Copthorne Macdonald

Playing the Wisdom Game --- Part 2

Subtitled "Some thoughts about the nature and development of wisdom," this article was first published in the 2006 book LIVING A LIFE OF VALUE.

Wise values express themselves in wise attitudes and wise ways of being and functioning. Among the value-based expressions of wisdom that speak strongly to me are:

•  Feeling fully responsible for one's life choices and actions

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

•  A reality-seeking, truth-seeking orientation

•  A desire to learn, and a feeling of responsibility for one's own learning

•  A desire to grow, to develop, "to become all I am capable of becoming"

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

•  Being creative: producing uniqueness and novelty that has value

•  Being a two-brain-hemisphere person, with intellect and intuition working together

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

•  Being courageous: able to face dangers and fears with clarity and skill

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

•  Being able to deal with situations appropriately, using a large repertoire of approaches and techniques. Choosing the approach that best fits each situation: appropriate planning, appropriate timing, appropriate problem-solving, dealing with commitments appropriately, etc.

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

•  Being deeply loving, and able to manifest love in appropriate ways

•  Having a sense of wonder

•  Being compassionate

•  Behaving in ways that benefit others

•  Possessing a deep happiness that is independent of externals

•  Recognizing that there are limits to personal knowledge and to the ability of our species to know

The world is not divided into wise and unwise people. None of us is perfectly wise or totally unwise. We are wise to the degree that characteristics like those mentioned above are part of us, to the extent that we actually live them. The specific qualities developed will differ in kind and degree from person to person, and this results in each wise person's wisdom having a distinctive character or "flavor."

DEVELOPING WISDOM

The good news is that the acquisition of wisdom is not something we must leave to the whims of fate, as many in the past have assumed. If we want to become wiser people, we can develop the characteristics of wisdom and incorporate them into our lives. The bad news is that we're pretty much on our own in doing that. It would be nice if we lived in a wisdom-fostering culture —  one in which every institution was dedicated to helping us become wiser. But we don't. So how do we become wiser people? In short, by

• exposing ourselves to wisdom-fostering influences, and by

• intentionally practicing, with effort, the behaviors and attitudes that we someday hope to become effortless expressions of our deepest, truest self.

THE ROLE OF INFLUENCES

If we don't like the values we have internalized to date or the particular mental process that is calling the shots, then we must change things. We are surrounded by influences that push us toward ordinary behavior and ordinary ways of thinking. But we need not be prisoners of ordinary; we can shift the balance of influences. We can intentionally increase our exposure to positive influences —  influences that promote and reinforce the kind of changes we are trying to make. 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

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