Wisdom

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by wesmorris, Dec 28, 2002.

  1. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    Cris,

    That's knowledge, not wisdom.

    That's knowledge, not wisdom.

    That's knowledge, not wisdom...

    Do you know the difference between wisdom and knowledge?

    Someone that traveled through the whole Europe probably experienced much of life, isn't it? Besides, experience doesn't lead to wisdom, it leads to knowledge.

    They can do it... they just don't because they are far smarter then many of us are and it is not their nature to do such thing.

    I experienced much of life. There are not many things I haven't experienced. I'm crazy to have kids, cause my life is pretty boring. Everyday I do the same things and I don't know whatelse I can do. Having kids is probably the last good thing that last for me to experience in this life... If there's something else, please tell me, cause I'm too bored with all that I've already done...

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    :bugeye:
     
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  3. wesmorris Nerd Overlord - we(s):1 of N Valued Senior Member

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    In my opinion, you don't, can't and refuse to. That is why I'm not going to respond to further posts by you in this thread.
    You JUST were telling me in your last post or the one before that about how I'm so different than you. So different that I can't possibly gain anything from attempting you reason with you. About that much, I can see you were correct. Buh bye.
     
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  5. wesmorris Nerd Overlord - we(s):1 of N Valued Senior Member

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    Truthseeker.

    Oh man, I didn't realize you are just a kid. I apoligize. I hope you wise up a bit as you age. It's good that you are here, please the reason I say you have sabotaged your mind is because it seems as if you're saying you've already found truth. The problem is that the only way you really grow is by searching for it. You're a freakin KID and you think you know everything. You're way way off. I know it sucks, but you'll be amazed how much you mature over your life. I'm 33 and I'd swear I felt kind of complete in a way when I was 20. I thought I knew a lot of shit, but it isn't anything to what I've learned. Be patient, learn to recognize wisdom when you come across it. Chris isn't always right but he is definately wise. I'm somewhat wise myself, but kind of a smartassed jerk. There are many others who have a lot of wisdom to offer you. You should consider the possibility that there are people in the world who know more than you do. Later, you'll know more than other people too...

    You really should live up to your handle, you seem more like "truthproclaimerwhodoesn'treallyknowshit".
     
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  7. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    The Wisdom Page

    Extract from the link at the end.

    Wisdom is one of those slightly old-fashioned words, the type that slip out of style because they sound less punchy than the jargon we start using in their place. In time we forget about using it at all. And because the words we substitute aren't quite the same, we're made poorer by the substitutions, losing slices of the original meaning with each change.

    So wisdom, good ol' sapientiae in Latin, hardly ever gets airtime these days. Instead, we talk about "cleverness," "I.Q.," "managerial know-how," or any of 50 not-quite synonyms. None of those really are interchangeable with wisdom, but they get used in its place. Meanwhile, wisdom, the original concept, is forgotten.

    Wisdom is the ability to make sound choices, good decisions. The best decision. Wisdom is intelligence shaped by experience. Information softened by understanding. And it is in very short supply these days.

    Wisdom is not something a person is born with. Intelligence is. Cleverness is. The ability to appear dynamic is. But Wisdom isn't. It only comes from living, from making mistakes — or from listening to others who have made mistakes and learned from them.

    If wisdom is in short supply among our leaders, we don't have far to look for the culprits. It started disappearing along about the time we stopped expecting it.

    The Wisdom Page - http://www.cop.com/wisdompg.html#10

    Edit to clarify these are not my words but an extract.
     
    Last edited: Jan 2, 2003
  8. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    wesmorris,

    That's the easiest way to "prove" yourself right, isn't?

    Talking about two different things...

    Don't think so. Wisdom doesn't come with time. It is not how big is the ocean that is important, it is how deep the ocean is.

    TruthSeeker...

    I've been searching since I was 12...

    Never said that. All that I do is try to tell what I see that is foolish in this world. I'm still not there...

    Have you ever though it might be you that is way off?

    Knowledge won't help me so much... Wisdom does help me, as it grows...

    I've never felt complete. Indeed, I feel so incomplete that everyday I try to work harder to find Truth... but it's not very easy...

    I've learn a lot about Quantum Physics, Astrophysics and Subatomic Particles, but I found nothing there... I even though I was getting closer to the Truth, but later I realized that I was still very far away... so I took another road and got closer to it, instead of farther away...

