If you want to know what a society values, just look at their ads.
In San Francisco, ads are about cheap data storage and SEO optimizing tools. Over in Manila, every other billboard seems to be for some skin whitener.
From my experience, 99% of ads have to do with making more money, looking better, finding love, or becoming famous. We could do a lot worse. I’d imagine that many ancient societies valued similar things.
To me, this is what makes the story of Solomon all the more intriguing. God offers Solomon anything in the world and amidst all the noise about wealth, romance, power, beauty, and fame, Solomon asks for wisdom.
When many of us first hear this story, our reaction was probably something like, “Sure, wisdom makes sense, but it’s kind of the obvious answer when you think about it.” To us, Solomon’s answer is the equivalent of “More wishes” when a genie grants us three.
The thing is, if wisdom were so obvious of an answer, we’d be spending a lot more time trying to attain wisdom ourselves. In reality, we spend the vast majority of our time on the temporal things that Solomon turned his back on. Just think about what we talk about with our friends: careers, cryptocurrency, money, politics, gossip, romantic endeavors, travel plans. Rarely do we talk about anything remotely related to how we can acquire more wisdom.
Thankfully, I was lucky enough to encounter wisdom in high school from my World History teacher.
Mr. Porterfield was the best teacher I’ve ever had. While Mr. Porterfield certainly knew a lot about history and current events, he knew even more about living life well. And that’s what his class really was about: how to go about living life well1. To me, that’s what wisdom is all about.
On top of that, Mr. Porterfield was a charismatic, gifted storyteller. When Mr. Porterfield began to tell a story, everyone in the classroom would be leaning intently over their desks, even before he got to the good part.
Storytelling is an underrated part of being wise. You can have all the street smarts and philosophical knowledge in the world, but if you can’t hold anyone’s attention, no one’s going to listen to you.
Mr. Porterfield definitely held the attention of me and my classmates, so I’m going to share some snippets of wisdom that stuck with me for the past 12 years.
On happiness
One time, Mr. Porterfield asked everyone in the class to say what kind of car they wanted. He went around the room asking each student, one by one.
And as you could imagine, luxury cars like Ferraris and Lambos were the most popular answer. I don’t remember anyone saying that they wanted a Toyota Camry or Honda Civic.
After getting answers from the whole class, Mr. Porterfield asked how we could ever be happy as a society when we all want something that only 1% of us will actually get.
Ten years later, I still don’t know the answer to that question.
On living well
One day, Mr. Porterfield drew these two graphs on the board.
The upper graph, he said, represented an overly volatile life. This was the kind of life lived by the person who peaks in high school, gets into hard drugs, and dies from a hang gliding accident.
The bottom graph, meanwhile, represented those people who were living a life so boring that they were basically dead. Their lives were the equivalent of a flat line on an EKG.
Mr. Porterfield then went on to say how important it was for us to find the right balance within ourselves.
On the financial crisis
I’m telling you, all the working people are scared and selling. Meanwhile, all the rich guys are out there treating this crisis like a clearance sale for stocks.
-Mr. Porterfield
At the time I was taking the class, we were in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis. I remember hearing headlines about the Dow dropping 6% in a day, and aside from Mr. Porterfield, everyone I knew was scared.
But to Mr. Porterfield’s point, scared money doesn’t make money. After all, there’s a reason why the risk-premium exists in finance.
On real estate
They don’t make land no more.
-Mr. Porterfield
I loved this quote until I learned about the new set of islands that the Saudis are planning to build off their coast. They literally made land, Mr. Porterfield!
I’ll cut him some slack here though because the context of this quote was students asking him for financial advice and Mr. Porterfield recommended investing in real estate. Given how the California real estate market boomed after I took his class in 2008, Mr. Porterfield was right on the money.
On maybes
If a girl says “maybe” when you ask her out to the movies, don’t go showing up to the movies with two tickets.
-Mr. Porterfield
No means no. And also, maybe means no.
While some might say that maybe doesn’t always mean no, I still think this is a good starting point for a bunch of teenagers in an all-boys high school.
I think it’s pretty criminal that we don’t have classes in elementary school dedicated to teaching kids how to live life well. Is there any knowledge that’s more worthwhile than that?