wisdom

Planted Jan 2021 Tended 2 years ago Linked from 7 notes

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Colloquially, wisdom is an acquired awareness of what matters most in situations, a defense against illusion.

MIT neuroscientist Matt Wilson (via Maria Popova):

Wisdom is the rules, based on experience, that allows us to make good decisions in novel situations in the future.

Perhaps the most important of those decisions is whether to act at all:

Wisdom lies in correctly discerning where we are free to mold reality to our desires and where we must accept the unaltered with tranquility. (Seneca)

Wisdom is awareness of one’s ignorance

In 426 BCE, the oracle at Delphi proclaimed Socrates the wisest person alive for knowing that he knows nothing. In the words of Diogenes Laërtius, “he knew nothing except just the fact of his ignorance.”

Collected Wisdom