Recently I joined The Magic of Emergence led by Steve March. These three questions have stayed with me:
- Where do you go to get information?
- Where do you go to get knowledge?
- Where do you go to get wisdom?
Source: John Vervaeke
Most people have an answer to the first two. Content is everywhere and our culture is hyper-focused on it. I think this is especially true in learning and professional development. There’s always something employees “need to know.” The amount of information is almost overwhelming at times.
Yet wisdom is seldom spoken of.
Here are some notes I took from what Steve shared:
Wisdom is something that emerges, something that unfolds.
There’s nothing that we can do to make individuals/groups wiser. However, there’s a lot we can do to help people notice the ways in which they’re blocked from self-arising wisdom. This presupposes that wisdom is a natural, evolutionary process and that we are already creative, wise, and whole. It’s not something we need to “make happen” but rather allow to unfold.
Knowledge can be written down, it’s content. Wisdom is emergent, it arises as you and me and us. It’s insight in action.
How can we support wisdom?
Humility – Actively embrace not knowing. We realise we don’t know but don’t have to be afraid. Vs. We shouldn’t let anybody know that we don’t know.
Deep participation – Working with our experience in a near way. When it’s ok to allow not knowing, there’s another kind of awareness and change that start to come online.
Love – Loves heals fragmentation. Love of truth, beauty, and goodness for its own sake. We do this work out of a love for truth. Implicit in truth is beauty and goodness, the fundamental goodness of human nature.
What I’m taking away?
We need both wisdom and information/knowledge. I suspect we have ample access to information and that the world is yearning for more wisdom. As am I.
We can only cultivate for others what we’ve cultivated for ourselves – so I’m left asking myself: How am I allowing myself to not know, to participate deeply in what I experience, and how can I keep turning towards love, connecting to our shared fundamental goodness?
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