wise-2
Explanation
This comic explores the cynical idea that wisdom in old age is largely a self-serving illusion.
In the first panel, a child asks his father, "Dad, when you grow old do you become wise?" The father simply replies, "Nah."
In the second panel, the father elaborates: "You decide you're wise because if you're not wise you're useless. If you're lucky you can convince others." This is a bleak but humorous take on aging -- the father suggests that elderly people claim wisdom not because they have genuinely accumulated deep insight, but because wisdom is the only currency they have left. Without it, age offers nothing of social value, so the elderly rebrand their experience as "wisdom" and hope others buy in.
In the third panel, the child says, "That sounds like wisdom." The father responds with a satisfied "Goooood. Goooood." -- delighted that his own cynical remark is being received as wise, which perfectly proves his point. He is doing exactly what he just described: packaging a somewhat obvious observation as profound insight and successfully convincing a younger person to treat it as wisdom.
The comic creates a neat self-referential loop: the father's claim that wisdom is a con is itself taken as wisdom, making him both the critic and the example of the phenomenon he is criticizing.