The Age of Reason probably produced the most dynamic minds in human history. At such times thinking was considered a noble activity of intelligent class. Philosophy became known as the science of knowledge. And it sent thinkers in pursuit of wisdom with passionate love that often conjured consequences of persecution, torture and even death. Bruno was burned alive at the stake. And Socrates drank hemlock from his jail cell.
Wisdom lured her lovers into cognitive arenas that spun revolutions in thinking. Copernicus took us from thinking that Earth was the center of the universe and that all the heavenly bodies evolved around man, to the thought that our planet is only one of several million planets throughout several million galaxies. And Aristotle took us from thinking that the world was flat, to the thought that Earth is a sphere and that ships are safe to sail forever without falling over the edge.
Philosophy ignored patriarchy and wisdom cast her love spell upon women as well. The feminine pursuit of wisdom showed no traces of gender and philosophy spared them no mercy in their struggle for knowledge. We have entertained the thinking of such women as Madame Helena Blavatsky, Annie Besant, Alice Bailey and Ayn Rand to say a few.
The Age of Inventions took stock of mental activity and man jilted wisdom for the machine. Since then thinking has been lured into ideas that spin the wheel of economics and manifest personal rewards of wealth, recognition and status. The pursuit of wisdom for the sake of its beauty, power and knowledge has become too much of a journey of trials and tribulations, cursed by poverty and filled with pain, suffering and sacrifices, for wisdom to succeed in luring modern day thinkers down that lonely road of philosophy. Philosophizing in western civilization has become an endeavor of adventure and research sponsored by financial grants that end up in literature with hopes of making the bestseller list of some prestigious publishing house. Gone from the pursuit are the devastating consequences of not sweeping wisdom off of her feet, making passionate love to her and forcing her to reveal her secrets of knowledge. The scarcity of the genuine pursuit of wisdom has chased philosophy into the arms of education and given it an academic disguise as history. Today's philosophers have become professionals of salary who teach the concepts of various philosophies of previous thinkers. Their philosophical status draws no suspect to the fact that they have no philosophy of their own. To conjure the strength and courage it would take to pursue wisdom in this day and age, and experienced knowledge that revealed a new reality would place any philosopher at risk of losing his or her teaching career – especially if his or her philosophy was dynamic enough to produce students as independent thinkers who caused wisdom to be a contagious love bug that infected an entire institution of learning.
The Washington Post headed an article in 1979 entitled "The Cupboard of Ideas is Bare." Prominent thinkers from around the nation admitted that they were unable to find solutions to the most urgent problems facing our society. Quoting the Washington Post, "Talks with noted intellectuals in Cambridge, Mass., and New York, in fact, not only confirm that the mainstream of ideas has split into dozens of rivulets, but that in some areas it has dried up altogether." One of the academics interviewed was Irving Kristol, Henry R. Luce professor of urban values at New York University, who said that he was resigning his chair because "I don't have anything to say anymore. I don't think anybody does. When a problem becomes too difficult, you lose interest."
There are no incentives to think beyond self-interest. Success of the individual is monopolizing the consciousness of personal thought. As a result our civilization drifts towards decadence with a narcissistic crew of thoughtlessness that is irresponsible of its debt to civilization and ungrateful of its privilege to be human.
