Why Wisdom?
What might wisdom offer us in this time? What makes wisdom? How do we source it?
We are an incredible species.
We’ve sequenced the genome, created works of art, travelled to the moon, looked deep into galaxies, created mass cooperative movements of change, designed life changing medical and technological innovations with everything from penicillin to electricity to video calls to airplanes.
Our capacity for creativity, intelligence, and even cooperation, is at the heart what it is to be human.
However, alongside this genius we’ve also created vast pain and destruction; ecological breakdown and climate change, war, violence and genocides, resource hoarding and economic instability, poverty, racism, corruption, plastic pollution… the list goes on.
What we need in creating a more just, loving and regenerative world is not just knowledge or skills – it’s wisdom.
As humans, we have more capability than wisdom to use it well - and this is often as true for us at the level of the individual, as the collective.
We can push hard for the world we want and burn out in the process, replicating the very patterns we're trying to change.
We can be experienced, skilled and qualified, but still lack the capacity or courage to follow our next step.
We can understand systems thinking and still collapse into binary good/bad, either/or thinking under pressure.
We can know the theory of nonviolence and still reach for domination when conflict gets hard.
We can see what's being lost and still not know how to grieve it while moving toward what's possible.
Skills are the how of this work. Wisdom is the when, the where, the why and the whether.
How might wisdom help us?
Wisdom and transformation go hand in hand. In becoming wiser, we evolve; we grow, we reshape, we transform.
In becoming wiser societies, we know how to use our technology well, we learn how to live together well, and we discover how to use and relate to nature well.
In becoming wiser humans and changemakers, we know how to use our time, talents, and skills well, how to trust and follow what calls us, what capacities we need to develop, how to work sustainably, how to love.
How do we get wise?
Wisdom is a living thing.
Wisdom is never static or fixed; if it was, it could be packaged and taught in a neat curriculum, a skill we could build or contained wholly in a book you could read.
In other words, we can’t say X, Y and Z is wisdom and now boom! you’re wise!
What we can do is create the conditions for wisdom to be cultivated and developed, including through:
Honest inquiry and reflection; the power of a good question
Contemplative practices including meditation, sound, and listening to our body
Community; listening, connecting and learning from others.
Disturbing our comfort and experiences with the unknown
Ritual; engagement and practices including with grief and loss.
Reshaping time and space; developing a long view across generations and galaxies.
As Richard Rohr would say, great love and great suffering. Our world is experiencing great suffering, and we are all capable of great love.