    I do... whatever God tells me about Love is wisdom.

    Not really! The reason of this world is foolishness before God. Cris is still pretty far away from being wise...

    God is more than enough...

    I don't seek knowledge... besides knowing the Truth...

    I'm far more mature than many people with twice of my age. I didn't say that, it was a guy twice of my age that told me that.

    I do my best to show people how foolish this world is...
     
  9. wesmorris Nerd Overlord - we(s):1 of N Valued Senior Member

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    Re: The Wisdom Page

    Cris, you make an excellent point about wisdom. I'm generally very impressed with your insights and this one is no different. However, it seems you are putting a little bit of a negative spin on it. I only mean that I don't know if wisdom is really in short supply, or if it's just that the media is in such large supply that it makes everything else seem small. I think people like you for instance, people like a few of my profs in college, a few people I work with, some people online here, my wife's dad... well, there is a lot of wisdom in the world I think. It's just that well, the volume is turned up so damn loud on the radio, I mean the TV, no uh.. that magazine there.. no I mean the web. It make it harder to realize there is wisdom all around us.

    *shrug*

    Maybe it's that since there are more people, there are more people who don't recognized wisdom and aren't prone to seek it, but the percentage is the same.

    *shrug*
     
  10. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    9,199
    truthseeker,

    As Lex Luthor once said -

    Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it was a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secret of the universe.

    Wisdom is something that one develops over time through the acquisition of knowledge, through experience, through learning, from intelligence, from being willing to listen to others, from humility, and from an ability to put it altogether.

    Some people never achieve wisdom no matter how long they live yet some acquire it in their youth. It is not something that can be easily taught if at all.
     
  11. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    15,162
    Cris,

    I agree with almost all that. It is all that besides "intelligence shaped by experience". You don't need experience to be wise.

    We don't born with wisdom but we gain it naturally, and not by making mistakes and learning from them.

    Indeed... wise people such as Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Buddha and Mother Teresa is extremely hard nowdays...
     
  12. Zero Banned Banned

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    2,355
    Exactly what the RCC is trying to do...they're all celibate, all they know are struggle, fantasies, and masturbation and they think they can tell the rest of the world how to have sex. Pathetic.

    Wisdom does come from experience, though it is not ALL about experience. Direct experience hardwires a piece of knowledge much more firmly into you than study of knowledge can ever do. And with such hardwired knowledge, you are able to use it and express it almost instinctively with much more flexibility. Of course, if you trust too much in your own experience your mind can quickly atrophy and ossify.
     
  13. Zero Banned Banned

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    Don't forget the number of Hindu saints who are still alive today. They're not exactly devoid of wisdom. Same to current practitioners of many other religions.
     
  14. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    Wes,

    The text on the Wisdom Page post is from the link and are not my words. I’ll have to stop putting the extract first and the link last.

    I think I somewhat agree with you. I posted the link since it seems relevant to the topic and the definition isn’t bad. But I think my last post to T is more accurate and does represent more of my perspective
     
  15. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    15,162
    wesmorris,

    How easy it is to agree and worship someone that is like yourself...

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    He is "right" because YOU are "right", do you get that? You worship one another so that you can both get credit. That's sad...

    Wisdom is lost in the foolishness of this world.

    Cris and profs in college are probably not the right ones to be called wise.
     
  16. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    15,162
    Cris,

    If so, then time and experience has nothing to do with wisdom. Can you please realize that? Besides that, wisdom is something that we actually can apply i life. If you have a knowledge that cannot be used in your life, then that's not wisdom.
     
  17. notme2000 The Art Of Fact Registered Senior Member

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    1,464
    Yes it does. It's all about what you do with your time and experience.
     
  18. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    Zero,

    Thanks Zero! That's a very good way to tell that to Cris...:bugeye:

    Wisdom is to be able to apply "knowledge" naturally, almost instintively. It also comes from a natural knowledge that doesn't come from experience. If you limit yourself to your own experience, than you are not wise. If you expand yourself and don't pay much attention to your own experience, then you can understand others better, and consequently, the world. That's what I've been saying...
     
  19. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    15,162
    notme2000,

    How does limiting the whole world to your own experience make yourself wise? Wisdom is from undertanding the world, not using your own perspective, but the world's perspective, it is seeing the world's perspetive and actually overcoming it.
     
