A Letter to My Future Children

By Joshua Charles Published on January 14, 2018

We don’t know where we come from. We have no idea of the great treasure trove of human experience most simply call “history.” We have data, and we have knowledge, but we have no wisdom. I want my future children to be wise.

I have been preparing a curriculum for them of wise words from great men and women throughout history. If our culture cannot supply this wisdom, I will share with them the words of those who can.

My book covers religion, morals, life advice, finances, and every other subject the wise man and woman will need to understand. I include excerpts from the Jews and Christians, the Chinese, the Indians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Medievals, the Renaissance men, the Founders, even the moderns. I’ve been working on this for years, and there remains much work to do.

An Inspiring Lack of Wisdom

I was inspired to do this because of the ubiquitous lack of wisdom in our time and culture. I personally subscribe to what I call the “Postman Thesis,” based on the famous book by Neil Postman entitled Amusing Ourselves to Death. Written in 1985, long before the internet, personal computers, smartphones, the book offers a stark and jarring appraisal of our culture and its degradation. We have become, in brief, disconnected from our roots, awash in mere amusements.

An individual who cannot remember what he learned earlier in his life is in great trouble. Imagine what the consequences are for a society that can’t remember what humanity has learned. Nothing so limits the heart and mind as knowing nothing about who and what came before you, Nothing so atrophies them as never hearing the wisdom that could be gleaned from human experience.

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What will ultimately become “Lessons for my Children” is meant to be a compilation of the greatest wisdom ever uttered by the human race. Here is part of the introduction to the work, addressed to my future children:

My child: This work exists so that you might grow to be greater, stronger, smarter, and wiser than the father who prepared it for you. It exists to ground you in the human experience through the ages, which has so much to give us. Every trend of this age, if you do not actively fight against it, will prevent you from ever even hearing that wisdom. Our age seeks to inculcate a merely narcissistic and delusional prejudice in favor of the present, as if the greatest achievements of mankind arrived only with the vanguardian horde of “progress.”

Hold On to This

Only by studying works such as these will you learn how to identify that which should be held on to, perpetuated, and refined. Only that way will you learn to see the nonsense of one’s own age, of which each age can claim a significant portion. By placing yourself in the experience, time and place of many ages, you thereby (at least partially) inoculate yourself against the stupidities of your own.

And by placing yourself in the experience, time, and place of many ages, you thereby come to learn that they themselves exemplify a plentiful source of stupidity as well. You will learn of man’s greatness and his meanness; of his capacity for beauty and courage, just as much as his capacity for the most irrepressible cruelty and murder. You will learn that he is that creature who both builds Auschwitz and writes the ninth symphony.

You will thus learn to both fear, and respect your species, and thereby yourself. With the help of humanity’s wisdom, you will learn that you are not beyond its vices, nor beneath its virtues, but capable of them all. You will learn that man is at best a dangerous angel, a virtuous devil, and that while he may occasion admiration, God is He alone who is worthy of your worship.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” In this way alone you shall grow to be wise.

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