🍄 Confusion Is The Beginning Of Wisdom

Any fool can know, the point is to understand.

Nov 08, 2024

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Ours is a season of awakening, pierced by reverberations of doubt, a time balanced precariously between the promise of insight and the abyss of uncertainty. In this unique age, each of us wrestles with the notion of wisdom, both in our own lives and in the collective mind of our civilization.

Hello, we’re Alice and we are always in a state of wander. What is wisdom? Is it reason tempered by empathy, or perhaps judgment broadened by compassion? Wisdom, we’ve come to learn, is not a mere product of age nor a trophy of intellect. It is, instead, a persistent unfolding, drawn from each individual’s inner reflection and grounded in the timeless frameworks offered by our cultural ancestors—from Aristotle’s syllogisms to Confucian ideals of harmony. And yet, how do we recognize wisdom in others, in our leaders, in the systems we build?

Intellect without empathy can become dangerous

Wisdom has occupied the minds of philosophers, scientists, and spiritual teachers for millennia, but our questions remain. We have learned that intelligence alone does not constitute wisdom—if anything, intellect without empathy can become dangerous. Wisdom is something altogether more nuanced. It is a complex fusion of self-reflection, social connection, empathy, resilience, and the kind of patience that allows one to embrace uncertainty and live with ambiguity.

Modern science has begun to probe wisdom’s place within the human mind. Neurobiologists like Dr. Dilip Jeste suggest that certain brain regions, like the prefrontal cortex, may support the intricate qualities we recognize as wisdom. But wisdom cannot be reduced to neurons alone. Its existence and evolution reflect an intricate interweaving of genetics and environment, culture and experience, and it’s not confined to any one individual. Rather, wisdom, like language, is a shared human trait that develops over time and through relationships, cultivated within the spaces of community and solitude alike.

Wisdom might not be fixed; like resilience or optimism, we cultivate wisdom through self-reflection and experiences shaped by both nature and the world around us. This potential to grow wiser holds promise for society, particularly in facing the paradoxes of aging: why humans continue to thrive after fertility fades and why older adults report deeper happiness than the young. Wisdom may be a bridge to mental health and resilience, offering insights into physical health and even helping manage neuropsychiatric conditions that disrupt judgment. As younger generations grapple with mental health struggles, wisdom education could address this need in schools and higher learning, fostering not just knowledge but balance and empathy to help manage burnout and build resilience. New research in brain imaging might one day uncover markers of wisdom itself, guiding us to create interventions that foster wisdom across generations, and expand well-being beyond mere survival. By exploring wisdom's dimensions, we unlock a profound path for improving mental health and resilience, shaping a society that thrives with age.

Seek connection, not dominance

As we advance into an age marked by artificial intelligence, the pressing question is whether wisdom can exist within the machine. This emerging technology—our digital progeny—has inherited our drive to analyze data and mimic intelligence. Yet it lacks the breadth of wisdom, lacking any innate moral compass, any intrinsic capacity for compassion or empathy. AI, for all its capacity, is not yet wise; it is a tool, brilliant but indifferent, designed by human hands but not human at heart. The challenge, therefore, lies not in engineering intelligence alone but in cultivating artificial wisdom—a technology capable of discerning meaning and nurturing well-being within the parameters we define.

To accomplish this, we might draw from both Western scientific paradigms and the Indigenous perspectives that invite us to consider concepts like hozho—the Navajo principle of harmony and balance, which seeks not dominance but connection, not accumulation but resonance. What would an “artificial wisdom” look like that values interdependence, that sees existence as a tapestry of relationships rather than a matrix of inputs and outputs?

“May it be beautiful before me. May it be beautiful behind me. May it be beautiful above me. May it be beautiful below me. May I walk in beauty."

The wisdom of an idea is rooted in accountability…deeply connected to the idea of responsibility

“For me ideas are coherent patterns of information that can be used for particular forms of action; either embodied action or to realize a particular form. This is the reason why I take the view that ideas are not memes. The meme originally defined by Richard Dawkins is a unit that competes with other memes in the same way that organisms are seen to compete with each other in the course of evolution according to Darwinian theory. The notion that memes are independent entities, I find fundamentally wrong. And then my question is “where did they come from, how did they originate, how were they produced in the first place, who was responsible for these memes?” You notice what the notion of meme does, it isolates it from the source and just says, well, it has an independent existence and jumps from person to person. And if it is a very good idea then it will replicate fast and if it’s a bad idea it won’t. Therefore, you have a kind of dynamic of competition. This concept reduces history to these irresponsible memes and nobody needs to take responsibility for them because they all are just propagating by their own dynamic. It’s a kind of transformation of the whole idea of cognition. Which is for me deeply connected with the idea of responsibility. You have an idea, you need to be responsible for it. In other words, there’s no sense of cooperation or responsibility between members in a meme ecosystem and, therefore, everything becomes mechanical. For me, the meme idea is just another of these devices to turn the world into something that is completely mechanical, amoral, without responsibility, without participation, without cooperation. And so, it just doesn’t work for me at all.”—Brian Goodwin PhD, Alice Archive Library, Visionary Biologist, Advocate of Holistic Science

Wellbecoming

Our path forward hinges on our ability to integrate this profound understanding of wisdom into every aspect of our lives—from the choices we make daily to the systems we design for the future. And, if we succeed, we may find ourselves not just surviving within the vast complexity of our world, but thriving. For wisdom, in the end, is less about knowing than about becoming—about embodying those qualities that connect us deeply to one another and to the unfolding story of life itself.

