I came to understand the importance of wisdom as a consequence of personally engaging in philosophical explorations. Not just exploring well known philosophers, theologians, academic scholars and big thinkers from the past, but I also engaged with newer thinkers in the online media revolution like Dr. Jordan Peterson, John Vervaeke, Dr. Sugrue and others. What became abundantly clear was that knowledge, which we have more of than ever, was not helpful in resolving the large issues in life such as meaning. Not just the meaning of words, or meaning in life, but also the phenomena of meaning itself – not to mention its importance to us as humans.
Wisdom cannot be understood simply, but to understand what we’re talking about we need a short description, a necessary but insufficient definition from where we can proceed. I propose the following: Wisdom is the intuitive relation to limitation. This is hinted at in Plato’s Apology 21, with the story of Socrates, coming back from seeing the Oracle at Delphi. He is shaken by hearing from the Oracle that he is the wisest person in Athens (or something close to this). Doubting the Oracle he walks along the road with someone else who has been to the Oracle. While talking with this person, he realizes the difference between them. This man is clearly claiming to know that which he does not, whereas Socrates realizes that he is wiser because he does not think he knows that which he does not know.
This is an explicit statement of the limitation of knowledge. I shall take some license here and claim wisdom extends to limitation as such, my reading of various wisdom literature seems to support this broader conclusion. Notable here, is that there is a limit to knowledge itself as well as the knowledge of Socrates the person. The importance is in his intuition (it cannot be knowledge because he didn’t possess it when the Oracle merely told him, he had to experience it) about the difference between his claims and the claims of his companion. This is a deeply experiential insight intuited through humility.
I use this to claim that wisdom is based in experience (not in mere thought or imagination) with things outside yourself. Recall that Socrates had tried to puzzle this out in his head alone but was unable. The contrast provided by the person traveling with him was required to ‘see’ (or perhaps integrate) what the Oracle had given (knowledge) already.
Given all this, the best way to increase wisdom in the world is through experience. Perhaps random experiences can provide wisdom, but you may not be humble enough to become more wise. So what I suggest here is that the best way to gain wisdom is through deliberate practice. As with Socrates, this practice should involve other people (distributed cognition, perspective and contrast) and we should prepare ourselves to have an insight as the result of this interaction.
My proposal, then, is that in order to cultivate wisdom, we must have intentional group practices which we engage in, on a regular basis, to increase our odds of becoming wise through direct experience of the world and people around us. That is what this community is all about, proposing, discovering, preparing, testing, documenting and encouraging group practices which will enhance the wisdom of the practitioners
Join us! Help to build tools to assist in the facilitation of wisdom journeys in local communities by providing feedback on tools and documents, participating in experimental practices and developing tools with us!