Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
The Beguiling of Merlin
(1874)

"Maybe we find our underlying connections beyond disconcerting."

Who knows how wisdom visits? Who knows what even constitutes wisdom in these EndDays featuring so damned many false idols? We each seem to imprint on our own trusted sources. Who knows how we discern which ones to trust? Our neighbors seem to rely upon other sources that do not seem nearly as wise to us as they do to them. We cite our sources until long after we begin to turn blue in the face, without convincing anyone not dependent on the same experts we depend on. We each hold Received Wisdom without often considering how it was that we set about ReceivingWisdom in the first place. Does knowing with such certainty even qualify as wisdom, anyway, or does wisdom somehow sort of transcend knowing to more agilely hold controversies unresolved?

The Muse returned from a public meeting having bailed. She’d entered the room at the appointed hour to find the usual dichotomy already present. The topic of the gathering was not without controversy, but it seemed to her as she entered that the opposition hadn’t needed to wait until their opponents had finished their presentation. They came with rebuttals already locked and loaded, carrying their brand of received wisdom as if it would necessarily trump anything their opposition proposed. She’d seen this passion play before and felt that she already knew the order of the impending battle, who would win, and in whose eyes, and also who would harshly judge their loser. She asked herself, “Why bother?” before returning home in time for dinner for a change.

These EndDays seem filled with competing Received Wisdoms, which have grown to seem not very wise at all. The Muse voted in favor of a vendor developing a data center on industrial Port property, and no inquiry ensued. Opponents flooded the meeting not with questions intended to get to the bottom of the decision, but with accusations of dirty dealing instead. Many seem to have been previously convinced that data centers are just evil, and that anyone even thinking of supporting them must necessarily be somehow compromised. This contingent seemed to hold an unquestionable Received Wisdom that data centers are, by their very nature, wrong under all conditions. They do not seem to seek understanding so much as vindication for their seemingly pre-conceived convictions, as if their study of the issues had resolved all possible questions. They seem to seek not dialogue but dominion.

I blame the meme-ification of civic conversation. The Repuglicans (and the Russians) were trailblazers in this field, flooding immature social media users with unforgettable images and phrases. These imprinted immediately, overwriting whatever might have previously passed for consciousness or wisdom. What might have encouraged conversation between opposing perspectives became defensive encounters between entranced sides. Middle ground seemed to evaporate into crude dichotomies. A trench warfare ethic emerged, replete with a seemingly deadly No Man’s Land. Inquiries became unfashionable since few seemed willing to show their thinking behind whatever position they were taking. I suspect this was because of what would have traditionally involved thinking being replaced by a subtle sort of transplant surgery where ideology was crudely injected directly into unsuspecting innocents. Where The Beef? became the prototype for ReceivingWisdom.

The Muse has been engaging with these presumed-to-be enemies of inquiry. Those who throw stones at her receive an invitation. Bring your questions, she invites, and I’ll gladly sit down with you and explain my thinking. This tactic seems uncommonly courageous to me, since she seems to have to simply ignore the blasphemy that many subjected her to as a precursor. She believes in the benevolent power of generous interpretation, but not everyone has been introduced to how to induce this in practice. It represents pretty much the opposite of memes, and often requires something approaching a hyperactive imagination. It seeks silver linings when finding them seems most unlikely. It genuinely wants to understand others’ thinking behind their position, just as if and whether or not much thought had gone into it beforehand. It encourages thinking, whether very much ever preceded it on the topic at hand. It invites more human interaction instead of mumbling memes to fracture. It aspires to win/win even when the counterpart seems insistent upon everybody losing.

Wisdom insists that there’s always something missing from every conclusion. There’s always more that might be considered. Even the seemingly best defended reasons might still harbor unresolvable questions. The perfections we routinely depend upon utterly fail us in practice, but generous interpretations often manage to somehow step in and save us from ourselves. We are more tenaciously interdependent than we could ever be decisively independent. I’ve insisted before that not only are we not islands unto ourselves, but we’re also not nearly isthmuses, either. We’re more deeply enmeshed than we could ever guess, ReceivedWisdom definitely notwithstanding. Maybe we take sides to hide from what’s too obvious to us. Maybe we find our underlying connections beyond disconcerting.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz