Žižek and wisdom

In a conversation with Peterson, Zizek ridicules the idea of wisdom, namely that taken to the extreme, they all just sound like boring cliches. And their inverses are also always true.

He’s not wrong – in fact, it’s a very shrewd observation – but perhaps he missed the point. What we perceive as wisdom are merely perspectives relevant to the issue at hand or current zeitgeist. They are rarely the whole answer. Sometimes, the poet or artist manages to encapsulate both perspectives: illustrating real understanding of the world as both how the common man and the king sees it. But often ‘wisdom’ merely serves as a pointer to an opposite or contrasting end of the spectrum: “never give up” or “always tell the truth”. Well what happens when you get cancer? Do you give up then?

“I don’t know which opinion you should choose. I could never advise you on that… No matter what kind of wisdom dictates you the choice you pick, no one will tell if it’s right or wrong until you arrive on some sort of outcome from your choice.”

– Levi Ackerman

Further, good advice is rarely objective; it’s subjective and deeply personal. People don’t attempt to understand others, they endeavour to put them in a box so their idea of the world stays coherent.

“我們不一樣, 每個人都有不同的境遇,
我們在這裡, 在這裡等你
雖然會經歷不同的事情,
我們都希望, 來生還能相遇”

– 大壯, ‘我們不一樣’