This session was mostly a reflective one for me. Reflective on this course and on what we define as wisdom. For the course, I believe that it has opened up many closed doors and boundaries within my mind, beyond academia, that most university courses wouldn't. Hopefully, the wisdom gained from courses in the future would be as applicable and as conventional.
In general, this course has corrected my beliefs and vision of what technology is. I've always had this view that technology was essentially just a force - like the wind or the tides, coming and going as it pleases. This detached view was developed mostly from the fact that in life so far, I was never able to influence or change the technology around me. And as a result, I solidified the belief that whatever happens with technology, I would not or cannot be part of the change - I would simply just be a user of technology, never an innovator. I do embrace technology in any and all forms and I believe that it will be the pathway for the future in almost every aspect but prior to the discussions and engagements in the sessions, I've always kept a closed view of technology much like the proverbial 'Frog in the Well'. But now, after experiencing 11 sessions of T.W.C., it has become clear that I need to find the wisdom and the meaning behind technology and see the relationships that it brings to our world. Although I've never really envisioned myself as being a 'technopreneur' or an inventor, having that mindset never hurt anyone. In fact, I believe that having that desire to gain insight on the way things work and how inventions have changed life is very important because when you know why and how things happen, you can preempt the future and adapt to changes, not just technological, better. Thus, as part of a personal reflection, I believed this course has helped me achieve just that - to spark the hunger to want to know how and why things are so instead of just being a drifter in this technological world.
Wisdom is a funny word. Everyone has varying definitions of what wisdom encompasses but the general idea is that you know what's going on or you have that special insight beyond just knowledge. For me, wisdom is in going beyond just knowledge and being able to absorb that knowledge. Martin H Fischer's quote that "Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification." is very true but I believe that simplifying knowledge is not enough to be deemed as wisdom. Simplifying knowledge would mean that the individual is able to absorb and regurgitate knowledge into a more conventional and understandable form for most people - which in essence, means that that individual knows exactly what he's talking about. But that wasn't enough for me. I needed an added dimension to that relationship - experience. Wisdom, I believe, lies in the simplification and, the addition and application of this simplified knowledge into experience. By being able to apply simplified knowledge to past experience and understanding how and why certain events happened, then you would gain the insight that is not conventional - you would become wise. This edge of unconventionality is what defines a wise person in my mind. And someone who is able recognize how knowledge can be simplified and applied is all the more wiser than someone who simply knows what knowledge is.
That's just my two cents on what wisdom is. And I don't believe that wisdom comes with age but rather I comes with the maturity of being able to self-analyse and apply that simplified knowledge into the experiences you've had. Maturity is therefore also a pre-requisite for wisdom, not age. This conventional quote - "The only true wisdom is in you knowing you know nothing." is an example of why wisdom requires maturity. Because without maturity, no one would be able to say that they know nothing (aside from the truly ignorant or stupid people). In many senses, it becomes a requisite - that one needs to be mature in order for them to be wise and thus, this is how the layperson view that old people are wise came to be. And one of the quotes or rather, the first poem examined in this class, by Alfred North Whitehead was:
"Wisdom alone is ambition's true aim,
Wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame;
Obtained with labour, for mankind employed,
And then, when you most share it, best enjoyed."
As a student of the arts, I found this to be rather intriguing as it seemed to me as a very practical application of what wisdom is and how it is applied in life. The first line speaks of the fact that if you want to be ambitious, then you only want to be wise - to be the know-it-all of what you do, to be a great provider of knowledge and insight which I believe is rather accurate if you are ambitious. The second line talks about wisdom as being the "source of virtue and of fame" - extrapolating from the first line and going to show that a wise man will indeed be a successful man. The third line goes into the practical application of wisdom on everyday life: obtained with labour (endless toiling and hard work) for "mankind employed" which would most probably equate to the masses or people around the world. This third line also goes into the fact that wisdom is gained through hard work and it is created for educating or helping the masses (mankind employed) as it was written during the period of the industrial age, there are many connotations of employment and labour that existed during that time as everyone had to work and they had to be working hard. The fourth line, which is my favourite, says boldly that once wisdom is obtained, it is "best enjoyed" when shared with others. This means, essentially, that a person who is able to spread his wisdom and his wise ways will live a more fulfilling existence. This is true when I think of the instances in which I give advice or conventional 'wisdom' to others and knowing that it helps them in some way, I feel better and more fulfilled.
Personal rating for this session: 9.7179/10
Off to further musings,
James G14
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