survival. It turns its head when something brushes its cheek, sucks whatever enters its mouth, holds its breath underwater, and grasps objects so strongly that they are nearly capable of supporting their own weight. Even with the most recent advances in artificial intelligence, robots and other advanced computer systems have nowhere near the cognitive flexibility that is innately associated with babies from birth. 

The persistence of this computer metaphor—such as it is, has had negative consequences not only in the realm of medicine but also in our broader understanding of consciousness and human connection. This perspective prompts a deeper consideration of consciousness and its origins. When we speak of consciousness, what are we talking about? Taken literally, the meaning of the word is deconstructed as ‘knowing with.’ As such, it is in essence not a ‘thing’, but a betweenness. Consider the bow and the harp—both are fundamentally strings under tension, balanced and efficient not despite but because of the strings being pulled in opposite directions. The taut string, with its ends pulled in opposite directions—embodies vital strength or virtue, representing a dynamic equilibrium. This ability to hold movement within stasis, reconciling opposites, is encapsulated in Heraclitus’ prominent statement that “all things flow.”

If we take this ascribed view of consciousness as “the coming together of opposites to create a sustained unity,” then reason itself can be understood as necessarily having its opposite origin in unconsciousness. I regard the best argument for the breakdown of reason to be sleep. While we are asleep, our mind generates "hallucinations" or dreams that often contrast sharply with our conscious experience of reality. So ultimate reason itself, torn apart from its unconscious origins results in a deficiency of right-hemisphere processing—an imbalance strikingly similar to the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia.

Importantly, the right hemisphere is what characterizes sustained attention over time, and it is notably more holistic and attentive to context when contrasted with the left. While the left hemisphere is more detailed and rational, it lacks holistic understanding. In other words, it is good at manipulating things but cannot derive any value from them. So, while it appears that consciousness is entirely rational and self-sufficient—aligning with the proposals of 19th-century enlightenment philosophers—further reflection suggests that reason may not only have an opposite in the unconscious; it might also be seen as emerging from it. Reason, in this sense, would best be conceptualized as a tool developed by the conscious mind to make sense of the raw, unfiltered material of the unconscious. A process thus emerges: the unconscious provides the content (emotions, impulses, archetypes), and reason organizes this content into coherent thoughts and actions.

When reason, dominated by left-hemisphere hyper-rationality, loses this balance, it fractures, leading to symptoms like delusions and hallucinations. Schizophrenic patients aren’t simply "irrational"; rather, they are trapped in an overactive rational mode, detached from the unconscious elements that provide context and meaning. This imbalance drives people toward fragmented thinking and, at times, alternative medical treatments in search of holistic solutions. It is a perspective that follows the view of Carl Jung, who famously emphasized that the integration of opposites is central to resolving both inner and societal conflict.

The Coincidentia Oppositorum

In Jung’s view, the process of consciousness itself arises from the effort to coalesce the opposites towards achieving sustained unity. The fundamental opposites in man, Jung proposed, are those of spirit—termed “higher aspirations”—and nature or instinct (which he relates to physical being). He attributes their conflicts to the inherent structure of the psyche, similar to Aristotle's view, who identified two opposing forces: reason (logos) and emotion (pathos), with the latter linked to pathos because they are primarily passive, instinctual states which can only be partially regarded as conscious. The movement in the psyche between instinct and spirit is compared by Jung to the variations within the color spectrum, from infra-red to ultra-violet. 

“At one moment [consciousness] finds itself in the vicinity of instinct, and falls under its influence; at another, it slides along to the other end where spirit predominates and even assimilates the instinctual process most opposed to it.”

