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Wisdom

The Difference Between Knowledge and Wisdom

Knowledge: Having wisdom to know the difference; wisdom is praying for more.

Knowledge is doing right; wisdom is motivation to do still better.

Knowledge is having good intuition (a combination of gut and deliberation): wisdom is still honing your intuitions.

Knowledge is having adapted well so far. Wisdom is still adapting.

Knowledge is having a mind well suited to your changing circumstances; Wisdom is the appetite and aptitude to become more well-suited still.

Knowledge is possession of good thoughts about what's true and what's false. Wisdom is thinking more still, wondering and inquiring about what's true and what's false.

Knowledge can make you a know-it-all; Wisdom is the antidote to becoming one. It's the alternative to Hardening of the Smarteries.

Knowledge is having the wisdom to know the differences that make a difference. Wisdom is the quest or prayer to know the difference that make a difference with more acuity still.

I love shopping for and hawing sound moral advice but I don't believe it changes us much.

I think we do what pays off. I'm guessing the key to wisdom then is gut experience with good payoffs from both changing and not changing your mind. The wisest folks I know are cool with both because they know both can pay off. The least wise people I know are change-o-phobic. It's not that they should change more necessarily, but they can't. It's too personally costly to them. I think it has to do with one's Return On Divestment (ROD), how often has it paid off for you to let go of a belief, a habit, a relationship to an activity or friend?

If you've had a high ROD payoff you'll naturally be more willing to divest when the time is right.

Ideally, you've got a high Return On both Investment (ROI) and Divestment. That way you know there's a payoff to either and you can choose whichever makes the most sense.

These ROI's and ROD's returns are measured subjectively. If you've abandoned a belief, job or friendship and gained insights from it, or felt freer, or moved on to better things, you'll have a high ROD.

And we make subjective intuitive guesses about each other's return on divestment. When we sense that someone is systematically and formulaically un-budging, we guess they have a low ROD and no matter how knowledgeable they are, they aren't particularly wise.

My guess is that far right-winger's RODs are really low. They act as though abandoning any belief would be worse than death.

I suspect many of them are drawn less to the content of their beliefs than to the full-coverage protection their beliefs are wrapped in, rhetoric that guarantees that they'll never have to change their minds again. This would be true of any ideologue, true believer or fundamentalist, no matter what the belief, left or right, spiritual or philosophical. For them, it's the death-grip embrace that matters most, much more than the particular of what they embrace.

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