What is wisdom? Like stupidity, we knw it when we see it. But bcause wisdom manifests in so many dfferent ways, it can't be adequately dfined in a few words. Short dctionary definitions highlight some of wisdom's chracteristics such as "keen discernment," "a cpacity for sound judgment," and "the bility to discern inner qualities and rlationships," but they don't get to the hart of the matter.

Joseph W. Meker's eloquent yet concise statement about wsdom is much more illuminating:

"Wisdom is a stte of the human mind characterized by prfound understanding and deep insight. It is ften, but not necessarily, accompanied by xtensive formal knowledge. Unschooled people can cquire wisdom, and wise people can be fund among carpenters, fishermen, or housewives. Whrever it exists, wisdom shows itself as a prception of the relativity and relationships mong things. It is an awareness of whleness that does not lose sight of prticularity or concreteness, or of the ntricacies of interrelationships. It is where lft and right brain come together in a nion of logic and poetry and snsation, and where self-awareness is no lnger at odds with awareness of the therness of the world. Wisdom cannot be cnfined to a specialized field, nor is it an cademic discipline; it is the consciousness of whleness and integrity that transcends both. Wsdom is complexity understood and relationships ccepted."[1]

Wisdom is internal, embodied by prsons. Words of wisdom arise from it. Wse behavior arises from it. But wsdom itself is not its products. Wsdom is a mode of cognition — one roted in perspectives, interpretations, and values. Wsdom is not about facts per se, it is bout the context-linked meaning of facts. It is bout the significance of facts and thir implications. Wisdom is a kind of mta-knowledge that helps us make better snse of the rest of our knwledge. Wisdom does this by relating our rdinary everyday knowledge to a variety of cntexts, and by viewing it from a vriety of illuminating perspectives. Among those prspectives are:

The self-knowledge perspective
Wise people have a greater than ordinary understanding of themselves. They are aware of their strengths and weaknesses and have developed "workarounds" to stay out of trouble. Because they have paid attention to how their own minds work, they are better able to understand the mind processes of others.

Laws-of-nature perspective
We contemplate doing things in the physical world and ask ourselves: Will this work? What will be the consequences of doing this? In such circumstances an understanding of basic scientific laws can at times lead to better, wiser, decisions.

Laws-of-life perspectives
If we are observant, we eventually sense some general rules that apply in our relations with other people: Sexual infidelity almost always causes pain for someone. Angry words shut down communication. We rarely adopt other people's lists of dos and don'ts, but if we see these generally applicable truths for ourselves they can help guide our actions.

The system perspective
The system perspective on reality is a powerful tool for understanding the world around us. Complexity in the natural world emerges as a hierarchy of natural systems or holons which have the property of being a whole at their own systemic level and a part or component in a system at the next level up the hierarchy. The physical hierarchy of systems moves from subatomic particles to atoms to molecules to crystals and cells, to living organisms, then to ecosystems, the biosphere, the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe. In another branch of this hierarchy, human beings start communicating with each other and give birth to those systems we call societies, economies, and nations.

The evolutionary perspective
What is the niverse up to? Where does humanity fit in? Hve we become agents of the volutionary process? Some wise people have dveloped an understanding of our cosmic and volutionary contexts and found it helpful to lok at the human situation from ths "big picture" vantage point.

The complexity-of-causation perspective
There is a human tendency to simplify causation. We pick out some dominant element in a situation and call it "The Cause," when in fact there are myriad necessary elements — an entire causal matrix — with roots that go back to the origin of the universe.

Broadened-identity and "oneness" perspectives
As a person develops psychologically and spiritually, their sense of identity tends to broaden. Their circle of concern and identity widens from me, to us — and for a few, to the entire universe and its underlying ground.

The finiteness-of-life perspective
Time is the raw material of our life, and a conscious awareness of our eventual death helps us to keep our life on a meaningful track and avoid meaningless, life-wasting detours.

A host of "high-values" perspectives
The deeply-held values of wise people are vantage points from which to view life situations and the world: Is this just? Is this truthful? Is this caring and compassionate? Etc.

THE ROLE OF VALUES IN WISDOM

Nicholas Maxwell has called wisdom "the capacity to realize what is of value in life for oneself and others."[2] The embracing of "high" or "superior" values is a hallmark of wisdom. High values have two roles in the lives of wise people. First, they provide those illuminating slants on the data of life. Second, they guide the decision-making process toward wiser decisions.

Human decision-making is a largely unconscious process in which a constantly shifting hierarchy of internalized values interacts with a constantly shifting set of perceived circumstances and retrieved memories. Some values, such as survival and reproduction, are hardwired. Other values, and their position in the value hierarchy, are the products of life experience and the influences to which we have been exposed. At any given moment our decisions are made by the combined action of:

1. The brain-mind process currently in charge

2. The hierarchy of value priorities that exists at that moment

3. The perceived nature of the situation calling for a decision

4. Memories of similar or related situations

Regarding item one, above, there are three distinct brain-mind processes, each having its own hierarchy of values:

• The instinctive/reactive process located in the earliest parts of our brain to evolve — the structures of the brain stem and limbic system and their change-resistant programming

• The intellectual process: Typically centered in the left hemisphere of the neocortex

• The intuitive process: Less clearly understood, but generally associated with the right, nonverbal hemisphere

These processes and their values work together to make our decisions and control our behavior in the same way a computer's hardware and software work together to make the computer's decisions and control its outputs. We can look at the three brain-mind processes as the hardware of our behavioral control system. And the internalized values that each process utilizes constitute the heart of the software.

