Book Review of The Wisdom Pyramid: Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World

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At-A-Glance

Rating 4.5/5

Length: Under 200 pages (Could read in a few short sessions)

What’s it about? I rarely hear the word “wisdom” heard in the modern world. But if you are working toward raising a thriving thinker, our understanding of this ancient word matters. Brett McCracken provides a simple visual framework for growing in wisdom without drowning in shallow knowledge in his book The Wisdom Pyramid: Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World. He uses the image of a pyramid to convey sources of a healthy information diet, building on a solid base of objective truth at the bottom, and moving upward to sources that require discernment and limits (or they lead quickly to folly).

McCracken’s works begins in Part 1 by painting a picture of the truth and knowledge crisis we are in and how it has led to mental and physical illness. In Part 2 he walks step by step through the pyramid model and throughout the text he defines wisdom, where it comes from, the benefits of wisdom, and how wisdom orients our minds, hearts, and souls in the right direction.

In a world where people are easily lost in the digital doldrums, this book can set us on the right path.

This Book is Best for: Parents (and their teenagers) who want a faith-rooted framework to build wisdom in an age of information overload. This book applies to parents and their children because it describes how the content we absorb impacts the wisdom we are able to pour out. It is not specifically a parenting book, but it can help parents and teachers to model healthy information consumption and provide a living example of wisdom in their own homes.

Why I Picked it Up

I heard Brett McCracken speak at our local church during a conference on Wisdom in the Age of Information. McCracken. He walked us through The Wisdom Pyramid and provided additional references to his book Scrolling Ourselves to Death.

The purpose of Thriving Little Thinkers is to help parents raise thinkers through sharing low-cost, high-impact resources and ideas for teaching and training in everyday life. This book articulately describes the dire need for thinkers in today’s age, particularly thinkers who are rooted in truth and are not easily swayed by deep fakes, viral social media posts, or the latest marketing strategy. It also gives us an image of Godly wisdom, which is a much greater goal to attain than academic success or being perceived as knowledgeable.

I am also intrigued by the overlap between McCracken’s wisdom pyramid and the backbone of classical Christian education: wisdom is cultivated, not consumed. The pyramid has a hierarchy of scripture, community, nature, books, and beauty that is weightier than the noise of the online world. Similarly, classical education has been described as a way to “order our loves,” to learn to love things that are good, true, and beautiful. Classical education is oriented toward virtue and the wisdom pyramid is oriented toward God as a source of wisdom, truth, good, and beauty. Classical Christian education also prioritizes wisdom over knowledge (applying knowledge rightly rather than just “knowing” facts).

3 Key Takeaways for Parents Who Want to Raise Thinkers:

Build the base before you add the top.
- A central premise of the book is that there is a hierarchy in sources of knowledge and wisdom—some sources are inherently better for living a wise life.
- Design your day with the building blocks of wisdom first and let the tech/screen time/AI filter in last. If you start at the foundation of the pyramid and work to construct those blocks into your daily rhythms, they naturally fill much of your time, and therefore the top of the pyramid is practically limited (by intention).
Your attention and mental capacity is incredibly important and “unlocks” the power of the wisdom sources.
- The top of the pyramid depletes your capacity to engage in the lower building blocks and should be used with intention and caution.
Choose physical and permanent sources of wisdom over digital or shifting sources of knowledge.
- Today’s digital content is endlessly “updatable.” Real world, spiritual, beautiful experiences in physical community offer rare stability and historical continuity.

What I’d Change/Limitations:

1) The book is more of “why” than a “how to.” The pyramid is memorable and helpful for sorting your information consumption in daily life, but this book isn’t intended to be an all inclusive tech guide for families.

2) This book predates the generative AI tsunami that is absolutely essential to consider in the context of information consumption. It doesn’t claim to be about AI, and in the pyramid framework it should only occur at the very top of the pyramid which is to “use sparingly.” For more information on AI for parents, check out Your Brain on ChatGPT: The MIT Study EVery Parent Should Know About or ChatGPT: A Practical Guide for Curious Parents.

Using the Wisdom Pyramid At Home

Here are a few ways we address the sources of wisdom at the Mumbower house:

Bible
- There are books and articles galore on why the Bible is the foundation of wisdom, so I won’t attempt to restate those arguments here. McCracken champions scripture as our base of truth very well: “In a world where information is fleeting and unreliable, the Bible is an ancient book that endures in every age–the bestselling book of history that has been read, preached, probed, and treasured by billions across centuries. An in a world of “to each their own” truth, where one’s inner compass is supposedly a trustworthy guide, the Bible represents an infinitely more reliable source of knowledge and truth: God himself.”
- We start our day with Morning Time by Brighter Day Press, which includes scripture reading, scripture memory, hymns, and catechism. It also includes weekly art study, poetry, and read-aloud book recommendations (a one stop shop to hit multiple key building blocks of The Wisdom Pyramid). We aim to study scripture individually as parents and as a family. We study the Word at church and in a group bible study setting.

