Wit
Wit is a thing to be treasured. Knowledge is a thing to be stored until it’s useful.
Wit is the twinkle in a person’s eye, knowledge is the droning of their mouth.
Wit is, in my humble opinion, far more important than any knowledge you can have, because while knowledge can be gained by anyone with the time and inclination to do so, wit is there, or it isn’t. That’s not to disparage those with a preponderance of knowledge. Knowledge is a wonderful stepping stone, and anyone who claims to be an expert in a field better have a lot of it. But knowing, as is often said, is only half the battle.
The other half is wit: the analysis, the insight, the mind’s eye that takes all of that knowledge, stored in bookshelfs all neatly arranged on a south-facing wall, and makes something out of it. Taking books off the shelf wildly, with a wrecking-ball’s abandon. Free-associating until the realization is reached that everything is related, and that separations between fields and subjects and ideas are a lie. Wit is the creative part of the equation, and the part that makes a great book great, and Stephen Colbert funny. Wit is the thing that makes people laugh, and cry, and turn introspective. Wit is the seduction of the mind to the mind.
I am a Computer Science major, because I like computers, and I can’t imagine a life not working with them. But this wasn’t an easy choice. I applied to CSUSB as an English major, and struggled for months with the question of what I wanted to focus on, what I wanted to do. I chose a science.
This quarter, I have only one Humanities class, and it’s Friday only, for two hours. I wish I had more. The thing that has struck me about the sciences, and it is this that has made the decision of focus so difficult for me, is the way that inside, so many people in the sciences are dead. Sure, the have a love of what they do (most of the time), and a passion for problem solving, and understanding the world. But so often, the wit isn’t there, and the understanding comes down to little more than that sad precipitous word “knowledge”. They wish to know things, to understand, but they do not wish to analyze beyond the clinical. “What is this?”, “How does it work?”, “What does it do?”. It is so damn boring.
So I’ve been struggling this quarter, with the way my life seems to be increasingly devoid of wit. I strike up conversations when I can, and I search out wit in those around me, but my pool is one of scientists, and the sample to choose from, limited. I am downcast.
Those of you with wit will understand, those of you in the Humanities will similarly understand. I often wish my fellow scientists could as well. But it most likely won’t happen, and so I read, and write, and talk, and hope for some soul in conversation, or, to wit, wit.