“For the past 300 years in the Western world we believe that nothing else exists but what we can see. This impoverishes our consciousness, and our lives. If through the latest theories in sciences, we could recognize that the world has a memory, that there is so much more to it than we think, than we have thought, we could enrich our lives. This field registers information, but it also maintains it. The information is all there and it’s all accessible. It’s like a tremendous internet, in that sense, that is a good example. Our brain is really a very sophisticated transceiver. We are constantly interacting with the whole cosmos around us. We need to enable our brain to operate in a way that this information penetrates to our waking consciousness. Right now, it’s there in a meditative state.”
—Ervin László PhD, Alice Archive Library, Systems theorist, Integral Theorist, Advocate of Quantum Consciousness

What Else We Are Wandering

BENEFICENCE: Humanity is at a very interesting time where we're understanding more and more about psychology and neuroscience. And we can use those learnings to create technology that reflect and amplify what is nourishing to the human spirit. TRU LUV, optimizes for what they call presence, collective flow and collective mission rather than for engagement or retention. They also looking at how energy reflects and amplifies in groups and contributes to collective flow into mutual benefit creation.

We Could All Use More Wisdom Right Now: Acting wisely is not a constant state, says Igor Grossmann, PhD, of the University of Waterloo. Grossmann’s experiments found that people tend to make wiser choices when considering others' problems rather than their own, and surprisingly, wisdom does not increase with age. To cultivate wisdom, Grossmann advises practicing self-distancing techniques, such as asking, “How would I respond a year from now?” or viewing situations from a third-person perspective.

Dimensions of wisdom perception across twelve countries on five continents : What makes up wisdom? Across cultures, people judge wisdom by two shared traits: reflective orientation—logic, emotional control, and experience—and socio-emotional awareness—empathy, active listening, and social navigation. The path to wisdom is a deeply personal one, shaped by reflection on our individual experiences, cultural backgrounds, and the wise exemplars we choose to follow. But, at the same time, when it comes to judging where others are on this path, it seems that all of us, wherever we are in the world, are looking through a shared lens.

What exactly does it mean to be "wise?" And is it possible to grow and even accelerate its unfolding? In “Wiser: The Scientific Roots of Wisdom, Compassion, and What Makes Us Good,” Dilip Jeste, MD proposes that wisdom is a complex personality trait with several component traits: Prosocial behavior (empathy, compassion and altruism), Emotional stability, Self-reflection, Balancing decisiveness with acceptance of uncertainty, Pragmatic knowledge of life, Spirituality or belief in something larger than oneself.

Wisdom is distinct from intelligence (as measured by IQ tests, Sternberg, 2000). Sternberg goes so far as to suggest that intelligent, well-educated people are particularly susceptible to four fallacies that inhibit wise choices and actions. Sternberg writes about these fallacies in his book Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid, summarized here.
•The Egocentrism Fallacy: thinking that the world revolves, or at least should revolve, around you. Acting in ways that benefit yourself, regardless of how that behavior affects others.
•The Omniscience Fallacy: believing that you know all there is to know and therefore do not have to listen to the advice and counsel of others.
•The Omnipotence Fallacy: believing that your intelligence and education somehow make you all-powerful.
•The Invulnerability Fallacy: believing that you can do whatever you want and that others will never be able to hurt you or expose you.

Developing Wisdom: Consider the following wisdom-building activities compiled, in part, by psychologist Jonathan Haidt:
•Read the works of great thinkers and religious leaders (e.g., Gandhi, Buddha, Jesus, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela). Read classic works of literature. Contemplate the "wisdom of the ages."
•Think of the wisest person you know. Try to live each day as that person would live.
•Look up prominent people in history and learn their views on important issues of their day.
•Volunteer at a nursing home and talk with residents about their lives and the lessons they have learned.
•Subscribe to two news editorial publications that are on opposite ends of the political spectrum (e.g., The National Review for the conservative perspective and The Nation for the liberal perspective). Read them both and consider both sides of the issues.

Imagine an AI sage: Trained not just to predict or process but to understand—guided by an ethical core rather than by cold efficiency. As artificial intelligence scales, the critical question emerges: how do we embed wisdom and compassion into machines? The algorithms driving social media showed us the risks of profit-driven design, leaving behind a more divided, distracted, and despondent society. Now, with AI’s influence only accelerating, we must ask if it can learn to prioritize the well-being of all beings over mindless optimization. Mind, Body, Spirit for AI invites us to consider a different path. Rather than teaching machines merely to recognize patterns, imagine training them to value life, to act with care, and to hold empathy as a core principle. Could an AI, within its vast computational network, hold some semblance of compassion or respect for the world it serves? The possibility sparks both hope and unease, as we wonder if it’s truly possible to teach a non-human intelligence the same ethical wisdom that has guided sages for millennia. By embedding ethical foundations, we might cultivate an AI that acts more like a guide than a tool, more like a companion than a controller. Such a future could steer humanity toward collaboration over competition, elevating technology not as a driver of harm but as an ally in our shared quest for harmony, insight, and understanding.

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.
Today I am wise, so I am changing myself” - Rumi

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