     DrWho | Sunday, January 28, 2001 - 05:10 am
Before I divulge into the heart of the article, I feel it is necessary for me to define the Key word of this article, That is Wisdom. People often have miscomprehension of the meaning of this word, I have to agree it is extremely difficult to define something which is quite rare in this certain time, nevertheless I shall attempt to define it and give birth to some more bafflement. Without a further Ado let me define it:
As my father told me once, wisdom is: the ability to make sound choices, good decisions. The best decision. Wisdom is intelligence shaped by experience. Information softened by understanding."
Wisdom and wilderness are overwhelmingly staggering words. They inspire feelings of profound respect, a little fear, and wonder when we recall how little we know about them. It is something like talking about God or joy or love; most people would rather not. These subjects are what Physicist like to call "soft" topics - the kind that cannot be handily measured or readily applied in solving problems. But wisdom and wilderness are also two of the most essential resources for human beings both necessary to our survival and welfare.
Perhaps practical minds prefer to avoid thinking about wisdom and wilderness because neither is subject to human management. They happen by themselves, according to natural processes that are not understood. No educational system knows how to create wisdom and no science can make wilderness. We do know how to damage and destroy both of them, however, and we have devoted much of our energy to that in recent centuries. Before we reach the point where both wisdom and wilderness cease to exist, we should think about what they are, how they relate to one another, and what the world would be like without them.
Wisdom is a state of the human mind characterised by profound understanding and deep insight. It is often, but not necessarily, accompanied by extensive formal knowledge. Unschooled people can acquire wisdom, and wise people can be found among carpenters, fishermen, or housewives " Not that I am degrading any of these professions". Wherever it exists, wisdom shows itself as a perception of the relativity and relationships among things. It is an awareness of wholeness that does not lose sight of particularity or concertinas, or of the
intricacies of interrelationships. It is where left and right brain come together in a union of logic and poetry and sensation, and where self-awareness is no longer at odds with awareness of the otherness of the world. Wisdom cannot be confined to a specialised field, nor is it an academic discipline; it is the consciousness of
wholeness and integrity that transcends both. Wisdom is complexity understood and relationships accepted.
Wilderness is to nature as wisdom is to consciousness. Wilderness is a complex of natural relationships where plants, animals, and the land collaborate to fulfil their environments without technological human interference. Wilderness is a systemic complex so intricate that it often appears chaotic to eyes accustomed to simpler
contexts such as farms or cities. Whether a ponderosa pine forest, an African savannah, an arctic tundra, or a desert of the some part of Somalia, wilderness environments are natural communities of intricate relationships and subtle interdependencies. However great the number of species and forces, wilderness environments are integrated places where multiplicity makes sense and complex order is evident.
There are good reasons to believe that wisdom grew from wilderness environments. The human brain did most of its million-year evolving long before humans had acquired the ability to domesticate natural systems. Our brains acquired their basic characteristics in response to the conditions of wilderness living. The more simplified environments of agricultural life have existed for only a few thousand years, during which time the brain and its functions have not changed the patterns of many millennia of life in the wilderness . What we have inherited from that history - a multileveled brain linked to our bodily functions and to our natural environments - is a good instrument for comprehending the world in its wilderness complexity. We are capable of perceiving a many-dimensional world, of feeling
deeply about it, of relating to one another and to other species in a large variety of ways. We are also capable of analysing our experiences and thoughts, and of bringing unlikely aspects of our awareness into imaginative new combinations. Apparently, we are well designed for wholeness and equipped for wisdom. Why are not more of us wise?
DrWho
London |
