People IRL often point out how smart I am, and in effect admit they're not as smart. Often I try to correct their perception, pointing out that intellectual intelligence is hardly the sole measure of a person's virtue, for example there's physical intelligence (athletes, martial artists, etc), emotional intelligence, social intelligence (good with people / can read people), sense of humor, determination, passion, patience, compassion, intuition, courageousness, honesty, creativity, etc, all sorts of other positive attributes. But I say this for their benefit, and what I don't mention is that overall I believe wisdom encompasses and transcends all these things, and I think it's crucial to distinguish between intelligence and wisdom.
I believe the roots of wisdom are a great mystery, perhaps more evident when wisdom is highly manifest in a person--I consider myself wise and understand the nature of wisdom--but less evident in terms of the nature of the disconnect or separation between the potential of wisdom and the state of severe lack of wisdom present in so many people. Spiritual understanding through the ages does much to clarify the nature of wisdom per se, but the nature of its lacking seems far more ambiguous, as exemplified in the popular notion that advanced spiritual discourse can be understood by less-wise people only very poorly, and when seeking to impart wisdom to these people then the language and style of writing used must be formulated very specifically, perhaps being one of the finest and most delicate arts there is. To navigate the other person's ego so masterfully that the words you choose are indeed the perfect ones to hit the other person precisely behind the elaborate maze of their ego's defenses.
One of the most puzzling questions I encounter is what made me special so that I could realize this state of awareness I have; like when soldiers come home from war and ask themselves why were they spared. Was it sheer luck? I know I only truly existed once I attained self-realization, everything before then was an incomplete circle, fundamentally different on so many levels. It was not at all a steady, linear progression, there was most certainly a series of--or perhaps for clarity's sake a singular--instance of a singularity, black hole, that which does not conform and cannot possibly be expressed with previous terms or previous concepts. I continue to search for the best way to express this transcendent element of the human experience in terms and concepts understandable to others, and while I believe I've made progress it remains a challenge.
I know the importance of philosophical awareness is championed on this forum, but I wonder to what extent this includes spiritual awareness in terms of actual wisdom (some posters subscribe to Hindu spiritual views I believe)? For example, how can it be said that some people are genetically inferior, if we do not understand the link between the state of wisdom and the state of lack of wisdom? Considering intellectual intelligence and all the other positive attributes I mentioned before, what combination of these qualities are necessarily required, if any, in order for the possibility of ever attaining spiritual wisdom to be honestly realistic? Is a quality of actual wisdom itself also passed on in a person's heredity, except not through their genetic heredity but their spiritual heredity (I know many posters on this forum subscribe to the notion of reincarnation)? Or how, whether or not wisdom is inherited or acquired in life or both, how does this wisdom manifest in modern times--isn't it perfectly plausible to hypothesize those who are the wisest often have the least success coping with modern society and thus develop the gravest psychological ailments and appear for all intents and purposes to be some of the least wise?