What’s the difference between wisdom, and conventional wisdom? Shouldn’t wisdom be sufficiently universal and timeless you shouldn’t have to qualify it with anything? And why conventional, of all qualifiers, meaning generally accepted as if common sense rather than wise knowledge known to a few? In that sense, conventional wisdom is an oxymoron, which is hardly wise, symbolically or literally.

I’m not a fan of conventional wisdom. That’s because I have generally found conventional wisdom to be merely tradition, i.e. convention, the keeping of something only because that’s how it’s been done, or thought of, for a long time rather than because of some positive net merit from an objective evaluation. Now, to be fair, once upon a time, some or much of the conventional wisdom touted today might have been wise. Also to be fair, there is a lot of good, conventional wisdom that still apply today, especially if ancient philosophy counted as conventional wisdom. However, for what I have come across in this day and age that is considered conventional wisdom, far more of it is convention than wisdom. As a result, you may see many of my quotes as contradicting or rebutting conventional wisdom. Maybe consider them to be contraconventional or counterconventional wisdom as I do, having made up those fictitious terms to classify them. To be fair yet again, though, possibly with karmic justice, the fact I am writing quotes might well mean one day, my contraconventional wisdom will also become more convention than wisdom.

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This post is one of 70 quotes I wrote, each with an accompanying essay, in my e-book and paperback Stars I Put in my Sky to Live By, on Amazon or Smashwords (choose your price including free!).