If self-interest, short-sightedness and revenge formed the pinnacle of human aspirations, then we could rejoice that civilization has fulfilled its destiny. But we all know that we cannot continue to wreak havoc on nature and our fellow humans like this without calling forth consequences of the direst sort. And we despair that we possess the collective wisdom to pull back from the brink in time.
Our knowledge has achieved technological miracles that defy our control. Our knowledge of the universe mocks our understanding. Our knowledge of how to extend life is exceeded only by our knowledge of how to shorten it. And our knowledge of how to make use of the resources of our planet threatens to pull the rug of life right out from under us.
But has our wisdom kept pace with the advance of knowledge? Has it even increased a little since our collective ancestors began inquiring into the wise life several millennia ago?
By knowledge we of course mean the intellect's ability to think and reason out problems, create hypothetical questions, make plans, distinguish between things, and, most of all, talk to itself. It's that reliance on self-conscious reasoning that marks much of modern thinking and has brought us both material blessings and curses.
The state of the world around us is little different than our own lives, however. We face a whirlwind of opportunities and challenges that do not seem to produce the outcome we expect when we address them using our intellect. Just as governments cannot seem to make things work in the real world by trying to fix them with reason alone, our own attempts to succeed by thinking creates unforeseen backlashes more often than not.
So how does wisdom differ from knowledge and why have so many creative and successful people warned us away from living a life too rational? If the world we live in isn't simply a series of dominoes falling in nice neat predictable patterns of cause-and-effect, then how should we look at it and what does real-world wisdom look like?
Is it simply the ability to make the right decisions? Or is it something deeper, having to do with longings and purposes more difficult to define? How can we tell if we have made a truly wise move or one that was merely smart?
I offer up these three ideas as a way of getting the discussion going. I'm hoping you'll jump in with ideas and recommendations of your own--
1. Respond to circumstances without preconceptions. It isn't important to get into an intellectual argument about whether this is possible in some absolute sense. What is important is to take it to heart and do our best to enter each moment with fresh eyes and an open mind. When we stop knowing what is right and wrong before we even encounter the moment, we have the chance to see things as they really are and act in ways that are more beneficial to the whole.
2. Focus on how you treat others, not on how they treat you. It's easy to use the intellect to keep score of times when others offend or wrong us, thus justifying our own ill will toward them. Yet their actions are entirely beyond our control--there is nothing we can do to make others treat us the way we want. How they act is their problem. All that we can control is how we treat others. With consistency, however, our actions prove to be the real key to influencing others and establishing mutually-beneficial long-lasting relationships.
3. Be playful instead of critical. The intellect is constantly on the lookout for what is wrong with this picture. This tendency to watch for what is absent or wrong simply amounts to others doing things their way instead of ours. Pay attention to what you are paying attention to--don't trivialize life by attending to meaningless details. Being critical wastes energy and harms relationships. Make a game of things. The person slowing you down or pushing you to go faster may be saving your life by moving you out of harm's way. Enjoy the eccentricities of others. Try them out for yourself. Waste time. Engage in purposeless activities. Wisdom enjoys life and cares that others enjoy life, too.
These are three small and achievable goals that can improve our lives by striking a better balance between acting intellectually and acting wisely. It goes without saying that we need to discover the secret to acting wisely on an individual level if we are to actually achieve that same goal on the global level where so many of our common problems need to be solved.
What is wisdom? How do you balance it with intellect? How do you act wisely? I ask that you contribute to this discussion with your own ideas and recommendations, from the most sublime to the most practical, and I will do my best to incorporate them into upcoming posts in a collective effort to explore this essential topic.
The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just been released by Larson Publications. It recasts the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico and includes original illustrations interpreting each of the hexagrams. Its subtitle, 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World hints at its focus on the ethics of the emerging world culture.
Brain, Spirituality, Confidence And Suffering
Be-ism Or Theism: How To Have A Higher Power As A Buddhist In Recovery
Thank you so much for your generous contributions.
We'll close the comments now so I can collate them and integrate them into the next post.
Looking Forward,
William
It's a limited metaphor but consider, my grandfather was repairing a hey-baler with the guard off the flywheel. I got close. He looked at me with hazel-eyes and pointed saying “any part of you gets caught in that fan-belt will go through that flywheel and get cut-off.” I heard him. The chance-variation I inherited from him was his eyes. I sought to put that same look into my comments because you promoted taking the guard-of-reason off unnecessarily, without even warning.
