Everything we need to do draws on the same ability.
Every problem we face, every decision we make, every risk we take, every belief we choose to accept or question—it all requires the skill of discernment. Life, business, ethics, success, it comes down to being able to see what's what in a given situation.
…what to do
…when to do it
…and how to do it.
And no skill was more cultivated by the Stoics than this. Epictetus talked of money changers who could tell, just by banging a coin on the table, whether it was counterfeit or not. This, he said, was what a philosopher had to be able to do—to know a good impression from a bad one, a good response from a bad one, a virtue from a vice. This is what Seneca was doing in his evening reviews. It was what Marcus Aurelius was trained in by Rusticus and Fronto and Antoninus.
To be able to see what's in front of you with clarity. To know what's important and what isn't, how things work. That's what wisdom is. It's not an encyclopedic knowledge of facts and figures but something both profound and applied—for it was not Gandhi's sharp legal mind that made him the mahatma.
No one is born with this critical and all too rare ability. It is not something, Seneca reminds us, that can be delegated to someone else. There is no technology that can do it for you. There is no app. No teacher who can simply download everything into your brain. No guru who can lead you to enlightenment or shaman who can give it to you in a dose.
No, I say (it's Ryan here), wisdom takes work (that's the title of the new book, by the way, and you can preorder signed, numbered first-editions here!). Lots of work. Lots of reading. Lots of teachers. Lots of experience. Lots of reflecting. It took lots of work in the ancient world and it takes lots of work today. But where would we be without it? Who would we be without it?
The reason we need discernment is that life is constantly putting us in difficult situations, asking us difficult questions, putting us in ethical dilemmas. Especially in a world of social media and algorithms—where we are bombarded with information, with noise, with temptations, with endless distractions. How can we navigate this? How can we make sense of it?
Without wisdom, we cannot. We will be carried away. We will be misled. We will do the wrong thing.
That's why my latest book Wisdom Takes Work, the fourth and final book in the Stoic Virtues Series, is about the work it takes to follow the timeless path to wisdom, walked by the greatest minds and figures of history, such as Montaigne and Emerson (our guides in Wisdom Takes Work).
The book also contrasts the patient, practical wisdom of Abraham Lincoln with the impulsive immaturity of today's so-called geniuses who, for all their brainpower, fail to understand so much.
Most of all, the book examines the work and methods you can take to acquire wisdom—which is available to anyone willing to earn it.
If you're ready to commit to that work, you can preorder Wisdom Takes Work now.
No comments:
Post a Comment