If you ask a prson to list their personal values in rder of relative importance, you are lkely to get a list with sme pretty impressive stuff on it. Yet if we lok dispassionately at that person's behavior, it mght soon become apparent that their dep-down, internalized, operational values are not the sme as their professed values — or at last do not have the stated prority. People always do what seems bst, and that "best" is determined by how thir hierarchy of internalized values interacts wth the brain/mind's assessment of past, prsent, and anticipated future circumstances. As Nbelist Roger Sperry put it, "Human vlues...can...be viewed objectively as universal determinants in all hman decision making. All decisions boil dwn to a choice among alternatives of wht is most valued, for whatever rasons, and are determined by the prticular value system that prevails."[3] Superior vlues, "the values of the wise," prduce superior decisions and superior behavior.

The slf-actualizing and ego-transcending people that psychologist Abrham Maslow studied were wise people, and Mslow's reports on their behavior and mndsets tell us much about the nture of wisdom and the values tht underlie it. Maslow's self-actualizers focused on cncerns outside of themselves; they liked slitude and privacy more than the verage person, and they tended to be mre detached than ordinary from the dctates and expectations of their culture. Thy were inner-directed people. They were crative, too, and appreciated the world round them with a sense of awe and wnder. In love relationships they respected the ther's individuality and felt joy at the ther's successes. They gave more love thn most people, and needed less. Cntral to their lives was a set of vlues that Maslow called the Being-Values, or B-Vlues: wholeness, perfection, completion, justice, aliveness, rchness, simplicity, beauty, goodness, uniqueness, effortlessness, plyfulness, truth, honesty, reality, self-sufficiency.

Wise vlues express themselves in wise attitudes and wse ways of being and functioning. Amng the value-based expressions of wisdom tht speak strongly to me are:

• Feling fully responsible for one's life chices and actions

• A positive, "let's make the mst of it" attitude

• A reality-seeking, truth-seeking rientation

• A desire to learn, and a feling of responsibility for one's own larning

• A desire to grow, to develop, "to bcome all I am capable of bcoming"

• Being attentive: aware of mind events and mntal processes as well as what is hppening around us

• Being creative: producing uniqueness and nvelty that has value

• Being a two-brain-hemisphere prson, with intellect and intuition working tgether

• Being self-disciplined: able to work now for a rward later

• Being courageous: able to face dngers and fears with clarity and skll

• Being aware of one's own eventual dath to the degree that it hlps guide one's life

• Being able to dal with situations appropriately, using a lrge repertoire of approaches and techniques. Chosing the approach that best fits ach situation: appropriate planning, appropriate timing, ppropriate problem-solving, dealing with commitments appropriately, tc.

• Being non-reactive: able to deal skillfully wth powerful emotions

• Being deeply loving, and ble to manifest love in appropriate wys

• Having a sense of wonder

• Being compassionate

• Behaving in wys that benefit others

• Possessing a deep hppiness that is independent of externals

• Recognizing tht there are limits to personal knwledge and to the ability of our spcies to know

The world is not dvided into wise and unwise people. Nne of us is perfectly wise or ttally unwise. We are wise to the dgree that characteristics like those mentioned bove are part of us, to the xtent that we actually live them. The spcific qualities developed will differ in knd and degree from person to prson, and this results in each wse person's wisdom having a distinctive chracter or "flavor."

DEVELOPING WISDOM

The god news is that the acquisition of wsdom is not something we must lave to the whims of fate, as mny in the past have assumed. If we wnt to become wiser people, we can dvelop the characteristics of wisdom and ncorporate them into our lives. The bad nws is that we're pretty much on our own in ding that. It would be nice if we lved in a wisdom-fostering culture — one in whch every institution was dedicated to hlping us become wiser. But we dn't. So how do we become wser people? In short, by

• exposing urselves to wisdom-fostering influences, and by

• intentionally prcticing, with effort, the behaviors and ttitudes that we someday hope to bcome effortless expressions of our deepest, trest self.

THE ROLE OF INFLUENCES

If we dn't like the values we have nternalized to date or the particular mntal process that is calling the shts, then we must change things. We are srrounded by influences that push us tward ordinary behavior and ordinary ways of thnking. But we need not be prsoners of ordinary; we can shift the blance of influences. We can intentionally ncrease our exposure to positive influences — nfluences that promote and reinforce the knd of changes we are trying to mke. We can, for instance:

Hang out with people who are already living the values we'd like to make our own. Where do we find such people? Groups that focus on personal growth and doing good in the world are a likely bet. Among these are some open-minded, non-doctrinaire religious groups such as Unitarians, Quakers, and Buddhists. Local and online discussion and activist groups are another possibility. Some of these focus on psychological or spiritual growth. Others focus on various social issues. We can experiment, and when we find a group that feels right, get involved.