Easefulness & humor?
Consider my initial comments. I had to work-my-way-up to being ignored.
That's funny.
I muse with friends that if circumstances allow I might make a smooth-transition from being too young to know anything, to being an old fool who shouldn't be taken seriously.
One more distinction William; the difference between sincerity (a feeling) and integrity (self-correcting) contact the people you've influenced about reason and tell them you've changed. No need for wearing ash or burlap because a mistake is not identity.
2 of 2
It has been my privilege to work with you to bring to light our common ground.
And yes, I should make clear how I have changed—
I now feel even more strongly about the points I made in the original post.
Thank you for your instructive example of reason,
Wm
Strife between emotion, reason, and instinct etc. is often arbitrary. There's no war. When the problem is identification, NOT particular aspects, identification limits emotion, reason, instinct etc. with superfluous bias. “Life serving ideas is backwards.” Whatever the concept of self, it’s as unstable as thought. Like getting lost in a self-portrait as-if we could live there, the ideas-beliefs “about” life are reproduced on the background and regardless of being complementary or contrasting; the point is the background accentuates an image-of-self/ego. Here the background being a conflict between reason and feeling (or other aspects). Ego-the-painter, thoughts-the-paint induces tremendous emotion but it is only an abstract of the self and world. The same self you can't find when you look for it. It's amazing that no matter how much the artist has to redo the painting s/he doesn't learn it can't be identity.
Recognizing a concept of self is no more than thought does not limit any human capacity. We’re not obligated to believe identity anymore than we believe the thought of a banana is actual food. Rejecting any capacity is like cutting off an arm because it can't fulfill your desire. Quiet the mind and the identity we fear to lose is gone, and we haven't lost anything.
1 of 2
lovely quotable quote!
thanks,
wm
Your statement is a premise of a generalization that might go like this.
Lying is unwise
Mr. X. lied
Therefore, Mr. X. is unwise
Saying all dogs are canine means we never expect to find a dog outside of the category. A generalization is an expectation/belief.
Check your reasoning against life. If you're premise is true then the liars who hid the Jews from Nazis were unwise. Not only Jews would disagree but you might too. The people who betrayed Anne Frank did it speaking truth, leading to her murder. Were they wise? Consider stopping genital mutilation of a girl in Oman by telling a lie, would you? I suspect there are circumstances in which you would feel moral-contempt for a person who didn't lie.
You're reasoning from ideals/beliefs, NOT life. Consider a chauvinist who has a belief and concludes from it without noticing when life doesn't confirm it. Life always trumps belief. Life is not black and white. Let me give you a premise. Not checking conclusions/beliefs against life is unwise.
Question: Why do people use a weapon suited to defend against enemies on people who are not, including those they claim to love?
One should never mistake knowledge for wisdom. Gaining knowledge helps you make a living; while having wisdom helps you make a life. Unless you know someone really well you don't know what kind of life they live, whether they live a lie or live the truth.
I have a hard time figuring out myself, how I'm doing and I project my inner world on my external world pretty much 24/7. My moods and feeling really color my day, muck like slipping tinted glasses on. I really saw this in retreat. To judge someone elses practice and qualities you need to be around them daily for a long time. To judge a system you pretty much have to learn the system your self and also watch others in the system to see how they are doing. To learn math I went to classes with a group of people. I barely made it through college algebra while others did well. Should I say the course work and teacher sucked or I'm not very good at math? I do judge but I usually judge myself and why I'm reacting. I hate math and Muslims for inventing Algebra (just kidding about hating Muslims).
I haven't had the privilege of seeing a physical copy yet. But I'd love to. There's been numerous exultant reviews by different folks on the internet, one showing some of the artwork. The publisher evidently did a magnificent job.
My overall impression is that it provides a deep and penetrating gaze into one of the most interesting minds of our time. What a wonderful gift his Red Book is to all of us who thought his complete works were fully completed! And what a wonderful gift you gave your husband!!
Enjoy!
Wm
Perhaps William wandered into a fallacy. Deeming something wise = believing it so. What's the reason to state something is wise? REASON’S may be validated or refuted by experience. Yet, the subject at hand IS reason. Giving reasons to discount reason is using REASON to do so; a vicious circle; if you're right you're wrong.
