January 31, 2007

Dear Colleague:

    The critic Harold Bloom says he finds more wisdom in Ecclesiastes than in Job. So I turn to Ecclesiastes to see what I can learn. Alas, what I learn is mostly depressing. In the very first chapter, the Preacher tells me: "For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow" (1:18). And he more or less repeats this message at the end of the book: "And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh" (12:12).

    Grad students are perhaps especially taken with the last piece of wisdom, namely, "much study is a weariness of the flesh," and I, who consider myself a fifty-fifth year grad student, am finally beginning to see that "of making many books there is no end." Note, dear student, how wise you are compared with someone my age and generation. People my generation denigrate information, praise knowledge, and idolize wisdom. Information, I was told when I was young, just cluttered up the brain. A wise man is one who severely limits the amount of information he receives so that he can process it and turn it into knowledge. Too much knowledge is also to be avoided; one must not become a mere encyclopedia! So, rather than allowing knowledge to accumulate like unsorted books in an underfunded library, we tried to turn it into accessible and usable wisdom. In opting for wisdom, my generation failed to heed the Preacher, with the result that we suffered a certain "weariness of the flesh." You don't so suffer because you and your generation are wise enough to embrace information! What you desire, above all, is "what, how many, and where." Your surf the internet for information, you are an expert on Geographic Information Systems, and the information you acquire makes you feel, not sorrowful, but competent and wanted.

    "Sorrow is better than laughter. It may sadden your face, but it sharpens your understanding" (7:3). Now, this is real wisdom. We learn from sorrow. We are made strong by misfortune. When something good—say, winning a lottery or a prize for meritorious achievement—happens to us, we don't ever say, do we? that we are made a better and stronger person by it? Both carrot and stick serve to improve our understanding, but, if Ecclesiastes is right, contrary to contemporary liberal thinking, the stick is more effective than the carrot. Life as a whole contains more sorrow than joy. But if life is a school in which humans learn to be better and wiser, as Victorian Christianity teaches, then it has to contain rather more of the one than of the other. My own long life is, up to this point, singularly without real bitterness and pain, which makes me think that—old as I am—I have never been promoted beyond elementary school. (Here I contradict my earlier boast about being a fifty-fifth year grad student). "Sorrow is better than laughter," says the Preacher. Maybe. But so far as the School of Life is concerned, I don't mind staying in the elementary grade, where milk and cookie are served more often than is the switch, until the bell rings.

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu