A remarkable new book & and interesting tribute to Yukio Mishima

Cambridge handbook of Knowledge 2019, Sternberg and Gluck et al

This is a scholarly psychology volume of about 800 pps.  Some of it is above my ability to comprehend, but there is a lot of accessible new and thought provoking information as well.  I must say that it is 800 pps and is a series of articles by many psychologists from many countries and universities and I urge you not to evaluate it by my abstractions here as they are a part of much larger concepts  - for the most part.

One of the most interesting essays states that in the XXth century, IQs in at least 12 developed nations rose about three points per decade.  The IQs in the U.S. are continuing to rise.  The significance of 30 points in 100 yrs is that 30 points is the difference between gifted IQ and average IQ, and between average IQ and intellectually challenged IQ.  In some of the dozen nations studied, IQs rose at a rate higher than three pts annually for the past 100 yrs.  No reasons are given, but being a scholarly book, we would need to comb thru dozens of referred books and dissertations to find that answer. (Canada is not mentioned among the 12 nations (Ha ha ha) altho they did say there are more.  From my experience, many Cdns know full well that as a people they are already far too smart and wise to need testing to prove it).

However, as to behaviour as a society and solving world problems, we see no progress at all.  The author notes many advances in the realm of things like cell phones, aerospace, autos, etc., but little in behaviour. "The state of the world today suggests that IQ has not helped much" . In fact she wrote "We are creating in our world a race to Samara: the destruction of our world as we know it.  (Note: This directly relates to the Henry Millier book I will mention below.  The Race to Samara is ref to a Somerset Maugham story about Death awaiting a man rushing to Samnara to avoid it).

The authors all try to define wisdom and how and when it is and is not acquired or lost.  They illustrate several possible states of non-wisdom such as Kinds of foolishness for example: unrealistic optimism, egocentrism, false omniscience, false omnipotence, false invulnerability, and ethical vulnerability.  (One category is my personal fav., which is Shallow knowledge which is one where deeper analysis or thought is avoided in favour of just accepting the believed wisdom of a leader or media).

One, or more, authors sifted through all known data published on wisdom and said it exists in two forms: lifeless, being stored in books and ...alive in the consciousness of man. (Einstein quote).  They used measurements like The Berlin wisdom paradigm (BWP - great name!) to distill a workable group of attributes of wisdom.  One consistent example listed for the acquisition of wisdom is transcendence  - or the ability to think beyond the self into a more worldly state.  Each of the conditions written are interesting and seem viable.  But I must say if you look at the above paragraph of non-wisdom and also at the list of attaining wisdom, there is one famous human who rates about 100 on non- or anti-wisdom and probably about 2 of 100 on the anti-wisdom scales - yes, the current president of the U.S.  Even now, it is genuinely shocking how he clinically rates as profoundly stupid on every metric on every scale.

However, it is amusing to me that an author mentions one method of learning beautifully named The Delphi method of ...going around recording opinions of experts in the field (which she used in her work - of course - what else).

If you have nothing else to do in your existence, or even if you select areas of personal interest,  the 2019 Handbook of Wisdom is for you.

Henry Miller, Reflactions on the death of Mishima, 1972.

This is a small book and has only about 40 small pages.  It happens that our Reference library rare books has the signed and numbered ( 200) version.  It is beautifully printed and a joy to hold and read as it is a virgin being protected in the rare book (lovely) bunker.  But it is still available in open ed. on Abe books for example.

Miller, as always, in this tribute to Mishima.   He said that the fatality of his life was his obsession with beauty, youth and death.  But he also wrote that Y.M.s suicide was in part, to emphasize his strong opinion that Japan ought to struggle to embrace traditional Japanese values instead of the dead-end Western values.

Miller believed that the West has it all wrong: that the true promise of obsessing on "...half-baked ideas such as efficiency, progress, and security is death.

The promise is death.  Death not only in litte ways but on a wholesale scale. The death of the individual, the collective...the entire planet... (This, in 1972 !!).

Recently I have been thinking of so many flat broke, hopelessly inept (economically) nations like No. Korea, Russia, Turkey, U.S. etc etc. spending so much potential wealth on armaments and creating trouble in the world  I have been frequently speculating on the state of their nations and even the world if all or most of that money was spent on their citizens and protecting the future of the planet.  But I neglected to realize that Japan is an example named by Miller.  He said that in military defeat and the lack of need for future military weaponry, the nation focused on Japanese values and rapidly rose from the ashes to an economically strong and widely wealthy nation and society.  The only other developed nation I can think of is Switzerland - where even the cows - I believe - have numbered bank accts.

Japan is always upbraided for its reluctance to admit foreigners.  But what Mishima and Miller have written ought to make us think in a slightly different direction.

Apologia:  I know the above has grammatical and probably spelling errors but I am too old and impatient to make this academically hygenic.  Anyway, I am not writing it for the Vatican or Library of Congress, only you.
 JKK