Global Education Scholarship - 1st Place & Fellowship

Question: "Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers."
- Voltaire, French Writer and Philosopher

Please come up with your own study abroad related scholarship question and accompanying essay answer.

Wisdom is a word you don’t hear much anymore. It sounds ancient, archaic, like it belongs more in a Platonic dialogue than in any modern conversation. But wisdom remains paramount for the happiness and fulfillment of the individual, and the perspective gained through new encounters and immersions in other cultures helps us attain some small part of that most elusive of virtues.

If we examine the nature of modern society for a moment, it becomes clear why intelligence now seems to trump wisdom. In our globalized and interconnected world, intelligence is the malleable new key to the blossoming world political and economic order. Wisdom, on the other hand, is immutable, and its use in relation to economics is obscure. But in our individual lives, we human beings struggle with the same things and search for the same truths today as we did millennia ago, and wisdom remains our guide. The 20th century American philosopher Will Durant defined wisdom as “seeing things sub specie totius,” in view of the whole. Wisdom, then, is the ability to analyze something with total perspective.

So how do we go about gaining this perspective that is the essence of wisdom? The most vital component is experience – of the unknown, of the new and the foreign. There are subtleties and details, what some might call the “feel” of a place, that are inexpressible through the written or spoken word, but which convey infinite meaning. You must see them, smell them, hear them, taste them and feel them to truly understand their significance and their relation to the whole. No amount of words can capture the essence of fanaticism better than an Italian soccer game in a stadium whose 40,000 spectators literally shake its foundations, and no amount of words can convey the meaning of poverty better than a walk through a Manila slum where almost 100,000 people live on top of a landfill. The only way to gain a realistic perspective about the world around us is through experiences like these that add up to form an understanding of ourselves and of our place within the whole. It is through travel abroad that we are given the opportunity to have these experiences, to gain perspective and, thereby, wisdom.

“Know Thyself” read the inscription above the entrance to the temple of Delphi, itself a commandment rich in wisdom and truth. In the ancient world, travelers far and wide journeyed to seek the wisdom of the oracle, but what they gained during their trip – through encounters with strange people in foreign lands – was of far more value than anything the oracle could have told them. And so it is for us today. Only through others can we gain the perspective to know ourselves. Only through time abroad can we realize our place at home. Wisdom may have little role for societies measured by GDP, but as individuals it has never, and will never, cease to be our guiding light.

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