Knowledge, Monsters and Wisdom

It’s Halloween time, and I love a good scary story. When I was an English teacher, this was my favorite time of the year to teach. When the leaves turn bright colors and the air turns cold, there was nothing better than taking my students outside to sit under one of the beautiful red maple trees that surrounded our building for a good scary story! We’d read everything from classics like Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” to modern day thrillers like Neil Gaiman’s “Click Clack the Rattle Bag.” There are few things I’ve enjoyed more in life than showing my students the magic of how the same 26 letters arranged in different orders can create feelings ranging from sadness to laughter to awe and even fear. I love the power that words hold, which is why I was so taken when I recently came across this quote:

“Knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein is not the monster. Wisdom is knowing that he is.”

So here’s your fun fact for the day. If you’ve never actually read Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, you may not realize that Frankenstein is actually Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the mad scientist, who created the creature. In popular culture it’s become mainstream to identify the monster as Frankenstein, but he was actually unnamed in the story.

The fact that Frankenstein is the doctor is just that… a fact. It’s actually an inarguable fact. But beyond getting you 100 points at Tuesday Night Trivia, that information isn’t going to do you much good. Wisdom, according to the quote, is understanding that Frankenstein, the doctor, is in actuality the monster. In other words when you apply your knowledge and your critical thinking skills you develop the wisdom to understand that trying to create man, trying to put life back into the dead, is a monstrous act. 

Too often in society we take our knowledge and lean on it. We put it in our pocket and pull out that inarguable fact to get our points, but we don’t learn the lesson. We don’t develop it into wisdom. 

Twenty plus years ago, our CEO Mike MacLeod was heartbroken over the loss of life he saw at Columbine and on 9/11. He calls this ignorance-based loss, meaning people died because of what they didn’t know. Yes, there is the inarguable fact that innocent people died because evil people did evil things, but at Status Solutions we believe you have to take that knowledge and turn it into wisdom. Mike knew he could create technology that would help prevent a loss of life. He knew he had the ability to give the true first responders, the teachers and students in the building, the situational awareness they would need to try and save their own or others’ lives. He knew he possessed the technology that could help firemen find a passable route from one burning stairwell to a safe one. He knew he had all of this knowledge in the form of technology and he knew sitting on it and doing nothing with it was throwing away wisdom. That’s how Status Solutions was born and that’s how it continues to evolve today. 

Since the turn of the millennium technology has advanced, making leaps and bounds in communication abilities. Status Solutions prides itself on staying at the forefront of this ever-evolving knowledge. What began as the SARA (Situational Awareness and Response Assistant) platform in schools, grew to add the CATIE (Communication and Access to Information Everywhere) platform —a tool originally designed to help prevent isolation in the elderly. Though no one could’ve predicted the Covid-19 pandemic, CATIE proved instrumental in helping seniors around the country stay connected with their loved ones during that tumultuous time. Today we continue to take our knowledge and develop it into wisdom with MIMI (Merging Information into Meaningful Insights). This groundbreaking technology takes the facts of a student’s attendance, grades, and reported moods and behaviors and turns them into wisdom. Studying the data points it analyzes, predicts, and alerts in the hope that intervention can occur before bad moods become bad acts. 

And that is who we are. We are a completely customizable situational awareness company that prides itself on taking our knowledge and using it to provide our customers with lifesaving wisdom. We don’t ever stop evolving the knowledge we have into wisdom. Yes, we know that Frankenstein was the doctor, and the truth is I’d put my money on the Status Solutions team at Tuesday Night Trivia any time. But we also know that Shelley’s message wasn’t just a scary story. It was a tale about humanity and our responsibilities to one another. How are you taking care of your fellow man? I can tell you how we are.