Believing something wise without reason is dangerous. Not because I say; because of demonstrable human suffering. Many things deemed wise individuals and groups have followed to disaster with-or-without good-intentions. Denying such agony seems a grave error. Pointing to a group of people declaring “they think it's wise too” is a fallacy that can/is being used to support all kinds of exclusively contrary “wisdom”. Many deem Ann Coulter to be wise. Does that make it so?
Feeling “can” be generated in mind, like lovers imagining a future. Does that feeling make said future more than mental? Mistaking thinking and imagination as fact because the emotion seems evidence for it often misses the fact that the emotion can be induced by the thought-itself, a fact worth noticing.
And in all that exposure to the wisdom teachings, you have not found any wisdom ?
Equally Heartfelt,
Wm
For example: a Vajra Regent (said to be enlightened) at one of the oldest Tibetan schools in America – Naropa. He thought his faith was a protection and he was the common denominator in the spreading of AIDS to several of his students. He apologized when he found out but it was too late. Surely the last time he stubbed his toe, or ate something bad (or similar cause and effect relation) his reason should have told him that the ordinary laws of nature apply to him. It follows that it would also apply to others. He missed the point because his trust in his wisdom trumped reason. It was wishful thinking wrapped up in a teaching. It's not unlike the charms against bullets or the disastrous sweat lodge death of recent notoriety.
Reason is a self-correcting faculty. To dismiss it or to cause others to believe that is wise can have consequences that you do not likely wish to burden your or anyone else's heart with.
The only examples of wisdom you can think of involve mistaken beliefs?
You have had (what i consider) the benefits of exposure to wonderful wisdom teachings and you have not found any of their wisdom traditions personally valuable?
You are really unable to distinguish between wisdom and belief?
I remember from a lecture: if you only focus on intellect and knowledge you will have a hard heart, and be very mean and sad, hard to get along with yourself and others. If you only focus on compassion your heart will be to soft, fall apart easily, you will be foolish, not very helpful towards self and others and anyone can take advantage of you which causes lots of heartaches. You need the combination of wisdom/compassion and intellect, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jnana http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhicitta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manas-vijnana
Beautifully said. This goes along well with Ed Shapiro's recent comment.
Real-world wisdom has a foot in both worlds....
wm
i think you're hitting the nail on the head here.
wisdom practitioners over the millennia (taoists, zennnists, sufis, for example) have engaged in the creative arts, particularly poetry and painting, as a means of expressing (as opposed to describing) their vision of the world underlying the one apparent to our senses. but (in the case of the three i mention, at least) with the goal of uniting the two (wisdom & knowledge: the absolute and relative) in a lifeway we might describe today as epitomizing "peak performance".
the goal of wisdom, after all, is not to become unreasonable. it's to transcend the limits of intellectual knowledge and live a more complete, more effective, more original, life.
certainly this quote of yours bears repeating: "What I find disturbing is that so many worship reason with all the rigor and judgment directed towards those who don't that one can find in the most extreme tent preacher. As Einstein said 'Imagination is more important than knowledge'."
thanks for this,
wm
Great points made by a discerning eye!
Thanks for jumping in,
Wm
Thank you for sharing your heart with all.
Best Regards,
William
outstanding! thanks for the view.
de-centering ourselves from the story we're telling ourselves about the circumstances going on in our vicinity is a vital step in drawing the wrong conclusions about things. it isn't all personal....
to feel ourselves part of the One, accepting of the complementary-opposites at play everywhere.....and to act in accord with it......this is the Ages-old definition of wisdom.....
thank you
wondrous journey
wm
Great comment!
This a beautiful way to look at it: "I think we can have insight, which we can go beyond thoughts and reason helps share this special insight with others." Seeing reason as a vehicle of expression rather than the arbiter of truth seems to me particularly clear-sighted.
The "Two Wings" of buddhism are of course wisdom and compassion. Not wisdom and reason, since it is too easy to fall into the trap mistaking rationalization for reason as both you and Writeonwater have pointed out. Such reasoning can easily be distorted into justifications for feeling a complete lack of compassion for the suffering of others.
Your point that "there is really no separation between us and other" is one of the bedrock axioms of wisdom in my mind. We can build a coherent practice of real-world wisdom from this single statement.
Thank you so much for being here!
Wm
You referenced Buddhism, a philosophy with which I'm not unfamiliar. I'll take my examples from that. I do not wish to deny Buddha or Buddhism any “deserved” merit which I gladly grant.
