The word philosophy is from the Greek for 'love of wisdom.' Last night, in a little noticed diary, I shared a list of maxims I use to stay on track in life. A long, personal search for understanding led me to conclude commitment to an ongoing learning process produces greater awareness, effectiveness, and freedom; hence, my personal motto Always a student. While writing the diary, I saw a way to organize the list into three broad areas, Understanding, Attitude, and Practice. The series continues with a discussion of understanding as the path to wisdom. Understanding means not only acquiring knowledge but making sense of it so that you see the world clearly. The relevant maxims are:
Stay awake
Seek the truth.
Keep an open mind.
Learn from everything.
Don’t jump to conclusions.
Don’t take it personally.
As I wrote earlier, "each maxim is the tip of an iceberg." By that I mean good maxims are mnemonic devices that point in the direction of ideas developed through a lifetime of experiences. In one diary, I could provide only an overview of what's behind the list I call "Sundiata's rules of wisdom." I would guess that many Daily Kos readers like their information byte-sized and some may lack the patience to read several interrelated diaries, consider how the concepts apply to their own experiences, and make an effort to evaluate how much water the 'rules of wisdom' may hold. After all, how does anyone know that the writer has anything worthwhile to say in the first place? Nevertheless, I will plunge ahead by discussing five of the six rules related to achieving a reliable understanding of human reality. The sixth rule, Don't take it personally, is in a way the culmination of the search for understanding; and, it will be dealt with separately in the next installment.
Stay awake.
Many of us tend to operate on autopilot. While technically awake, we are repeating patterns of behavior learned long ago based upon assumptions we seldom revisit. Of this, we are largely unconscious, lacking enough awareness of our daily activities even to be able to describe them to others. For all practical purposes we’re sleepwalking. Think about the popular film The Matrix. Not me, you say? Don’t be so sure- every culture indoctrinates its members into a view of reality that is in many ways arbitrary. To see what’s arbitrary in ones own culture is tricky. The net subculture of DKos is certainly an example. How so? Sorry, but you’ll have to tell me- I’m not going there in this diary. I will tell you that it usually takes a shock of some kind to jolt us into awareness that there's anything wrong here.
Seek the truth.
This is one of the two core ideas on the path of wisdom (The second is respect yourself and others). Seek the truth implies that you don’t have the truth and must seek it. The hitch is that no one ever has "the truth" in a transcendent sense; we only have theories that are more or less accurate. Wiser and more effective people have better theories than less wise people (or fools, as they’re sometimes called). How do you know that your theory is any good? Because it works better than your old theory. Let’s say your significant other seems to be complaining all the time about your spending too much time on DKos. You keep trying to explain to him (let’s make him a guy) why this is so important and that just seems to make him more frustrated with you. Your theory is that you just can’t please him because he needs to control you. Then, you try listening intently to his complaints without defending yourself. You tell him that you can understand why he’s frustrated with you. Lo and behold, that does the trick and the complaints die down for a while. The new understanding is the real issue was whether you cared about his feelings. By listening, you gave immediate evidence that you care. This also illustrates the importance of the other principles.
Keep an open mind.
Your original theory (can’t please him unless you do everything he says and he’s still not happy) left no room for discovering the truth and becoming more effective in the process.
Learn from everything.
Not only did you learn what the real issue was with your mate, you learned that your assumptions about people are not always right and that it’s important to test them.
Don’t jump to conclusions.
To illustrate this point, I refer you to a lovely blog by Byron Williams. Apparently, no one of HuffPo read or paid any attention to this one, a shame because it’s quite profound. I commented on it (as OwenScottIII); and, if you find this line of discussion wothwhile, you will appreciate Byron’s confession of his near failure to act on his most basic values and the affirmation of those same values that ensued when he woke up and came to his senses before it was too late.