Why elders have learned the most and know the least
We’re living at a time when we seem bereft of wisdom. Sure, we know more than ever before but our knowledge isn’t nourishing us or the world.
Instead, knowledge has been hitched to achievement and progress and a stark ambition to produce more and take more, while leaving less. And the residue, the consequence, of our fixation on evermore, is less abundance and more deadness, more downside, more mayhem and chaos.
Uncontrolled climate change is an example. Species extinctions and habitat destruction are others. Soil loss, drought, desertification, wildfires, food scarcity and famine are more signs that knowledge coupled with rampant exploitation is unravelling and destroying natural systems on a global scale.
Rampant depression, drug addiction, and spiraling suicide in the young are further signs that humans are in a kind of death swoon. The atomization of life — lonely, isolated people, gated communities, and the loss of the village square and communitarianism are further signs of this malaise. The segregation and shunting of ageing and old people into over-55 communities, and then into nursing and aged care facilities is the new normal.
Which is distinctly abnormal.
What’s missing, or maybe part of what’s missing, are elders, meaning people who aren’t focused on achievement or production or building surplus and profit.
What do elders bring?
They bring a conscious acceptance that life has limits. That it winds down, breaks down, and ends. And by making peace with life’s limits, by living in harmony with the natural order of things, elders breed sustainability and feed new life.
And although elders don’t last, in the way we wished our grandparents had stuck around longer, the example of their attitude, their embrace of ending lasts. It lasts forever.
Mind you, elders aren’t necessarily old people. They’re wise people. They’re engaged people. But our elders are in short supply and largely invisible so their example is hidden and their wisdom is going to waste.
Here’s an excerpt from Stephen Jenkinson speaking about elders that gives voice to where we are and maybe what’s needed.
Jenkinson suggests that if we don’t start nurturing young and middle aged people in the arts of elderhood we’ll soon have no elders. But there’s no curriculum for making elders and we can’t train people to be wise.
Why? Because wisdom isn’t a body of knowledge or set of attitudes or skills. It’s not something that can be passed on or acquired. Wisdom isn’t about knowing something, so anyone who seeks wisdom, or who tries to teach it, will fail. So the first step in preparing the soil for elderhood is to give up.
What is wisdom? All that can really be said (which is inadequate), is this: wisdom is congruent with Tao.
Tao is the way things work.[i] It is the principle underlying all processes, all things. Tao is principle and all things unfold according to Tao. So when I pay attention to what is happening, while it’s happening, I sense how it is happening and I sense Tao. In this way, Tao can be known even though it can’t be taught or defined.
No path to wisdom
The way of the wise can’t be traced or followed because authentic wisdom can’t be imitated. Each of us must find it for ourselves. So, the pathless path to wisdom is like the flight of an arrow — an image of impermanence revealing the truth that all is fleeting, dissolving, leaving no trace for followers or imitators.
This wisdom conceives that life is not going anywhere and there is nothing to be attained. And like the arrow, the wise one is in accord with Tao, with how, not what, or when or where.
Accepting that there is no path to wisdom, no way to teach it, nor any knowledge to be sought or acquired brings us into accord with the very nature of wisdom. In accord with Tao.
So, how do we ‘approach’ wisdom? How do we approach Tao? Just as Tao can be noticed through meditation, elders create circumstances for approaching wisdom by allowing the unfolding of Tao.
This means elders are selfless, without ego. Their wisdom places no special value on knowledge, or method, or ‘self-development’ because ego and content are distractions from Tao.
This wisdom doesn’t reside in any person or body of knowledge so all that elders really ‘do’ is live congruently with Tao.
Learning and knowing
Learning in western culture is seen as a temporary stage on the road to ‘knowing’ things. And if it’s ‘useful’ it turns into knowledge.
But true learning isn’t like that. It’s not something to be suffered or endured. It’s not a temporary delay on the freeway to certainty and self-assuredness.
True learning is a willingness to forgo what I think I know. A preparedness to abandon certainty in service to wonder and mystery. A readiness to relinquish ability and competence; to know nothing, if necessary.
Learning is a willingness to be unnerved; to sit on the edge of losing all I know — including my attachment to ego-affirming knowledge.
‘Knowing’ in our culture has an air of acquisitiveness about it. We start out by knowing very little and end up knowing a lot. But true learning doesn’t acquire, gathering as it goes. Instead, it’s characterised by puzzlement and wonder. Real learning is hard on knowing and it comes at a high price and by this measure, the elders among us have probably learned the most and ‘know’ the least. [ii]
Dan Gaffney’s new book and podcast series, ‘Journey Home — Essays on Living and Dying’ was published in November 2019.
[i] Heider, J (2005). The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age. Humanics New Age
[ii] Jenkinson, S (2018). Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble, North Atlantic Books, pp 152–154
