Everything in between is just a matter of communication - you need to be able to pay attention to take in the wisdom of others, & you need to have presentation skills in order to convey a message. However, we are not born with these abilities. In these times of decreasing attention spans & reliance on technology over social interaction, you could almost say that we are even losing the basic skills for transferring wisdom.
This is how wisdom is quite distinct from knowledge, which is becoming increasingly easy to access - to the point where we no longer need to carry it around with us. We no longer need the facts in our head, but we need to know the method by which facts can be acquired - the index, the map, the web address. This is partly due to the sheer number of facts that we are expected to have, & partly to do with the accessibility of information in general (& connectability of people).
If we’ve got that much more information to play with, how do we learn how to use it? How do we learn how to get access to it (rather than being given an index)? How do we learn to discover the sources of facts in the way that we used to look at the natural world & discover facts?
Although this isn’t wisdom, as such, it is the ability to think for oneself, & this is a precursor to holding wisdom. It’s not enough, in itself, but it’s a start.
In today’s instant-gratification world, information is a commodity that can be acquired with little patience - it’s like fast food - an expected convenience. However, fast food is not particularly nutritious (useful to the body) & is often unhealthy (detrimental to the body). Many people shun fast food because they understand this. Many people “live” off it because they don’t. Information can be found by going to pick-your-favourite-search-engine & pressing a button. You are now informed. You are not well-informed; you could even be badly informed. Thank you, come again.
Wisdom is what gives you the understanding that a search engine is a fast food service.
In the same way, you don’t expect commercial television to teach you anything so earth-shatteringly useful that you will become successful & live a long, happy, & prosperous life (even if that’s the claim for the 6.30pm time slot each night). Why would you expect a search engine to slake your thirst for knowledge at the press of a button, just because it claims it has access to billions of results that may interest you.
If you read each of the billions of results, then that process will make you wise. Wisdom is that journey, or having taken such a journey, the ability to look at search results & determine if there is useful information on offer - like looking at the nutritional information on the packaging of fast food before eating it (trust me, it’s there).
Wisdom is not a drive-through experience. Wisdom is not the domain of couch potatoes.
Wisdom is not acquired through getting a University degree. That’s simply the equivalent of dining-in for fast food, or else watching the whole series of a sit-com, including ad breaks. It may sound like a big commitment, but that piece of paper at the end does not certify you as wise. I attended a very probing lecture by the Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University last night, & the up-shot was that he believes that universities are there to educate, but students are there to learn. If the contract is broken by either party, then no-one is the wiser.
Once upon a time, very few people sought wisdom, & even fewer were sought as sources of wisdom. Such people were revered. They had generally acquired wisdom in their pursuit of knowledge, because that, in itself, was an arduous task that required perseverance & dedication. Anyone who got knowledge probably got wisdom, & was willing to share both. Now, the vast majority of people want knowledge (information), & yet everyone avoids wisdom. Universities, which once gathered knowledge wisely, now dispense information for a price (I had to avoid saying ‘cheaply’).
It’s ‘too difficult’ to acquire wisdom. It’s ‘not practical’, ‘not useful’, ‘irrelevant’ … I could put the inverted commas of sarcasm around many such phrases. If you see wisdom as unimportant, then you have, by definition, proven yourself to be in need of it.
It’s time for all of us - & yes, I include myself - to wise up.
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