- Wisdom – the quality or state of being wise; knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgment as to action; sagacity, discernment, or insight. ~ Dictionary.com
- Insight -an instance of apprehending the true nature of a thing, esp. through intuitive understanding ~ Dictionary.com
If I create a tool that gives us practice at exhibiting wisdom how dangerous could this be?
I have found much to my dismay that if I stop exercising my muscles I get weaker and less capable of doing the physical things I used to do.
The opportunity to do physical exercise outside of the time I spend swapping my time for money is getting greater and greater. There are no end of things being invented to make physical exercise more convenient, exciting and fun. With participation undoubtedly they would make me stronger, yet I am less physically fit than I have ever been.
In days gone by I worked on Farms, building, mowing lawns doing all manner of physical activity. I was fit, happy and healthy. I now work in an office in front of a computer getting fatter and less healthy.
My switch from physical work to more sedentary work shows me the value and need of practicing the physical.
I’ve been wondering if the same principle applies to Wisdom.
Are the systems we implement in business and society taking away the necessity to practice wisdom and thereby making us less wise?
Barry Schwartz gives a TED talk where he gives examples of systems creating barriers to the practice of Wisdom.
Perhaps we need to be designing systems which promote the practice of wisdom. With practice, perhaps we can turn the tide on what is seemingly a collective loss in this area.
Along side our fight against obesity, should we be fighting against this loss? If so, what are the new set of tools to help us with this fight. Kahatika?
Update: Barry has released a little more on the subject. Still no definitive answer to how to ensure more practical wisdom. He does touch on changing the system though.
This is what Kahatika does.
I seem to concerned about Love but what is my concern for Money?
Ahh! I see, you’re a conspiracy theory nut blaming the banking industry and big business for the woes of the world!
Not at all, just trying to reveal just how controlling the money system is, and how that impacts on our ability to exhibit Love and Compassion.
If after pondering the Money as Debt concept for a while, it may seem hopeless.
Then again a tiny tweak to the system may just reverse that hopelessness……who knows?
Here are a few clever people who appear to be wondering about the solution.
Seems like something needs to be done, exactly what still eludes them.
“The world would be saved if we could just love one another.”
An airy fairy statement used by hippies and dreamers?
No matter how true the statement may be, it is hardly a pragmatic plan of attack to “Save the World”.
Defining love is difficult in many ways. It’s association with sexual intimacy, and it’s broad context of use where many contexts are deemed socially unacceptable to even have a hint of that association, make in depth discussion of love uncomfortable for many.
There are so many different contexts where the word Love is used that it is impossible to determine if the world is increasing or decreasing in it’s level of Love.
In science, technology and business, when you have something you wish to measure, which is seemingly unmeasurable, you look for substitute characteristics, or if you are lucky, a substitute characteristic, which correlates strongly. Then you measure that. Interventions can then be trialled and reasonable assumptions on those interventions’ success or failure can be made from the analysis of data. Society moves in some direction or another as a result.
Pretty simple stuff, but what would be a measurable substitute characteristic for Love? I guess we are looking for an indicator or a “Symptom of Love”.
Furthermore perhaps we are looking to build the technology to provide the interventions, measure the results, analyse the data, and rework the interventions where appropriate to maximise the love.
Perhaps if this helped us practice the Symptoms of Love we could and would, over time, generate genuine love.
Use the old “Fake it until you make it” technique of self improvement on a global scale.
Now if I just had such a thing……….I reckon I’d call it Kahatika.
If the role of business is to identify an others pain and offer a cost effective solutions to that pain, one would suspect compassion would have a major role in business.
Should more businesses be embedding, or at least deriving inspiration from a Charter for Compassion when formulating the company mission and standard operating procedures?
Does the profit motive of business explicitly rule business out as vehicles of true love and compassion?
If you had a virus that if given to a patient, cured them, and once cured, would give that patient the ability to infect other sick people with that virus, hence curing them and so on until all sick people were cured; Would you start the ball rolling by giving that virus to the first willing patient?
What would your answer be if only patients with the capacity for compassion were cured and patients without this capacity for compassion died as a result of becoming infected?
“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile Universe.” ~ Albert Einstein
Having just written about a Crisis of Trust I must recognise that, as a society, we still trust.
The following TED talk I found reassuring. His observations provide partial reason for why my Plan to “Save the World” may just work.
Like every world changing idea now-a-days, mine too involves the internet to a very limited degree. More importantly it involves some aspects of Human behaviour Jonathan touches on.
Despite all the complicated Systems and Mechanisms our society institutes to reduce the need for trust, our day to day lives are manageable only because we do trust.
