![\"The](\"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/don_pleasence.jpg\" "\\"don_pleasence\\"")
<\/a>Is it true that you have to learn life\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lessons the hard way? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe that. In fact that maxim sounds to me like an excuse, a cheap rationalization that comes in handy for folks who know they shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take some destructive course of action but plan to anyway. The single note of wisdom detectable in this sentiment is applicable only in retrospect, not in prospect. If you have passed through a rough patch that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t your fault (or even if it was), you will be well advised to take stock, to learn what you can about life and especially about yourself, from your experience.<\/span><\/p>\n But if you blunder on into the path of what you already know will be a mistake, you won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even learn anything from the ensuing mess. This is because you will have made it a policy. Like the guy in the joke who thinks it unmanly to submit to the legal speed limit and looks at the sign and thinks \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A hundred dollar fine? I can afford that!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d You will be like the Sunday Catholic who, abusing the penance system, goes out carousing Saturday night, planning on confessing it all the next morning. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pure charade. And giving yourself the go-ahead to do something stupid is the same charade. And you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re the one who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to pay for it.<\/span><\/p>\n So what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the alternative? Childish naivet\u00c3\u00a9 is no good. You do need to learn wisdom. But I think there are ways to learn that wisdom vicariously. Think of it as almost a good kind of cheating, copying from the paper of someone else who has<\/em> learned life\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lessons the hard way. One way is simply to listen to advice from people older than you. Of course, there is an initial possible roadblock: you may be such a thick-skulled adolescent that you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see the value of someone else\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s experiences. You may have to learn that<\/em> the hard way, smart guy. As for me, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d prefer to ask directions from someone who has already been down the road I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m embarking on. <\/span><\/p>\n And then there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reading. Over the ages, many people have bequeathed us their hard-won wisdom in the distilled form of proverbs and aphorisms. The Book of Proverbs in the Bible is a prime example. If you read it sometime, even in a cursory manner, you may be surprised how little its advice depends on any religious belief at all. It does not contrast believers with unbelievers as other portions of scripture do. Nor does it contrast Jews with Gentiles or pagans. In fact, some of the material comes from Arab and Egyptian sources. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because the sayings concern themselves with life in this world. I guess you could sum up the gist of Proverbs in the words Jesus tells his disciples in the gospel: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Be wise as serpents, yet innocent as doves.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s part of the wisdom: one can be shrewd in the way of righteousness. You have to learn the rules of the game. You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to cheat at the game. One need not get one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ration of proverbs from the Bible if you cringe from all things religious like Dracula from the cross. Abe Lincoln or Yogi Berra will do. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter who said it. The only authority a proverb possesses is that of the ring of truth. You hear or read it, and immediately it crystallizes what you have learned but not yet correlated. You suddenly say to yourself, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s right!<\/em> I should have thought of that!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That makes sense! Of course!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And you go forward, forewarned and forearmed. You learned it the easy way from someone, it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter whom, who learned it the hard way. Call it vicarious wisdom.<\/span><\/p>\n Nor does it have to be wise sayings. Traditionally, gaining wisdom was supposed to be the goal of reading novels. Granted, sourpusses have long condemned readers of frivolous novels as wasting their time on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153worldly amusements.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Excuse me if I take a friendlier view of popular genres. I have for decades understood the moral value of superhero comics and seen the value of science fiction and heroic fantasy for expanding my imagination. But let me focus on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153great literature.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Apologetic school marms have always tried to convince bored students who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d rather be out playing ball (or, today, taking drugs) that it was worth slogging uphill through Shakespeare or Dickens or The Old Man and the Sea<\/em> because of what one can learn from them about life. And they were right, though one can hardly blame the kids for hating that stuff. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not ready for it yet. (I only know that reading Shakespeare is, for me, like reading a foreign language, whereas, when I see it performed on film, it is lucid.)\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Great novels, those I as a nerdish fantasy fan regard as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mundane,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d are libraries of other people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lives. You as their reader are like a vampire devouring their lives and experiences. Or how about this? You will be just like God as some theologians view him: God experiences worldly loves, hates, ideals, losses and lessons, none of which come properly to him as an eternal, omnipotent Entity, through us, via his omniscience. You see, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re like the deity floating above the mortal world. The novels and their striving characters are like earth\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ephemeral inhabitants, experiencing things precisely because of their temporality and finitude.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Like God, you may never know the fear of the battlefield or the anguish of betrayal, or the satisfaction of achievement or the thrill of reciprocated love. Not firsthand. But others have, and you can siphon it off! You can experience it secondhand, vicariously. What a bargain!<\/span><\/p>\n Until Northrup Frye, literary criticism was pretty much secular homiletics (sermonizing), the job of literature instructors to edify their students as if the latter were a congregation. I love the Twilight Zone<\/em> episode, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Changing of the Guard,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d starring Donald Pleasance as an elderly Literature professor in a prep school, forced to retire. On the verge of suicide, he is dissuaded by the ghostly visitation of several old students who perished in World War Two, taking to their graves noble ideals learned from the old man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lectures in their youth. <\/span><\/p>\n Frye realized that literary criticism should be a study of how literature works, a grammar of narrative, figures of speech, symbolism, structure, etc. This is the approach I mostly take. Other critics examine literature for what it tells us about socio-sexual-political-colonialist assumptions which the texts embody. Some of that stuff seems to be political polemic, not really concerned with the text for its own sake. But I appreciate the approach. It is impossible for me to read Pride and Prejudice<\/em> as its original readers did precisely because the cultural codes jump out at me in a way impossible for the intended audience who swam in that same sea like oblivious fish. And yet this enriches the text for me instead of impoverishing it.<\/span><\/p>\n So I appreciate the various modern approaches to literature. But I want to stick up for the school marms and the old-time Lit professors. Why not cash in on the life experiences of characters in literature (not to mention biographies and autobiographies)? Why reinvent the wheel? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a question of shying away from the adventurous living of your own life. No, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s simply a matter of getting a healthy head start.<\/span><\/p>\n So says Zarathustra.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Is it true that you have to learn life\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lessons the hard way? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe that. In fact that maxim sounds to me like an excuse, a cheap rationalization that comes in handy for folks who know they shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t … Continue reading <\/a>The Epistle of James contrasts \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the wisdom from above\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153diabolical wisdom.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I should nominate Machiavelli and, especially, Saul Alinsky as masters of wicked wisdom: the hardball tactics of winning at any cost. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re experts in diabolical wisdom; Alinsky even dedicated one of his how-to manuals to Lucifer, after all. Of course, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not saying there is a real devil\u00e2\u20ac\u201dexcept for Alinsky and certain prominent followers of his in our government.<\/span><\/p>\n