Practical Wisdom What is Wisdom? Wisdom has been described in many different ways over the centuries. Here Joseph W. Meeker sums it up in a profound paragraph from his article "Wisdom and Wilderness": "Wisdom is a state of the human mind characterized by profound understanding and deep insight. It is often, but not necessarily, accompanied by extensive formal knowledge. Unschooled people can acquire wisdom, and wise people can be found among carpenters, fishermen, or housewives. Wherever it exists, wisdom shows itself as a perception of the relativity and relationships among things. It is an awareness of wholeness that does not lose sight of particularity or concreteness, or of the intricacies of interrelationships. It is where left and right brain come together in a union of logic and poetry and sensation, and where self-awareness is no longer at odds with awareness of the otherness of the world. Wisdom cannot be confined to a specialized field, nor is it an academic discipline; it is the consciousness of wholeness and integrity that transcends both. Wisdom is complexity understood and relationships accepted." Practical Wisdom Aristotle identified two types of wisdom - the esoteric/metaphysical and practical wisdom - what Coleridge referred to as "Common sense in an uncommon degree." I suspect both are linked and that a journey into practical wisdom would eventually take you to a metaphysical level. For our purposes, we would like to start with an exploration of practical wisdom and what might be needed for individuals and organizations to flower more of their wisdom. The 'I' It seems that the journey starts with the self; with what goes on within the self; all the thoughts, feelings, values, meaning etc and the extent to which we are conscious of them. For many of us, for much of the time, the thoughts in our heads are random; they come and go seemingly dependent upon the range of stimuli we are exposed to moment by moment. I am out for a walk and see a dog, it reminds me of a good friends dog that died recently and how upset she was, and I remember that I have not been in contact for a while and I feel guilty and my mood changes and the rest of my walk is clouded by this guilt that takes me a while to shake off. It is unlikely that this type of randomness will lead to wisdom. It is more likely that wise people have developed or learned a way to bring to structure or form to their thinking. They may meditate to quiet these thoughts and begin to let the real self emerge. They maybe pay attention to what they are sensing and use this information to learn from and guide their actions. If I am in a meeting and am not totally present; my mind is following the random paths it often follows then I am not truly present. In fact I am not fully conscious. And in this condition there is a lot of information that my senses pick up that stays in my unconscious. Not only might I miss some of the content of the meeting, I will miss valuable information about how I am feeling about what's going on and how others are behaving. If I don't notice that I am getting angry or frustrated then there is every chance that I will react from these feelings without choosing. If I am not sufficiently present to pick up the cues about how others are feeling from the tone of their voice, their body posture etc, then I will not fully understand what is going on and perhaps behave inappropriately. So a wise person is likely to be more fully present; connected to and aware of the information that is coming from their senses and using this information to learn about themselves and the group in the moment and act in alignment with what is needed to achieve the desired outcome. There is a second part of the individual, however, that influences their wisdom as perceived by others; their behavior. Whatever wisdom you might be able to bring forward will not be heard if it does not come with sincerity and benevolence. There often needs to be a strictness, to bring the conversation back to where it needs to be, for example, and a courage to speak what is in the heart, that others may not want to hear. Speaking with superiority or judgment is unlikely to make people responsive to your wisdom. And if people are not responsive to your wisdom, then your wisdom will have little impact in the world. The 'We" The next level of practical wisdom development relates to the organization, or more particularly, the culture of the organization. It is possible that a number of people in the organization are following a growth journey as described above but the organization is not able to handle what they bring forward. This may be because what they are seeing and speaking is not 'open for discussion' in the organization. In some way it challenges 'the way things are done' and the organization is not ready for this type of revolution. At a more subtle level, it is likely that the culture has many conscious and unconscious protocols that make it a challenge for wisdom to come forward. It is necessary for people to speak from their heart, their emotions, their body and their spirit if wisdom is to come forward. Many organizations do not acknowledge emotions are part of a human that is acceptable at work. Similarly with spirit, although this is starting to become a more accepted topic for exploration. By limiting conversations and decision making to our logical brain, organizations cut off their access to the collective genius of their people. A friend, Heather Campbell, writes that businessmen wear ties as a symbol of the separation of their head from the rest of their body! The 'Us' The third level at which we need to consider wisdom is that of the organization in the context of its environment. Meeker says "Wherever it exists, wisdom shows itself as a perception of the relativity and relationships among things. It is an awareness of wholeness that does not lose sight of particularity or concreteness, or of the intricacies of interrelationships." It is in this area of interrelationships that organizations show themselves to be particularly short of wisdom. In the development continuum that moves from ego-centric to ethno-centric to world-centric, most organizations are stuck at the equivalent of the ethno-centric level. They will do anything to ensure their survival even if it means ignoring and ultimately destroying the world on which they totally depend for their survival. For many of their current leaders, their previous experience and success is a handicap. It limits them to an out-dated way of thinking. It limits the information they are able to take into their awareness. It leaves them only half conscious. And we cannot expect half conscious leaders to create a wise organization, or a wise world. As RD Laing, the Scottish psychiatrist, said in his own inimitable style: "The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little that we can do to change, until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds." The Challenge Thinking about wisdom in this way begins to open up the size of the challenge. It is not sufficient only to develop at the individual level for organizations have powerful ways of maintaining the status quo. Revolution is needed. It is not sufficient only to change to culture of the organization. Humans have equally powerful ways of maintaining the status quo. And for both of these reasons, it is not sufficient only for the leaders of organizations to move to a world-centric paradigm. All three elements must move together. We have a holon; a whole made up of other wholes which sit in a nested growth hierarchy. Within each of these wholes are layers of levels of development and each whole must move in a way appropriate to its own level as it progresses towards wisdom. Top © The Wisdom Meme 2007