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Are We Ready To See Our Wisdom Explode?
There are many ways to be wise, and many wise people wanting to make us wiser.
Just as there isn’t one type of intelligence, there isn’t just one way to be wise.
In our imagination, we think of wisdom in the shape of an old man with a big, white beard. Now that I think about it, it isn’t too far from the Western idea of a god: an old, white and bearded wiseman. Apart from the many prejudices against everyone who isn’t old, white or bearded (I’m at least two of those, in case anyone reading is prone to take offence), there is something fundamentally wrong about this image: it describes wisdom as this one attribute that someone can have or lack.
Indeed, it would be unwise to constrain wisdom to our own, limited preconceptions. There isn’t one way to be wise, there isn’t one type of wise person. If wisdom is the ability to discern what is true or right, this isn’t a quality that will simply come to us with time. If wisdom is the quality of being sharp and precise, we can’t expect to be born with it. So if it doesn’t come with time and it isn’t innate, how do we acquire wisdom?
I see wisdom as the wonderfully elusive intersection of knowledge and experience. All the knowledge in the world won’t make us wise unless we apply it and test it, refute it…