• In 1905 the British invaded Tibet. The Tibetans boldly advanced having been given magic charms against bullets from the (wise?) Buddhist Lamas. Upon receiving casualties the Lamas observed the bullets were nickel-pointed and their charms were only effective against lead.
Russell - P 120 A New Social Analysis
• The feces of the Dalai Lama was given as medicine in centuries past.
Reason stopped these errors. Many similar examples could be given but belabor the point.
It would be unwise to despise these examples for being old. Recently, death and illness resulted to people in a sweat lodge. It is likely the people who became ill had reason to leave the sweat but stayed following one they deemed to be wise. Perhaps what is meant by wisdom needs to be much clearer.
Stating a group agrees with you is not evidence the belief is true. Nor that the group possesses the means AND motives of forming correct opinion.
You meditate. Perhaps you notice that when the habits of mind are checked a great deal of vitality that was previously consumed by those habits is liberated. The risk is that habits/beliefs that remain become intensified with the vitality formerly dispersed in habits. Often a new belief arises as a result of interpreting (thinking about) the new experiences. This loses sight of the awareness all this phenomena including identity comes and goes within. Then the ego takes a new trip.
Here's where reason comes in. If what is believed is contrary to observation of facts reason can expose delusion in a new form. Commonly it’s thought wonderful things have wonderful properties. A shower of insect feces once fell on Italy and people regarded it as manna and ate so much of it that only a small quantity was available for chemical analysis by a skeptic. Skeptics really are party poopers.
1 of 2
• A woman was arrested under suspicion of terrorism for transporting two components of a binary chemical weapon and hardware necessary as a means of combining them. She was on her way to a grade school. Experts say if she had combined the ingredients at the school it would have contaminated the entire building with toxic gas.
• A woman was driving to pick up her kids from school after finishing her work as a house cleaner. She was pulled over and her car was searched. The police found amongst her brushes and rags, a bottle of Ammonia, a can of Comet cleanser, and a bucket. She was arrested on suspicion of terrorism.
Two stories with the same facts and reason separates the fallacy.
Part of the burden of critical thinking is not merely recognition of reasons limits but also such thinking exposes many deceptive fallacies that often go unnoticed. Remember Galileo?
To presume reason is more or less than what it is, is committing an error. The error is probably wishful thinking. If it is, that error has little to do with reasoning itself.
Your examples are intriguing. Please allow me to add a third:
• A woman was driving to pick up her kids from school after finishing her work as a house cleaner. She was pulled over and her car was searched. The police found amongst her brushes and rags, a bottle of Ammonia, a can of Comet cleanser, and a bucket. After initially questioning the woman on suspicion of terrorism, authorities apologized for their excessive use of reason, which could have escalated into disrupting the woman's family and ruining her standing in the community.
Using your examples to develop the theme further, it might be fair to say that the relationship between reason and wisdom is similar to that between "the law" and "the spirit of the law". Reason can apply the law strictly to arrest the woman whereas wisdom keeps in mind that we are trying to protect ourselves from terrorists, not from moms who have to work as house cleaners in order to support their children....
Since human nature is not rational nor linear—and since human decisions impact much of the day-to-day world in which we live—it is difficult for many to put much faith in reason's ability to really understand the world or participate in it authentically. I will mention child-rearing as the most obvious example, since everyone has been so raised and many of us have tried our hand at it.
Thanks for such a thought-provoking contribution.
William
"After initially questioning the woman on suspicion of terrorism, authorities apologized for their excessive use of reason, which could have escalated into disrupting the woman's family and ruining her standing in the community."
Apology is justified for unnecessary use of state power, NOT the reasoning that revealed that the use of power wasn't necessary.
I suggest that there is confusion here between rationalization and reason. Rationalization attempts to make some belief or desire appear reasonable. Reasoning begins from the facts and follows the facts where they lead which may even shatter previous beliefs which dissolve like salt in water.
What I mean when I say reason - looking for the truth about anything based on the facts. This is not the same thing as the desire to prove what we desire is true.
There is a difference between Galileo and the scholars and mathematicians at Pisa who refused to look through his telescope for fear of what they would see. All were highly accomplished, but only one of them was being reasonable. The desire of belief used power to persecute him. The inquisitors of Galileo were not reasoning from facts they were “deeming what was factual” from belief. The Inquisition imprisoned Galileo for the rest of his life. That was belief persecuting reason with power and rationalizing according to belief.
Listening to you
Thank you for your loving presence
Wm