Where Have All The Wise Ones Gone - Long Time Passing

From this article .. thoughts around the types of people that are seen as potential natural influencers to the mobs these days .. but will they ever have ears for this message?:

"The philosopher/theologian pursues education the way a loving man pursues his wife. He is not studying her to manipulate her. He does not view her like a stepping stone toward greater personal success. He does not use her strengths to boost his career. He pursues her because he loves her. He wants to know her because he cares about her. Romance is relational, and so is wisdom. The philosopher/theologian has a soul captivated with the mysteries of the divine and dives into the deep end knowing he will never explore the depths of the sea of learning as long as he lives. No academic program can contain it. It is a pursuit which never ends. The result of such a pursuit is a humble well-rounded man of wisdom. He knows he has merely scratched the surface. He knows his place is that of the passive observer attempting to comprehend principles set in place by someone far greater than him. He does not manipulate the world around him but uses the wisdom he obtains to faithfully occupy whatever station he possesses.,, The beauty of the philosopher/theologian is that any person is capable of being one. Academic accolades are not required, just a love for truth." 

The title of my post is based off a 60s/70s song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" written by Pete Seeger made popular during the Vietnam War by the group "Peter, Paul and Mary"

Where have all the flowers gone?

Long time passing

Where have all the flowers gone?

Long time ago

Where have all the flowers gone?

Girls have picked them every one

When will they ever learn?

When will they ever learn?

An image might help:

Yes, an anti-war song. So what does this have to do with the missing wise ones today? This is nothing new .. the wise, the prophetic (forth-telling / truth-telling .. not fortune telling) have all been marginalized and driven underground by the loud, arrogent and ignorant used as tools of the elite, the politicians, and the deep state all who profit and obtain power in this current environment.

No wonder fake news travels so fast .. no one stops to think about it and when the wise ones after thinking reply .. well then that is OLD news and no one cares even if it was outright lies and half-truths.

It does seem that the true "half-life" of a main stream media / government lie is probably a generation or two. Recent whoppers are still believed by the masses (WMDs in Iraq, Global Warming, etc) .. and ones 150 years old (Lincoln invaded the South to rescue the slaves, George Washington decided to move his troops to Virginia to surround the British, etc) are believed as well.

Early in our country's life, many were influenced by these thinkers who wrapped the known with the mysteries of life " ... the philosopher/theologian ought to be the ideal man, not because he is the smartest, but because he is the wisest. He is the wisest because he understands the connections which exist between fields of study and in knowing such connections has a more direct understanding of the immaterial eternal world of ideals and principles.,,"

As time went on, following the philosopher/theologian was the  ".. gentleman who ... retained the noble moral code of the previous station without the other-worldly glow. In short, he was the man of tradition defending the world passed on to him, but without a transcendent standard to be self-conscious of. While it was the case that the vast majority of gentleman drew their precepts from religion, it was not a requirement to be religious in order to attain to the status..."

Following the gentleman in "...This is the world we currently live in.,, [is the specialist] If you’ve ever seen someone dressed up in a lab coat trying to sell you the newest invention or medicine you are witnessing the elevation of the specialist. The specialist understands his limited narrow field of study and that is about all he is expected to comprehend. Those in society elevate the specialist because he is the “best” in his field. Not all of this is wrong in every way, but there is a fundamental deceptive element to it, and it relates directly to Christ-likeness, academia, and humility."

I see it all day every day in the field I am in. Scientists and engineers can both have a narrow specialty and therefore miss a grounding element that keeps them humble.

"... You see, the specialist is in danger of catching a disease all men are prone to, but not all men are exposed to, at least not to the same degree. Call it a bad case of having a “big head.” The Apostle Paul talks about it in 1 Corinthians 8:1. “knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies.” Of course knowledge itself is not the problem, otherwise the Apostle’s reference to the “gift of knowledge” (12:8), or his multiple positive uses of the same term (i.e. 11:3) in the same epistle would make little sense. It is best to understand the warning as one of motivation and not education. It is the soil in which the seeds of knowledge are planted that prove to make the field inhospitable to the ideal of love. Academics is incapable of corrupting a heart, but a heart is capable of corrupting academics, and the heart of the classical philosopher/theologian has a much different purpose than the heart of the modern specialist..."

The article is a good read because it exposes what is out of balance in this twisted world. We are not in a unique position here .. this I believe is part of the curse as all common men from one time to another will ignore/marginalize and even stone/kill the wise because their message does not fit well into their narrative/life-view :)