What’s wrong with the US society? - Lack of wisdom
What’s wrong with US society? - One has to wonder about what is immature in American culture that they would elect a convicted felon, civically culpable sex abuser, 6 time bankrupt business man, pathological liar, and narcissistic psychopath to be their chief executive and commander in chief? What is it in American society that would make such a person attractive to the voters?
The belief and thought system operative in dominant American culture values the quick fix and the charismatic leader over purposeful and deliberate management and competence. It is interesting that the typical American voter doesn’t recognize, or if they recognize it, respect competence and expertise enough to choose leaders with it to lead them.
Why is expertise and competence threatening to people and they would rather choose a charismatic bully? Because Americans have been trained in Aristotelian logic, cause and effect. They have been trained to view things from a linear and reductionistic perspective. They have been taught to ask “What is the cause for this”, and “who is to blame,”?.
When problems are seen as merely cause and effect, the bias is to look for blame, usually in simplistic terms. However there is another way to view problems and that is through a systems lens. Usually problems are multi-dimensional and are the result of mutliple factors some immediate and easily seen and some remote and outside the level of perception and awareness.
In religious traditions it is often suggested that a person not be judgemental. “Judge not lest ye be judged.”(Matthew 7:1) The biblical injunction might be better phrased “judge not because the situation is much bigger than you can appreciate and so your understanding will be compromised.”
A system’s perspective is one of the foundational aspects of wisdom. A system’s perspective gives one a better understanding of how things really work. When it is said that most Americans are stupid, it simply means that they lack a systems perspective and so don’t have a more comprehensive understanding of how things really work. This blindness leads to bad decisions and negative consequences.
Whatever might be said about the educational ability of Americans, and it is relatively low compared to other countries, one of the primary things wrong with the US society is its lack of wisdom due to a lack of a systems perspective.
How is systems thinking to be taught? It is not merely a matter of “media literacy” or “critical thinking.” Systems thinking is based on a different epistemology from linear, reductive thinking. Systems thinking contributes to an awareness that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
There are many ways to teach systems thinking and the key is to have the student identify the interconnections of things and the repetitive patterns of their behavior. The pathological engagement in systems thinking is conspiracy theories and it is necessary then for the identification of the component parts of a system and their interactions to be scientifically tested with evidence that is valid and reliable.
Wisdom is more than an epistemological activity, it is the first of the four Stoic cardinal virtues. If we considered wisdom as a virtue on a scale of 0 - 10 how wise are you? How wise are some of the people you know? How wise are the people in authority over you that influence our life?