True wisdom is knowing that you know nothing

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column

Michael Commane

Last Sunday week, Radio 1’s ‘Bowman: Sunday’ programme was dedicated to poet Thomas Kinsella, who died on December 22. We heard how Kinsella had initially no interest in poetry as a result of how it was taught in school. ‘Teaching of poetry managed to remove any charm or accessibility or success that it might have’, he said. He recalled how they were made commit to memory one or two stanzas so as to satisfy the examiner. ‘No art form could survive that,’ he said.

Imagine inflicting corporal punishment on pupils for not remembering a stanza? The violence of it is beyond words. However, I do remember later in college having a lecturer who had me sitting at the edge of my seat listening to him. 

It’s interesting how words and thoughts can influence us.

Someone gave me a Christmas gift of ‘The Sinner and the Saint/Dostoevsky, a Crime and Its Punishment’ by Kevin Birmingham. It’s about how Fyodor Dostoevsky came to write ‘Crime and Punishment’.

On learning of his father’s death, Dostoevsky wrote to his brother Mikhail: ‘Humanity is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don’t say that you have wasted time.’

 

I am forever asking what life is about. Is there a God, is there life after death and if there be, what form does it take?

What do the words God, Devil, heaven, hell mean? 

Reading Birmingham’s book about Dostoevsky has ignited a flame of curiosity in me. 

Nothing ever stands still. We are in a state of constant change. 

Of course I can only speak for myself but how can anyone be certain about anything in a universe that contains realities and mysteries light years beyond our understanding? How conditioned are we by our surroundings and environment?

People of faith will say that God is a constant but surely our faith and understanding of God develop?

When I see what happens within organised religions I often find myself saying how can they know so much about God when they get so many simple matters wrong. We always have to be extremely careful attempting to say anything about God and the mystery of the universe.

In the Russia of the mid-19th century it was generally accepted that serfdom was ok. God apparently sanctioned the institution. When a serf ran away, there was a patron saint to whom a serf holder could pray to speed the serf’s capture.

It often strikes me that the sin of idolatry has been airbrushed out of the text books. It’s so easy for us to create our own cosy sanitised idea of God, in other words create our own image of God and fall into the trap of idolatry. It’s important never to lose sight of the sense of mystery and wonder of God.

Dostoevsky said he was studying the mystery of life and death, because he wanted to be a human being. I like that comment from Socrates: ‘The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.’