the folly of our wisdom

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.
Plato

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates

“Any fool can know.
The point is to understand.”
― Albert Einstein

(a curtained window in The Great Hall, Trinity College Library / Dublin, Ireland /Julie Cook / 2015)

What saith the wise man of his knowledge?
Is he, pray tell, the master or keeper of his own immediate world…

What of the land and sea…
Do depths and heights belong to the wise and knowledgable amongst us?

What of the stars, the moon, the sun and the very planets?
Are these entities, such as ripened fruit ready for the plucking, merely waiting for the wise among us first to imagine then to eventually claim as their own?

( The Great Hall, Trinity College Library / Dublin, Ireland /Julie Cook / 2015)

And what of the very universe itself, might it therefore belong to the wise and knowledgable as it simply sits waiting as it seems, at the yearning fingertips of the sages, in need of their dissections and explorations.

Then perhaps it it be the explorers among us who are the wise and knowledgable.

Has knowledge and wisdom become man’s end unto himself?
Has it become his golden calf?
Or has man simply become god himself?
All knowing and all powerful.
As the Great Oz hidden behind his smoke and mirrors.

( The Great Hall, Trinity College Library / Dublin, Ireland /Julie Cook / 2015)

And what of this wise man…?
Does his knowledge beget wisdom, or does his wisdom beget knowledge?

( The Great Hall, Trinity College Library / Dublin, Ireland /Julie Cook / 2015)

And who do we say are the wise among us?

The mighty or the diminutive?
The powerful or the weak?
The wealthy or the poor?
The healthy or the sick?
The kind or the evil?
The educated or the illiterate?
The ruthless or the polite?

There rests a palpable silence hanging heavy throughout the great halls and houses of learning which grace the major cities of this planet.
Their ancient voices continue whispering across the pages of time..
Those wise and knowledgable men among us who are still studied, quoted, read, savored, reimagined and realigned.

(Bust of Socrates stands among the many busts of those learned individuals lining the walls of the Great Hall, Trinity College Library / Dublin, Ireland / 2015)

(Bust of Plato stands among the many busts of those learned individuals lining the walls in the Great Hall, Trinity College Library / Dublin, Ireland / 2015)

The very books, the lectures, the theories, the postulates, the queries, the discoveries, the equations, the abilities, the mastery of it all, pales in comparison to the Master Creator of all that was, all that is and all that will be…who by His very decree has given man the ability to think, to learn, to dream, to create and to dare to seek more than himself…

The perhaps it is indeed the wise man, the learned man, the knowledgeable man who realizes, who actually knows and absorbs this very simple truth.

( The Great Hall, Trinity College Library / Dublin, Ireland /Julie Cook / 2015)

“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else … Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
― Hermann Hesse

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”
― Meister Eckhart

Let no man deceive himself If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish, so that he may become wise.
1 Corinthians 3:18