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Humanity in general, and America in particular, have become contemptuous of wisdom

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WISDOM IS REAL.

 

It's not knowledge, which is basically going from the unknown to the known.  Wisdom transcends that.  It’s better described as going from the unacknowledged to the acknowledged.

 

Wisdom is concerned with the bedrock of human existence; not greed, politics, or even science.  Indifference to wisdom is the certain death of any civilization.  In fact, the same is surely true of any "advanced species". 

 

Naturally many definitions of wisdom could be put forth, but probably the best one is "transcending delusion".  Now this is oblique, because wisdom is less realizing "what is the case", than realizing "what is NOT the case".

 

The cloud image says it excellently.  Wisdom is removing the "clouds" which stand between us of the sun of truth (which shines with its own light -- it certainly doesn't need us!).

 

And these clouds are what?  Basically, they are the clouds of the collective human mind set.  This is "consensus reality", or to borrow a classic image from the orient, the clouds are "Maya" (the world illusion).

 

Delusion is equating "reality" (let's use that word) with "how we think about it".  It's escalating our "thinking about point of view" (which is the essence of ego/personality) to reality itself. 

 

But such an escalation is tragic!  Thought is basically internalized language.  It's talking to ourselves inside our heads and the long arm of past conditioning.  Indeed, it's what keeps the social conditioning game going, and we should never forget that thought is not a dualistic perspective “on” the universe, but a spontaneous activity “of” the universe. 

 

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A liberal American, PhD mathematician, bipedal Earthling.
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