Church
- We aim to attend weekly IN PERSON services at our local church. We utilize remote service streaming during times of illness and travel, but we think the physical embodied gathering of God’s people is a crucial family rhythm. Chapter 5 of McCracken’s book is all about the church’s role in growing us in timeless wisdom. We invest in other local communities so that we have people to challenge and encourage us and that we can mutually serve, too. For more about the physical gathering of community, I also recommend Justin Whitmel Early’s book The Body Teaches the Soul.

Nature
- In the last 5 years we have worked toward the 1000 Hours Outside Challenge. We have only hit the 1000 hour target once, but the hundreds and hundreds of hours spent outdoors working toward it have built habits and rhythms that help our whole family prioritize time in nature. We often eat outside, do school work outside, and of course play and explore outside. I admit this challenged me at first–I’d much rather be in the AC with a book and a cup of hot coffee when it’s 98 degrees and humid. But the more we practice, the more it becomes habit and the easier it feels to “conquer the doorstep mile” and head out on a microadventure.

Books
- No matter what approach your family takes to education, books are an essential resource for knowledge and wisdom. Reading books enhances cognitive development, builds growth mindset, and is potentially neuroprotective. We read books together daily, have read-alouds, visit our local library, buy books for birthdays and holidays, and have quiet time each afternoon for either physical books or audiobooks (shout out to our Yoto players for keeping our kids engaged for a 12 hour car ride a few weeks ago with no screens!).
- An important note: choose physical print books for children under five years old rather than screen based digital reading. Audiobooks are great, but remove the quick dopamine hit of the screens and stick with paper and board books while they are little and their brains are still making massive connections to reading and language.
- Just the presence of physical books around your home has academic and cognitive benefits. In a research study of more than 70,000 families from 27 countries, children growing up in homes with physical books (“a scholarly culture”) gained “3 more years of schooling than children with bookless homes, independent of parents’ education, occupation, and class.”
- In the age of AI and endless digital book options, physical books can’t be hacked, edited, or tracked. There is no algorithm, no update, no shift in what our children may encounter. Reading older, timeless books in physical form taps into ancient wisdom. If my kids pick up Little Women from our bookshelf, it says the same thing every single time.

Beauty (Art, Music)
- Beauty if one of the languages of wisdom. While I love the brain and I can lean hard on the cognitive side of wisdom, beauty is powerful because it is affective. It can grab our minds and hearts and “move us viscerally, sometimes more powerfully than logic or reason” (McCracken, 2021).
- Adding music and art to your life doesn’t have to be expensive–you can access high-resolution classical art in the public domain for free and checkout or stream classical music from your local library’s app. In our family, as I mentioned above, we use Morning Time by Brighter Day Press after breakfast each morning. It includes a new piece of artwork to study each week along with a hymn and a classical composer to learn about. The art is printed and right at my fingertips, the hymn lyrics are included, and we stream music by the composer for that week as we drive or clean or play. This way, we are incorporating beauty frequently and it’s already gathered together and laid out for me. The easier, the better in this busy season of young kiddos!
- We visit our local art museum on free days and try to focus on only one section at a time. We encourage our kids to bring notebooks and draw or write down notes as we move through the exhibit.
- We attend at least one ballet or orchestra performance with our school aged kids. Our library system also hosts free events by our city orchestra.
- For more on beauty, check out my post What Can Beauty Teach Us?

The Internet/Social Media/AI (use sparingly)
- The world largely flips the Wisdom Pyramid on its head: many families spend the bulk of their time in the top of the pyramid, immersed in the digital world. I greatly appreciate that McCracken doesn’t suggest getting rid of all technology but rather keeping it in its place and orienting ourselves toward greater sources of wisdom. We still have a young family, so limiting our children’s internet/social media/AI use has been manageable so far…but that is changing by the day. My children have started saying “Can you just ask Google?” when they have a question. My preschooler recently asked before we went to the Houston Space and Rocket Center, “Will there be computers there?” He was referring to the touch screens embedded in many of the museums we have visited lately. I responded, “Yeah maybe buddy, but there will also be a real space shuttle and real astronaut suits!” He said “Okay that’s fine but I’ll probably just play on the computers if they have those…”
- The degree to which parents spend in this layer of the wisdom pyramid will largely impact the habits of your children. Each family is immersed in digital tech at different levels, at work and at home. I think the key here is intentionally and timing. Do our kids needs skills in how to use tech wisely? Absolutely. Should we be handing them screens when their brains are still growing and making connections as they are actively learning what is true, good, and beautiful by their real surroundings? Let’s not. I’m a big fan of giving them a chance to build brains before we hand them over to digital bots.

More Books about Wise Family Media Diets

The Tech-Wise Family by Andy Crouch– household tech practices for faith led, countercultural families.

Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport–If you personally struggle with information overload, read this book and unplug yourself before you try to tackle it with your family.

The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt–a research driven case for linking pediatric mental health with smartphone and social media addiction.

I hope you pick up a copy of The Wisdom Pyramid and apply it in your home with wisdom!

Cheering you on,