  20. Zero Banned Banned

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    In Rama, I think the octospider characters mention something about an "ossification coefficient". Interesting tidbit there. Read it, Rama rocks. The whole schmole, I mean.
     
  21. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    9,199
    wes,

    Ahh nuts, I was hoping no one had noticed.

    Unfortunately wisdom is relative. I appear wise to some maybe, but to others far beyond me I know nearly nothing. And the opinions of those who have no wisdom simply don’t count.

    I work in a research environment as a first line manager and I am fortunate enough to work closely with some very bright people. Compared to them I am very much a junior. But such people seem to share certain common characteristics – quiet, humble, unassuming, good listeners, incredibly insightful, and of few words. Their answers to questions tend to be penetrating and devastating. I see these people as examples of true wisdom.

    In a training course many years ago I led a small team that had to design a particular object. My team won easily because of my direction and design. But I was unhappy. The instructor congratulated me and asked me why I was unhappy. My answer was simply that I felt I could have done much better.

    I do not find it satisfactory to sometimes be better than someone else. I measure any successes against what I feel I could do and am only content, very rarely, if I feel I have done everything possible. I am perhaps my own worst critic.

    So because I know there are people wiser than me then I would not consider myself wise in the absolute sense. But I guess I have developed some wisdom over the years, and while that might sound immodest it reminds me of a quote I heard once “it is a foolish man indeed who does not know he is wise”. To always ignore what you know and not realize you have wisdom to impart is to deny reality. I try to temper that with humility whenever I can. But I am afraid that compliments do make me cringe.
     
  22. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    9,199
    truthseeker,

    Wisdom is learnt hence time must pass. Experience contributes to wisdom so it is but one of the sources of wisdom but not the only source. However, as I stated earlier “the greatest wisdom comes from direct experience”.

    The amount of time that passes differs between individuals, some must wait forever and never become enlightened, with others it is quick.

    Perhaps but not necessarily.

    Knowledge can result in wisdom but whether you make use of it or not is entirely a different matter.

    That’s a loaded question. Gaining wisdom through experience is not a limiting activity. The experience opens new insights into reality and turns dry knowledge into realizations.

    You are interpreting ‘experience’ to mean a subjective personal perspective. I interpret ‘experience’ to mean the confirmation of knowledge imparted by others.

    The greatest wisdom comes from actually experiencing the world. This is the closest one can come to true reality. It is through direct experience that one can more easily achieve understanding.

    But experience is only one of the sources to wisdom.
     
  23. MacZ Caroline Registered Senior Member

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    271
    Truthseeker:

    You say that experience has nothing to do with wisdom.

    Your reasoning is that experience is filtered through ourselves, that our perceptions cannot be more than our own. Well, I think that that’s exactly what your book is – a filter, and one that proscribes a method for seeing and understanding.

    I also think that behind this lies your belief that "providing wisdom to others is something a wise person would do." Therefore, perhaps, you are concerned with a person's qualifications for doing so. I think that you forget that when it comes to experience, there are different types of people.

    There are those who think they can accumulate it vicariously, through books.

    Other people might experience something and assume that they have got at the truth of the matter, that the pattern holds true for all others too.

    On the other hand, there are those who consistently remind themselves of the very fact you speak of, that their experience is their own. But in doing so, there’s an interest to discover the larger picture, having had a glimpse of it, of which we are part. Our own experience is the only starting point we can possible have for doing this. The extension of this is communicating with other people, because we have to see the differences to get at the similarities, the common ground, some essence of the reality and core of things. Again, the “big picture,” which may be what wisdom is all about. It’s that something “more”.

    To give a little example, you can read all about drug addiction, etc., and think you can acquire some wise insights on the matter. You can be a drug addict or alcoholic, but insular, and think that what has happened to you is “how it is” for everyone else too. Or you know this isn’t so and go to NA and CA and AA, listen to other people, share things, and understand that though the destination may be the same all our paths are different. But somewhere in that difference, from assembling and merging and overlaying experiences something emerges that, in the old saying, is bigger than the sum, bigger than our own experience. In fact, so much bigger that it speaks to a lot more than the nature of addiction, say, but to something of the human condition perhaps. It’s something learned, from experience that can be applied to much more than the experience it started with.

    And if you say that experience counts for nothing, because the mind is a filter that colours our perceptions, precludes our seeing the “truth,” then what is your book? Surely it’s a filter too, one with a proscribed method for discovering it.
     

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