FEEDBACK

Another viewpoint

Here is another slant on the topic of this Viewpoint article (January, "Is it a crowd or a mob?") In my mind, wisdom comes with age. The oldest person in the group has the potential to be the wisest because it takes time to pick up the characteristics of a wise person. Aristotle, Plato and Socrates were surely wise men. Anybody who studies their books and thinking processes has the potential to be wise. This is really the old school of thought. Of course some person in podunk who has never had excess to the work of Aristotle, Plato and Socrates could also be dubbed as having wisdom by his group. Hence, your reference to a crowd or a mob. It does depend.

I am thinking that the wisest person in the group today might be the person who knows how to get the data needed from the Internet the best of all the other people in the group. This could be turning our concept of wise/wisdom upside down, because that person might be a very young person. Even the person with the most wisdom in the group (you know the person who might have been considered the most wise before the advent of the Internet), might not know how to get data needed from the Internet, and he might not have that data in his head. Therefore, the person with the most wisdom still might not be the wisest if he/she has not picked up the skill of knowing how to get needed data from the Internet.

—Paul Smith
Little Rock School District

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