We trust that the oncoming traffic will stay on their side of the road, we trust that the money we give to the banks will be available to us when ask for it. We trust that we will be paid, things will arrive on time, that basically agreements written and implied will be kept. It’s not because of our laws and systems that enable us to do this. Most of us couldn’t afford the time nor expense of seeking formal justice in every instance where trust is involved.
If we didn’t trust, we would be in a paralyzing state of indecision, leaving our lives impotent. Inaction would be the norm. Societal evolution of humans is fundamentally down to trust.
In what environment do we feel most comfortable with trust? The answer to that is, when we feel the most loved.
In what environment do we feel most uncomfortable with trust? The answer to that is, when we are afraid; in a state of fear.
This link gives rise to the definition I heard at a course I went on called Money and You “The opposite of Love is Fear”
Having also learned Deming’s 8th point of his 14 point philosophy; “Drive out fear where ever it exists in your organisation” was perhaps couched that way because he simply didn’t believe he could sell the idea “Exhibit Love everywhere within your organisation”
Economists the world over would agree that the Global Financial Crisis is essentially a crisis of trust. The collapse of Lehman Brothers, an organisation the global financial institutions trusted, was found to be not trustworthy. If Lehman Brothers could collapse, who else could go the same way. The flow of money, which was primarily based on trust, between these powerful organisations stopped. This had a knock on effect, falling business confidence, foreclosures, unemployment, bankruptcy. Recession.
In summary the world has just had a whole hunk of love ripped out of it and had it replaced with fear.
The solution; put back the Love.
Lets assume for a moment that I have the solution that will save the world and an action plan to implement it.
If you think I have, you might invest in it. If you think I haven’t you won’t.
You’re a hard nosed investor, you’ve got no children to pass the world on to, you’re very self-centred and are only into what it returns to you.
Is the solution something that creates a return on investment?
The short answer is yes. (I think) The financial modeling I have done shows a Return on Investment of under three years.
What proof do I have other than the model it self?
None.
Ok, let’s assume for a moment that you are still interested.
What generates the return?
Increased efficiency is what I think produces the return. “More with Less”
We are talking about Saving the World why are you talking about ROI?
Because if I talk about Love, compassion, giving, family, communicating, justice, I become a “nut job” in your eyes, so I decided to speak your language.
Ah, so you’re starting some wacky religion?
See I told you.
The world needs saving because the climate is changing. This is impacting on the way we as humans currently live and we are all worried.
Being agnostic I find I just don’t know what the truth of the situation is. There is so much conflicting information out there that seems to be so complicated and with so many compelling reasons for it to be presented in a particular way that I can’t trust what I see or hear.
But nobody likes a fence sitter. You have to decide.
Anyone could be forgiven for deciding that this is where you concentrate your efforts to Save the World.
Our planet is under attack, and it’s under attack by us.
Seas are rising, ice is melting, floods are massive, droughts are long, hurricanes are bigger and more frequent; and that’s just the start. We are also going to freeze to death. As individuals we must all do our bit, right? Rah rah rah speeches, social media campaigns, politics, advertising.
You can generally get everyone on the same page for a short period of time when in a time of war. Define an enemy, generate some hate by laying blame, tell everyone what to do. If they don’t do it, kill them. Unfortunately the enemy seems to have been defined as all of us. If we use the same strategy we’ll legitimise killing our neighbour simply because they don’t car pool.
The generation of an enemy to accelerate change unfortunately works but it is wrong, when the enemy is us, it is really really wrong and self-destructive.
If Deming was right and over 90% of the problem is due to the system not the people we must look at the system.
Regardless of the debate over climate change; and there is still significant debate, moving around the proportion of responsibility for action is simply an elaborate dance.
Business for better or worse is always going to be the main change agent. Inventing the light bulb didn’t change the world, commercialisation of the light bulb did.
A seemingly forgotten base principle of business needs to be revived. “More with Less” (See Buckminster Fuller Institute, Deming Institute, Excellerated Business Schools)
Following that fundamental principle in combination with following the principle of, “Think Global act Local” would render the debate redundant. There would be no reason to debate if the climate was changing or what was causing it. The consequence of following sound first principles simply because they are the right thing to do puts us on the right track and eliminates the need for an enemy.
Furthermore the original reasons for incorporation of a business needs to be remembered. The law was originally written to produce entities to serve the people. “Us”. Build roads, bridges, railways etc. Through a succession of bastardisations of that original law do we get the entities we have today. (see the movie “The Corporation”)
We also need to remember that it’s not that the climate is changing it’s the speed of predicted change that is the problem.
Assuming the climate will follow these predictions how do we get our biggest most powerful change agent to respond quickly enough?
Thats all I can remember that we should remember. I’m sure there are other things, I just can’t remember.
Love, Peace, Bellbeads 🙂
P.S. This is not the solution but it is related. Read on.