Tag Archives: wisdom

Coming out of hibernation

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It was a lovely break, and I needed it! Thanks for being patient with me. I spent the past two months creatively BLANK. I petted the cats and watched TV and shopped and wrapped presents. I told myself I’d do something creative. I did nothing creative.

I think conversations with creative people helps trigger my own creativity.

In that light, let’s try kicking things off with a bit of philosophy:

What is wisdom?

Try to define it in your own words, without resorting to synonyms for wisdom (judgment, knowledge, etc). I’m curious about people’s personal twists on this.

My definition is below.

 

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  • The ability to be happy in a civilization
  • The ability to make the kindest actions regardless of outside pressures
  • The ability to make crueler actions for the greater good
  • Tempering every action with love
  • Tempering love with sanity
  • The ability to be emotionally and situationally balanced, or to regain it quickly

 

What was your definition?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the futility of knowledge

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Everything starts and ends
With the floor
On the floor
We are born on it
Crawl on it
Walk on it
We die and fall on it
It isn’t really a foundation
It’s just a flat plane
To which we are limited.
Time, the universe, life, death, space
All happen on a plane.
We can only understand this one level of reality
We observe and shape our reality
Aristotle said
We should not experiment, only observe
Experiments change the observation
Now we say
Observation changes the experiment
Eventually it all comes around again
Old theories are proven right
Outmoded fashions come back into action
Old thoughts are rethought
Things that are lost get discovered again
Children crawl on the floor
It’s all pretty well impossible to measure
How silly to try.
The ancients who spent their days
Trying to count the stars
Trying to corner knowledge
They really did that
And when do you think
They finished?
Even if you finish counting what is visible with the naked eye
Then you must move to another pole
And count again.
Even then
You may have a telescope
Or you might make a better, stronger one
But one can never
Never
Be done counting the stars
Because the universe may not be infinite
But by the time you reach the edge of it
You are back at the beginning
The number has changed
And you must start
All over again.

So it is in life.
What we measure is immeasurable.
And even if we try
Anything we put in our heads
Will be made head-shaped
And no longer be the thing
That we wished to understand.