World WIthout Wisdom

Sven Birkerts’s essay “The Owl Has Flown” offers a new idea about the value that reading and writing is playing in our lives. This was a well-structured essay that describes his view of wisdom with the involvement of reading. Birkerts states the fact that reading and writing are basically related. “From the Middle Ages until sometime after 1750, according to Engelsing, men read “intensively.” They had only a few books -- the Bible, an almanac, a devotional work or two -- and they read them over and over again, usually aloud and in groups, so that a narrow range of traditional literature because deeply impressed on their consciousness. By 1800 men were reading “extensively.” They read all kinds of material, especially periodicals and newspapers, and read it only once, and then raced on to the next item. “ With advancing times, our selection has increased with the uses of brochures, advertisements and labels. He insists that in our current generations, we are just skimming “from one site to the next without allowing the words to resonate inwardly.” It is simply said as wanting quantity over quality. It is more important to of read a great sum of books rather then to comprehend the text. Most people only read because they have to or are just skimming through text to see if it is appealing to them. Birkerts believes “we know countless bits of both important and trivial than our ancestors” did. With the advancements of television, people feel as if they have experienced places or things because of what they saw on television. Seeing the differences of cultures and places make people believe they know what they are all about and what their countries are like. They substitute it for traveling or for narrowing down places for intended visiting. It does not matter who sees this on television where they are rich or poor but either way people believe to have a better experience. People of our times are losing depth, and greatly losing wisdom.

Wisdom is stated by Birkerts as “the knowing not of facts but of truths about human nature and the processes of life.” He argues, “ We no longer accept the possibility of assembling a complete picture. “ A strong point I believe he makes is that “Wisdom can only survive as a cultural idea where there is possibility of vertical consciousness. Wisdom has nothing to do with gathering or ideas of facts. Wisdom is seeing through the facts. “ In order to “see through data,” we have to have something to see through. It is important to understand the idea as a whole. We are destroying our quiet time because without knowing the underlying meaning, wisdom will not be expanded. Birkerts refers to this meaning as resonance. Without deep time there is no resonance, which leads to no wisdom. I agree with Birkerts when he explains how we pay people for “silence.” The only time we have time to think about anything is when we step outside the real world and gather our thoughts.

This world is so fast paced that we never have a moment to even realize we need this deep time. This all refers back to the past articles we have read for example “On The New Literacy.” We ignore the use of books and even verbal communication because of the technological advances we have today. With email and text messaging we do not have to use verbal knowledge. We just live our life day by day and do not take a step outside the box. We do not want to do hard work and put it off. Being able to comprehend our reading and gather our thoughts helps solve the lack of wisdom issues we deal with today. Birkerts answers the reasoning to the way humans act the way they do for the authors of our past articles. We simply need to seek information and comprehend it as a fulfillment to our everyday life.