Jung locates the purely instinctual at the infra-red end of the spectrum, and the “true” spirit (which Jung associates with the godhead) alongside the ultraviolet. He points out that although blue would seem a more appropriate color, ultra-violet is in fact a better representation of the spirit predominating the psyche, given that its makeup—a fusion of red and blue—indicates “true” spirit as an integration of pure spirit, blue, with the red of instinctually. He adds that the integration of the instinctual never occurs at the level of instinct, the red end itself, “but only through the integration of the image which signifies and at the same time evokes the instinct.” This means that our unconscious instincts can only be truly understood and connected with by a higher order unity that both represents and actively triggers its associated feelings and thoughts within us; essentially, we project our instincts onto symbolic systems, known as archetypes, which emerge from what Jung termed the collective unconscious. 

It is my belief that Western civilization’s rational structures are therefore grounded in a deeper, mythic foundation that provides meaning and coherence to its worldview. The Judeo-Christian narrative serves as the cultural "dream" that shapes the collective unconscious of Western society. It is the axis upon which collective reason has accumulated over the centuries. Myths and religious stories often function as guiding frameworks that give people a sense of purpose and direction, much like how dreams serve the individual. The decline of these narratives in modern times has led us to the meaning crisis, wherein reason has fragmented, similar to how schizophrenia manifests for the individual—but on a collective scale. This isn’t a new problem—it’s happened in every religious and philosophical system that starts believing in itself. Philosophers always end up creating the world in their own image because philosophy is itself a drive for power—the will to reshape the world and be the first cause of everything.

True psychology must confront this resistance, as even the most well-meaning person might feel uneasy about the idea that "good" behaviors come from "bad" impulses. However, it’s essential to accept that negative emotions like hatred and envy are necessary for life to evolve. This view might make people uncomfortable, but it’s crucial for understanding the bigger picture. Those who dare to explore these ideas are embarking on a journey that may destroy their own sense of morality, but it’s a journey worth taking because it offers a deeper understanding of the world.

The Rebirth of Wisdom

Philosophical ideas aren’t just random or independent thoughts. Even when they seem to pop up suddenly, they are part of a bigger system, just like how animals belong to a specific ecosystem. Different philosophers, from various backgrounds, often end up repeating similar patterns of thinking. This happens because their ideas are shaped by an underlying system that they may not even be aware of. Philosophizing is less about discovering new things and more about rediscovering ancient, shared ideas that are deeply rooted in human history.

Some people still believe in "immediate certainties," like "I think" or "I will," as if these thoughts are directly connected to the true nature of things. But the idea of "immediate certainty" is actually a contradiction. When we say "I think," we make a series of assumptions—that there is an "I," that thinking is an action, and that we know what thinking is. In reality, we don’t have immediate knowledge of these things; we’re just using familiar concepts to explain our experiences. Logicians often assume that thinking is something we control, but in reality, thoughts come to us on their own, not when we want them to. The idea that "I" think is just an assumption, and even saying "someone" thinks is an interpretation of the process.

Similarly, the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on rationality and Kantian thought, has misconstrued the problem of truthfulness as a cold, pure, divinely indifferent wisdom. While Kant’s categorical imperative certainly offers a logical framework for moral action, it neglects the complexities of human experience and the very real potential for actors to operate in bad faith. Paul Tillich captures this tension in Theology of Culture, where he describes faith as "ultimate concern". Faith, in this sense, is the commitment to what a person considers to be the ground of their being, the ultimate source of meaning and value. Importantly, he relates this idea of faith to a form of existential courage. Courage, for Tillich, is the ability to affirm life despite the presence of suffering, death, and the awareness of our limitations. Courage doesn’t eliminate fear or anxiety but rather acknowledges it while choosing to live authentically. Yet, under the influence of Enlightenment thought, secular society has reframed faith as something mechanistic, a concept to be controlled rather than a force to be experienced.