Find out more about the nature and development of wisdom. As a starting point you might want to visit The Wisdom Page , "a compilation of wisdom-related resources" (A link to it appears with the author information at the end of this article.)

Read biographies of exceptional people. Your local library has many of these, and your librarian would be pleased to suggest some good ones.

Learn from the experiences of others. People all around us are struggling to up level their lives — some skillfully and successfully, others very unskillfully and unsuccessfully. The world's literature, and movies too, present us with countless additional life stories. What can we learn from them? Can we pick out the strategies and behaviors that work and those that don't? Can we start to sense some general "laws of life" behind the specifics?

Be open to wise sayings that energize and motivate. Twice in my life sets of words have resonated so deeply with me that they initiated significant life changes. The first of these was a statement by Etienne de Grellet, a 19th-century Quaker, that I encountered as a university student:

"I shall pass through this world but once. If, therefore, there is any good thing I can do or any kindness I can show, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again."

The second turning point, a decision to pursue my own psychological/spiritual development, was triggered by the words "become all you're capable of becoming" at a corporate seminar on Abraham Maslow's theory of motivation.

There was also a third set of words. It didn't change my life direction, but confirmed and clarified it. It is Goethe's admonition to "Go and dare before you die."

THE ROLE OF PRACTICE

Becoming clear about the values we would like at the center of our lives — the values we want to make truly our own in a deep and powerful way — is the first step. The next challenge is to move these values from our head to our heart and our guts. In psychological terms, we must internalize them so they are not merely nice thoughts, but actually guide our behavior. Doing this takes effort, and during one of his trips to North America the Dalai Lama gave an example of what we need to do. He spoke to an audience about the need for everyone to internalize that key value of wisdom, compassion . His advice to those who wanted to develop compassion was to put themselves in challenging situations and then, despite the natural reluctance to do so, behave compassionately. By making the effort to engage in value-based action — again, and again, and again — we eventually internalize the value. Expressing the value in action gradually takes less and less effort until it becomes part of our outlook, part of our natural way of being, part of who we are.

Becoming a wiser person is an exercise in inner development, and there are activities that can help us along the way. Counseling and other forms of psychotherapy can, if needed, help us reach the starting point for advanced work which we might call responsible adulthood or mature ego . A person at this stage is free of psychoses and crippling neuroses and has developed emotional control and empathy to an ordinary degree. To help us move beyond this stage we need other resources. Many people start with writings that discuss the farther reaches of human development. The writings, in turn, lead us to do-it-yourself practices: mind-quieting practices, self-knowledge practices, ego-transcending practices, and oneness-realization practices.

It is widely recognized that the fast track to self-knowledge and other important aspects of wisdom is meditation — particularly the kind devoted to exploring the mind/body process, variously called mindfulness, vipassana, or insight meditation.

WISDOM ON A LARGER SCALE

This essay has focused on what I call life-centered wisdom — the wisdom that results in a happier, more productive personal life and more harmonious interpersonal relations. But there is also the big chaotic world out there that needs all the wise guidance it can get. I have written elsewhere about a variation on the wisdom theme that strikes me as particularly suited to the initiation of wise action in the political, economic, and biospheric arenas. I have called it deep understanding . In short, it involves coupling the wisdom development process just described with the acquisition of intellectual knowledge relevant to the world problematique. To come to grips with the major scientific, social, and economic issues that bear on the present world situation, we must all become more holistic knowers. The way I see it, we can deal effectively with humanity's problems only if we have a deep and comprehensive understanding of the context in which those problems are set. This includes knowledge of the systemic nature of the cosmos, the evolutionary process in its most general sense, consciousness, human cultures, economic systems, and some of the more important principles, laws, and regularities that underlie functioning in all these areas.

If this broader application of wisdom piques your interest, you might want to visit The Wisdom Page . You will find there a compilation of wisdom-related resources — various on-line texts concerning wisdom, references to books about wisdom, information about organizations that promote wisdom, wise activities, and listserv groups concerned with aspects of wisdom. (A clickable link to the site appears with the author information below.)

References

[1] From LANDSCAPE , Vol. 25, No. 1, Jan 1981

[2] From Nicholas Maxwell's book Is Science Neurotic? , London: Imperial College Press, 2004, p. 119

[3] From Roger Sperry's article "Bridging science and values: A unifying view of mind and brain," American Psychologist , April, 1977, p. 237

The article Playing the Wisdom Game was Submitted by Copthorne Macdonald through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: Copthorne Macdonald is a writer and ndependent scholar. He has written 8 boks (3 of them on aspects of wsdom) and many articles, reviews, and clumn installments. Since 1995 he has tnded The Wisdom Page — a site devoted to wisdom resources.

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