Philosophy vs. Wisdom.

[crow]

Wisdom = observing what things actually are, and living in a way that is based upon those observations.
Philosophy = observing things in terms of how the philosopher imagines they should be, and writing vast volumes about it.

Student of wisdom = one who seeks to understand the currently incomprehensible.
Student of philosophy = one who seeks to impress others with how much he 'knows'.

Sage = one who has observed enough of life without superimposing his own judgments upon it, to know WTF is going on.
Philosopher = one who has succeeded in finding fault with almost everything except himself.

It is easy to see how short a step it is from philosophy to ideology. The religion of how things should be, and the enforcement of that view upon everybody else.
Thus it is also easy to see how wisdom can become vastly unpopular, in the latent threat it seems to pose to ideology.

Wisdom = the quiet assimilation, into one's own life, of timeless natural principles.
Philosophy = the strident harangue for everybody to act in the arbitrary fashion of the moment.

[BillHopkins]

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wisdom/ 

[crow]

I'm wondering why, exactly why, you posted that link, with no text, accompanied by a wink.
I'm wondering, too, if you even know.

[trystero]

I don't think wisdom emerges from the intellect at all, nor is it purely rational. Wisdom is, to an extent, felt. A lot of our cognition is intuitive, unconscious and emotional (dulling emotional affect makes people crippled when it comes to simple decisions). There is a purely biological, non-rational element to it, though overall this is balanced with reason. Inbuilt (also traditional, hence "traditional wisdom") responses to problems are acausal solutions which may break down in the face of rational inquiry but gets you to the right place more often than not (especially when combined with rational inquiry). This is why, to me, a lot of philosophy becomes very airy-fairy and disconnected from real experience. It elevates rational thought to a pedestal it does not deserve to be on, though not all are guilty of this and there are philosophers with powerful insights on human nature.

The comparison between philosophy and wisdom is not completely warranted, as one does not preclude the other. You can be a wise philosopher. However, wisdom and rhetoric are I think in some opposition; wisdom being (partially) inbuilt truth and rhetoric being controlling others by appeals to the inbuilt. I don't believe there is any such thing as rhetoric which does not rely on pathos. The contrasts a powerful speaker uses in debate or discourse touch something primal in us I think. The enjoyment gained out of music is probably related, I can't imagine music being anything worth bothering with if approached by an intelligent robot; we feel the connections in it due to the release of reward hormones. It's kind of ironic that the first post is mostly rhetoric.

[crow]

Philosophy implies there is meaning to life, and attempts to define that meaning.
Or that there is none, and attempts to define why that is so.
It operates through intellect.

Wisdom clearly sees that there is life, and discovers how best to live it.

Intellect seeks meaning in things.
Wisdom seeks none. It accepts what is, and makes the most of it.

Life is for living, not analyzing.

[username]

Some philosophers seem like charlatans. Sometimes it's difficult to judge at a glance. But I found that the poetic stuff of Nietzsche(Zarathustra and Dionysos Dithyramben) and the essays of Schopenhauer were extremely important texts.

The old fashioned religious wisdom litterature such as the upanishads, the Dhammapada, Lao Tze etc, is something one must absorb in an active way and think about to integrate it in ones being.

Though, reading a text always requires you to be active as a reader to get something out of it.... But that can also be saids about looking at a tree.

[crow]

I would say that observing or reading actively is exactly the opposite to being able to see what it is, or what it contains. Active suggests mental processing, and no wisdom ever came of that. Only knowledge. Whatever that is.

This is the difference - a profound one - between consideration and contemplation.
The first processes information. The second allows what is there to become apparent, without processing it.

This difference is the thing most impossible to convey to anyone who knows nothing else but processing.
There is a whole alternate but complementary cosmos of input to be contemplated, rather than processed.
The final frontier, you could say.

[trystero]

Perhaps there is too much of a semantic complaint, "actively" reading a religious text would imply for me reading it with an open heart and you are right, this means turning off some things in your head. Nitpicks are forgotten and the message is absorbed. You let it convince you totally, and not just as a logical process. But some things are meant to be processed, and its foolish to attempt to colour those with anything else; a treatise on mechanics perhaps. Processing is a much more valuable ability in our times from the point of view of both individuals and groups, so expect to see more of it! Parts of the coalescing neoreactionary space can perhaps be considered a response to extreme processors (internet autistic social justice types).

I've found "heart" a very convenient word to use for stuff that isn't cause-effect logic (but naturally is in the brain). There is something to traditional wisdom that considered a person's consciousness to emerge from the heart. For a nitpicker it is just biological inaccuracy,

[username]

Well, in the world of changes there will always be the object-subject duality, so observing/experiencing a thing is always defining the thing in relation to something else.

The thing in the world of changes is never defined by putting it in relation to the thing itself, and it exists only as a relation to other things.

The idea of the Atma/Brahma experience is on the other hand that absolute subject experience of the absolute subject itself. I wonder if that is something like what you are talking about and perhaps we are speaking past each other.

[crow]

Certainly we are 'speaking past each other'. This is a phenomenon that dogs me.
There is no effective way to explain what I always attempt to explain, and that I do attempt to explain for the very reason that it is such a priceless thing. It is, apparently, inexplicable. But it operates as I have said. No processing. If you're able to perform this feat, that actually is the total absence of any feat, then everything changes.

Why do I do this thing, anyway, if it is so impossible, and so thankless?
Imagine if a man discovered that it was, indeed, possible for a human to fly, unassisted. He would, in all likelihood, be ardently interested in sharing that with other people, no? Maybe he wouldn't, but I would.
And then imagine everyone getting really angry at him, and abusing him, because everybody 'knows' people can't fly.
He gets called an idiot, and a moron. Yet he is able to fly, when nobody else can.

That's about the size of it. I have knowledge of something that is far too big to not share.
But it is impossible to successfully share it.
What would you do?

[Phoenix]

In the world of philosophy it's a well-known fact that philosophers vigorously disagree about what philosophy is and what it should be. I would argue that a true philosophy should eventually transcend itself for the philosopher, over a fair period of time and largely in a deconstructive manner, and lead to wisdom.

[crow]

Deconstruction deconstructs. Demolishes. Wrecks. How can it do anything else?
I don't wreck stuff. I build stuff. Every day.

[Phoenix]

You can't just tell a person to simply be.
That would seem absurd. They already "are".
ISness is the result, not the cause.
Behind every person who is present is a person
and people have many theories and ideas,
practically all of them wrong.
When the child asks "why", should the parent say "because"?

[crow]

Wrong again. It may seem absurd, but it is not what it seems. It is what it is.
How many people do you know who just are?
They are a seething mess of contradictions and angst.
Lose all that, and maybe then you can just be.
Just being, is living without the madness that people assume is living.
It is as different as chalk is from cheese.

[Phoenix]

The fruit does not have to wilt before it can fall? How does this miraculous change you speak of happen at the drop of a dime?