Such mechanization of thought provides a clear reflection of the left hemisphere’s tendency to fragment and manipulate the world. And since we know that increases in material well-being have little to no casual association with happiness, the condition of human flourishing—what Aristotle refers to as eudaimonia—must be seen as arising from somewhere else. It’s starting to dawn on some thinkers that natural philosophy (or science) is just a way of organizing and presenting the world, not explaining it. Because it relies on the senses, people treat it as if it’s a real explanation. But this view is limited and based on the idea that only what can be seen and touched is true. On the other hand, the Platonic way of thinking, which was more aristocratic, found a higher pleasure in resisting sensory evidence, controlling the senses through abstract thought. This way of thinking offers a different kind of satisfaction compared to the scientific, mechanistic approach popular today. In The Republic, Plato asserts that ultimate reality exists somewhere beyond the physical world, a notion captured most compellingly in his Theory of Forms. For Plato, the essence of something, its eidos, reflects its true purpose: a hammer’s eidos is its ability to drive nails. For humans, this essence emerges through the cultivation of virtue, which in turn culminates as wisdom.

The Stoics called this rationality, though today this is a term often misinterpreted as mere logical thought. Quite differently, the Stoic sense of rationality goes far beyond academic intelligence of any sort; it refers to living in accordance with nature and reason, aligning one's actions with a higher order of existence. But to “live according to nature” is a misleading idea! Nature is wild, chaotic, and indifferent—without mercy or justice. How can you live “according to” that kind of nature? What matters isn’t free will or non-free will but the strength or weakness of a person’s will. Those who feel trapped by "necessity" or "compulsion" are often revealing their own lack of strength. People either cling to personal responsibility or reject it entirely, and these positions usually reflect deeper personal issues. Some people even romanticize weakness by siding with criminals or playing into a narrative of suffering as a way of avoiding responsibility.

Conclusion

To conclude this essay, I am reminded of the story in Genesis of Ishmael, Abraham’s illegitimate son. In this account, Ishmael and his mother, Hagar, were cast out into the desert following the birth of Isaac, one of Abraham’s most beloved children. After wandering the lonely desert, they ran out of water. Fearing that her son would die of thirst, Hagar left Ishmael under a tree and walked a distance away from him, so unbearable was the prospect of witnessing her child’s death. However, God heard Ishmael’s cries and sent an angel to lead Hagar to a nearby well, sparing the duo’s demise. This motif of spiritual abandonment, followed by cries in the wilderness and salvation from God, is famously echoed in the story of Moby Dick. Driven by vengeance after losing a leg, Captain Ahab pursues a white whale onto which he has pinned his woe. Yet, in the process, a shipwreck destroys both Ahab and the majority of his crew. The story alleges that Ishmael only survives due to his epistemic humility.

The two stories of Ishmael in both the Bible and Moby Dick reveal a profound pattern: a casting out into spiritual or social exile, where one is severed from the community, left adrift and alienated from both society and self. By rejecting the “tyranny” of the Judeo-Christian ethic—the axis of our cultural unconscious—we too have become like Ishmael, cast forth into a desert of meaninglessness. As the Israelites wandered through the wilderness, so too do we now wander, stripped of the myths that grounded us. In forsaking the ideals that once unified the right hemisphere’s holistic vision, we have unleashed a fractured and fragmented psyche, both individually and collectively. As Lee observes in East of Eden, the Hebrew word "timshel" from the story of Cain and Abel can be translated as "thou mayest," implying that the choice to rule over sin, to overcome our flaws, is ours to make.

In the Old Testament, the Israelites, plagued by serpents in the wilderness, were saved when Moses lifted up a bronze serpent on a pole at God's command. Those who gazed upon it were healed. This symbol of salvation prefigures Christ’s crucifixion, where he is lifted up as the ultimate source of healing not just for a single individual but for the entire civilization. Christ, like the serpent—became sin, so that we might be redeemed by God. And just as Moses’s serpent brought healing to those who looked upon it, so too does Christ’s sacrifice offer the antidote to our cultural disintegration. This psychic rupture, much like schizophrenia, has left us lost, searching for coherence in a world that no longer makes sense. The symptoms are clear: disconnection, delusion, and disintegration, not just of the mind—but of the true spirit of our culture.