Wisdom Accretion

It is true that we often do not listen to the wisdom of others. Most often we need to learn from our own mistakes rather than avoid those mistakes all together by listening to our elders. As the world goes this means that the collective wisdom-in-action, not the wisdom that actually resides in the heads of the older generation, is always at a lower level than it could be if we indeed listened and took to heart the wisdom of those who have gone before. One could make the argument then that we are not really building up the collective reservoir of wisdom. That the body of wisdom is not evolving so fast. The reason is that the older generation die off and with them goes there wisdom. And a fresh generation starts, ignoring the old stuff. What if either the old folks didn't die out so soon or the young folks really listened to the old ones? Would our wisdom pool grow? Advance? What would that wiser world be like?