Wisdom: a practical capacity to choose a good path
This short post is about distinguishing the various components of wisdom
Wisdom is a practical capacity to choose a good path — and then act on that choice to realize it. Here, for now, we’ll focus on the choosing and leave the acting part for later discussion (see four types of problem for why choosing and acting are different).
Choosing is often the key thing we think of when we think of wisdom. Take this clip from Gandhi for example.
Individual and collective wisdom
There’s individual wisdom and collective wisdom.
Individual wisdom is about choosing at an individual level.
Collective wisdom is the ability of a group to act wisely: to make wise choices for the group and to act on them. For example, choosing as a planetary civilization to cut green house gas emissions — and doing it.
Choice has two components: sensing what is good (valueception) and sensing the truth (sensemaking)
Choosing has two components which need to be integrated to find a good (wise) path forward:
Sensing the good — or more accurately the ‘Good’ with a capital G. This is directly related to valueception
Sensemaking: Sensing what is so, understanding the world, discovering the truth — or what is truer. This is sensemaking.
Skill is then needed to integrate these together to suggest a path that has the best (or a good) chance of advancing the good.
Take the famous story of King Solomon and the baby. First, Solomon sensed the good: returning the baby to its true mother. Second, Solomon sensed that a true mother would never sacrifice her baby even if it meant letting the other woman have it. He then integrated this together to create a situation that revealed who the true mother was by making his proposal to divide the baby in half. Notice that Solomon’s proposal on the face of it was not wise: it would involve killing the baby! In fact, this indirectness is precisely one of the aspects that made it wise: it was a skilful way of finding the truth and advancing the good.
We’ll talk more about these in an upcoming post.