Knowledge versus Wisdom

wuliheron

You get what you fear the most, you become what you hate the most. Again, the trick is to find acceptance.

To paraphrase R. W. Emerson, "Virtue is its own reward, to have a friend you must first be a friend." Friends see each other for all of who and what they are. If my friend drinks too much, they remain my friend but I may keep encouraging them to at least cut down on their drinking.

The opposite is true for enemies. Enemies tend to see only what they hate and dislike about each other. Even what they otherwise might admire in each other, they see in the worst light possible. Thus wars erupt over apparent trivialities.

As I've often told people, I came to acceptance kicking and screaming, dragging my feet the entire way. My name, Wu Li, I got from a famous book called, "The Dancing Wu Li Masters". It's a book about modern physics and Asian thought. The physics was easy for me, but the philosophy drove me nuts.

One thing I did get from the book is that in many ways we are all our own worst enemy. Nobody knows you like you do, and nobody can retard your growth as a human being like you can. Therefore you need to find ways of getting around this difficulty. What I did was offer to buy any book my friends wanted on the subject of self-help.

One of the books I bought this way is "Giant Steps" put out by the Option Institute. They're an off the wall nuttier than a fruitcake New Age group in the US. Despite this, they managed to penetrate my carefully cultivated skepticism and drive home the overwhelming importance of attitude, not intellectually, but in the way that really counts. :0)

Mentat

Who says that wisdom is difficult to cultivate. I think that you are confusing "widom" with "enlightenment" (the latter of which is very difficult to cultivate, btw).

SIDE NOTE: If a person applies knowledge in a desctructive manner, then it is "destructive widom". It seems very simple, and yet you seem to think that evil and wisdom are mutually exclusive.

Iacchus32

I actually don't have so much trouble accepting myself, and I'm actually quite happy to be alone, it's just that the whole thing seems to get contrasted between the two cultures.

Oh, I thought wuliheron was some kind of "hairy bird?"

wuliheron

LOL, Heron is my daughter's name. Where she was born Great Blue Herons are common. By chance she also has my tall, thin, and long legged build. What a skinny baby she was! :0)

wuliheron

What you are describing is just applied knowledge. Here is the dictionary definition of wisdom:

As usual, Mentat, you are spouting rhetorical nonesense in defiance of what anyone else says. Redefining words to suit your own personal beliefs, and arguing against thousands of years of deliberation on the subject. If you weren't so serious I'd think you were a clown.

newton1

this is the kind of question of intelligence quotient(iq)
and emotion quotient(eq), which is more important...
if our eq is week....
then we can have a good concentrate to learn something
then the iq will not come
but if we no iq....
we dun know how can make our eq better
i think both of two is important

wuliheron

No, its more pointedly a question of flexibility, openness, and inclusiveness from a personal standpoint. Whether EQ or IQ is more valuable just depends upon the individual and their present situation. Both can change, grow, and adapt in leaps and bounds as the context changes. Our flexibility therefore increases when our entire worldview originates from a more flexible and less clearly defined source.

Mentat

Well, I didn't make up the definition of wisdom, that I was using before. It was told to me by a person that I considered not only very wise, but very enlightened.

You should notice, as is typical of such contraversial definitions, that for every definition of wisdom - that you have posted - there is a synonym of wisdom that better fits that definition.

And BTW, please keep your personal opinion of me (and others, for that matter) out of your posts. It is not only irrelevant, but insulting - and in most cases, wrong.

Iacchus32

It's what you do with knowledge that determines whether you're wise, or foolish. So in this respect I would suggest wisdom falls in more along the lines of enlightenment (as both of are deemed "spiritual qualities"). And besides being defined as "the ability to discern inner qualities and relationships," as well as "insight," the dictionary defines wisdom as "good judgment."

So this may be the problem, in that you can have "good judgment" and "bad judgment," and people will mistake judgment for wisdom.

While here it's possible for someone to claim they have "judged wisely," when in fact it's a big cover up to disguise the fact that they didn't. In which case we only have wisdom (hopefully) to discern its "inner quality."

wuliheron

Exactly, two people can have the exact same knowledge and come to completely different conclusions and applications for that knowledge. The opposite end of spectrum for wisdom is foolishness. Yet sometimes the most apparently foolish and ignorant among us can be the wisest. From an asian and shamanistic viewpoint, an accepting attitude is what makes the difference.

Iacchus32

Except how do you do this without becoming gullible, or "contrived." This is pretty much my predicament, except I am to some degree (slowly but surely) becoming more accepting towards people. Whereas I think as you get older it doesn't matter so much.

"Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth."

Iacchus32

That's another thing, if you're brought up in a culture where the door has never been "slammed shut," chances are you're not going to have any experience of what that means.

On the other hand, if you were brought up in the west, where you're apt to experience "barriers" all around you, chances are you're going to experience a sense of what Alan Watts has put so succinctly, "alienation."

wuliheron

You could say the same thing about behavior, how do you choose behaviors that won't make you a patsy. You can go round and round with such arguments ad infinitum. The simple truth is people come up with all kinds of negative speculations about everything imaginable that they have never tried or experienced in their life. My six year old son is the pickiest eater imaginable, for example, and its difficult to get him to even taste anything.

Most Asians meditate as a way to cultivate inner peace, balance, and acceptance. One asian compared it once to falling asleep. Westerners often try to discipline their behavior and make themselves fall asleep. Asians try to just allow themselves to fall asleep. That's what meditation is about, just clearing all those preprogramed behaviors and perspectives out of our mind so we ourselves can take charge instead of compulsively relying on habitual thoughts and behaviors. Especially suspicious and negative thoughts and behaviors that can become counterproductive.

Yeah, the culture doesn't support an accepting attitude in many respects. Asians are known for being inscrutable in part just because they often prefer to avoid getting involved with angry and irrational people fired up about what they consider to be silly and pointless arguments unless they see a possible productive way to do so.

An american karate champion was once in Japan for a tornament and happened to be riding the bullet train. A drunk and beligerent man was slowing making his way towards him, harassing people as he came. The karate champ decided he would put a stop to this guy's nonsense when he came up to his seat. Instead, an old man in the seat in front of him offered the drunk another drink and he sat down with him.

After a while the old man looked at the drunk and asked him what was bothering him. Breaking down in tears the man said his wife and children had just been killed that morning in a car wreak. With that revelation the karate champ realized he had not learned the number lesson of the Dojo, how to avoid fighting and just how important it is to avoid fighting.

Even in western cultures, such wisdom as the old man displayed is valued. You don't need to read a lot of books about asian and shamanistic cultures or go to any lecture seminars or anything like that in order to cultivate wisdom. All you need do is cultivate an accepting attitude, but that includes acceptance of who you are as an individual first and foremost and accepting the society you live in as well. Most people who make this attempt seem to take about three years to fully make the adjustment and find their own unique center.

Mentat

Wu Li, I've just realized that the incompatibility of our definitions of wisdom results from the fact that you seem to think there is such a thing as "evil". You seem to think that one form of action is definitely "wrong", and another form is "right". While I think so as well, that doesn't mean that it's true, and so this concept doesn't show up in my definition of wisdom. IMO, wisdom should exist even in societies that know nothing of "right" and "wrong".

Iacchus32

Right and wrong are only "relative" to the situation. This indeed is where "wisdom" applies. In which case you can take something in the literal sense (as many Christians take the Bible) or, you can inquire within, and observe its "inner-quality."

wuliheron

Sorry, but you're wrong. I don't believe in anything like "evil". For me, evil refers to something absolute, innate or irredemable. I do believe there are serial killers and whatnot and to some extent they may even be predisposed to such behavior, but that doesn't make what they do "evil", just extremely bad. No doubt with the right environment and perhaps even medical attention such people could be helped.

Actually, I'm an amoral Philosophical Taoist. To a great extent concepts like good and bad are relativistic for me as Iaccus points out. However, I must point out they are relative to how we each see them as individuals, not in some abstract theoretical way. For the vast majority of humanity the idea of someone blowing up the entire world is bad, so sometimes I'll refer to such things in straightforward ways. Most people with moralities and ideas about normalcy don't understand such a viewpoint, so I don't go into the details much and just put it out that its merely my opinion.

This same relativism applies to everything for me. Free will vs determinism, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, and even the irrational and rational. That's just the way paradoxes are, they lend themselves to whatever interpretation we care to make.

Additionally, there really are no societies that don't know right from wrong. Many like the !Kung have no words for certain concepts like guilt, but they understand the concepts nonetheless. They just don't need the word and may even find its use counterproductive. Sometimes implicite rules are better than explicite ones for achieving goals.

Mentat

While you may say that you don't believe in the distinction between good and evil, the opposite is evident in your perception of wisdom. You see, I was saying that wisdom is the application of knowledge and understanding. You disagreed, and said...

... thus showing that you didn't think him to be wise, because he was destructive. Why can wisdom not be involved in things that are destructive, unless - of course - there is something *wrong* with being destructive.[;)]