1. Well, I'm sorely tempted to argue with you here, but I won't. After all, it isn't really relevant to what we're discussing or your question.
Sure it is. It's a lot harder to argue your proposition from a materialist perspective, specifically because we know there are distinct material changes in brain structure during adulthood.
2. I don't, and I'm sorry if it seems like that. I wasn't saying that I'm some an omniscient, rare, and infinitely wise teenager. I am sorry if I didn't answer your question, but I can't do that when there is a proposition in the question I do not agree with. I will always be gaining wisdom, and I will always be looking down at my younger self. This won't change no matter how old I get. If I may offer an answer as to why it seems like I "reflexively separate myself from those qualities and descriptions," I would say I view wisdom as attainable for as long as someone is living.
Here's the first thing that young people get hung up on when it comes to life - you don't get to take it on your own terms. You have to take it as it comes. Unfortunately, life is all about answering questions, the propositions of which you don't agree with. The only proposition I made was that you were reflexively separating yourself from the objects of your criticism. You may have interpreted that as a comment on your inner cognition. It was not. It was a description of your behavior as I perceived it. To reject that proposition is to reject my capacity to competently perceive the world around me.
This, my friend, is the subtle arrogance of youth. That we somehow perceive things better than those around us, instead of recognizing that we perceive them in different contexts, and what's more, no one's context is the right one.
Corresponding with it is the other arrogance - that life is something to be possessed. Wisdom is not attainable because wisdom is never had in the first place. The wise man does not own unique knowledge, but rather understands that he has been invited to the table by his forebears, and to share in their food, drink, conversation, and experiences thereof. He also understands that the feast is eternal as long as people continue to be invited, but each individual person's invitation only lasts until death. Thus, the idea of possessing wisdom is silly, because then, what happens to it after you die? It's an utter waste.
Of course, sitting at the table is a daunting prospect, and to think oneself unworthy of that seat will forever keep a person away. Thus, a wise person must forgive the naivete of youth, while understanding it his or herself in the first place.
I have a lot to learn and concede there are wiser folks than me. The difference is, I acknowledge that we
all have a lot to learn, and we can all learn something from someone else. Yes, even me.
Another example of the subtle arrogance of youth - that the existence of wiser folks than oneself is something that must be conceded, rather than as given as the existence of the sun or the earth. There is no such thing as the wisest person on the earth, because any person only has a certain kind of wisdom. Wisdom is the process of keeping one's ears open. When you hear a very wise statement, it's not because of some special knowledge that the other person has, as much as it is that the other person took care to listen to what you were saying in the first place.
We don't
have a lot to learn - there is a lot we can
choose to learn. What's more, people choose to learn different things. What's a given, is that with age, a person has had the opportunity to learn far more than at the start.
In my estimation, a person is not truly wise until the age of 40 or so. This is because, before that age, a person has not had the opportunity to watch someone close to him or her grow from infancy to adulthood. That person has only experienced that process from a muddled, immature and subjective outlook, and not from a emotionally developed one. Once this is done, a person has fulfilled his or her biological imperative; that is, making sure the next generation survives to reproductive age.
In many ways, wisdom is the process of preparing those who are younger than you for life after you die. Your role goes from preserving a particular genome toward strengthening and preserving a cultural genome, the table of which I previously spoke.
