Ten Steps to Return to the Path of Wisdom

Driving through the city of Los Angeles, I see famous people everywhere. You don’t have to look long to spot on giant billboards and posters a famous Youtuber, actor, singer, influencer—not quite the same as the influenza, esteemed older reader! Everyone here, so it seems, wants to be famous. What for? Mostly just to feel wanted and to get what they want. Our phones are loaded with sexy images and dramatic messages, all to grab our attention.

We are being influenced to want and reject possessions, people, and positions, without even noticing it. Swipe left, swipe right, like this, hate that. Thinking is not necessary anymore, at least not thorough thinking. We go with the gut and stay with our tribe. Instead of being guided by wisdom, we are lured by what feels safe and good while feeling disgusted by the rest.

The extreme left is married to certain ideas and so is the extreme right. And the middle? They are married to their own certain ideas, too. Every group feels superior to every other group. As we leave wisdom in the dust, we become disconnected from one another, loaded with feelings, high on anxiety and maybe fentanyl.

According to social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, the divisions are largely created as we subject ourselves to loud and demanding voices on social media, media based on harmful algorithms. He warns us that democracy itself is threatened by social media, rendering us unable to take in others’ positions. We follow trends moronically. During a talk, repeated during a Munk debate¹, he attacked the left in academia:

“Everything is about power. Every situation is to be analyzed in terms of the bad people acting to preserve their power and privilege over the good people. This is not an education…this is induction into a cult, a fundamentalist religion, a paranoid worldview that separates people from each other and sends them down the road to alienation, anxiety, and intellectual impotence.”

He is not that thrilled with the extreme right wing either, also heavily influenced by paranoid tweets and posts, for example, about the pandemic and all kinds of vaccines.

Opposing factions talk over each other, making no attempts to scrutinize opinions and seeking validation for the views to which they have already subscribed. Everybody falls victim to the so-called “confirmation bias,” which is the tendency to favor information that confirms our existing beliefs. Where is wisdom in all of this?

While social media may play a huge role in splitting people apart, there is more to the story. We have gone through the Great Recession from which not everybody has recovered. The wealth gap and a pervasive sense of injustice have only increased.

We have also removed ourselves from our natural habitats as we live in gray cities with a post-human pace. Our habits do not promote psychological health but high anxiety, as we live isolated lives (see the blog Loneliness is a killer!), eat too many simple carbohydrates, move too little, multitask and find no time to sit and stare. It is hard to be wise when our hearts are pumping fast as we try to make it through an ordinary day. Our civilization has given us so much, but it has robbed us of our inner peace. Very few people feel calm and collected, even before looking at social media.

Before I suggest steps that we can take to return to the path of wisdom, let me throw in this caveat: Every older generation claims that the younger generation appears less wise. We also tend to catastrophize the future; it always looks as if the world will soon come to an end. Except for the effects of climate change (my personal bias), we are probably overly pessimistic.

Jonathan Haidt wrote a beautiful book on how we can turn to ancient wisdom to find modern truth.² For example, the Golden Rule—“Treat others as you would like others to treat you"—is part of good thinking and living in much of the world. Learning from ancient wisdom ought to be part of everybody’s life. There are also well-thought-out remedies to fix the negative effects of social media, such as having the platforms change their algorithms.

Wisdom Essential Reads

Do We Get Wiser as We Age?

A World Without Grandmothers: What Would We Lose?

Furthermore, there are some steps we can do right away, both for ourselves and our youth.

One: Return to nature. Our wisdom cannot be found in books alone, even though knowledge is essential for the formation of wisdom. We need to have a sense of our life force, of that which gives us nourishment. Natural experiences are much needed. To lean onto nature lays the foundation for all wisdom to come (see also Go Wild! Part One and Part Two).

Two: Argue the other’s position. Instead of reiterating your position, train yourself in walking in the other’s moccasins and speak as if you believe in the opposition. Give it your best as you argue the other side.

Three: Finish your position with a question mark. My Zen teacher once gave a talk about forgiveness being the most important step towards inner peace. When he was finished, he said, “And this is true or maybe not.” Leave room for doubt.

Four: Lean onto the indefinable, existence or God. No matter what you see as the truth, create habits of leaning on what you find sacred or absolute. This practice may be religious or secular. You might find it useful to read Chapter 11: Reliance in A Unified Theory of Happiness.

Five: Question “want.” What gets us most away from wisdom is the drive of wanting more or something other than our reality. Every dream starts with accepting Now. When we feel driven, our mind becomes anxious and impaired. Laying aside our wants brings us the greatest and deepest form of happiness, which is “the focused experience of being fully engaged in the flow of life, a sense of interconnectedness.”

Six: Be generous in your interpretations of “the other.” We could all benefit from a little bit more love. Love is generous and assumes the best, not the worst, in the other. Assume that the other has good intentions.

Seven: Avoid condemnations. It is important to stand up for what you believe, but abstain from condemnations. Harsh judgment blinds you to understanding the other side and is often a sign of being merely emotional. This brings me to…

Eight: Be suspicious of your feelings. When we feel strongly, our thinking mind is quickly impaired. We lose our patience and maybe a couple of points of our intelligence. Halt yourself and let your feelings pass so that your intelligence can unfold. Following your gut is overrated.

Nine: Refuse the power of the few. The loudest may get the most attention in life, especially on social media, but they are rarely the ones from whom to learn. It takes a few bad apples to make all others go bad. Resist. Do not cave to your fears or desire to be with the herd. Examine carefully the positions of the loudest and ask for evidence.

Ten: Open your heart. The wise heart is not only knowledgeable, experienced, patient, curious, calm, and kind. It is also open. May you begin the day with an attitude that says, “Whatever the day brings, let me be open to it. Let me learn and open my heart wide. Open my heart. Open my heart. Open my heart.”

© 2021 Andrea F. Polard, PsyD. All Rights Reserved.