The crisis of wisdom..welcome knowledge!

✨ These past days, a thought keeps chasing me, one that, on the surface, seems so intricate that I try to avoid it. Now, I’ve decided to write it down in order to unravel it and let it go, allowing it to settle neatly among the thousands of rooms in my mind.

✨ I should start by saying that a key contributor to this persistent thought is the Master’s program I’ve been attending for about a year, titled “Poetry and Wisdom – Studies in Partnership on the Sacredness of the Natural World in Indigenous Traditions.” Wow! Even the title itself offers a glimpse into a fascinating world that sparks curiosity and makes the imagination travel far…

✨ But without digressing, I want to stick to the theme of this post. And to those of you who love reading (even if this time it’s on a blue screen instead of paper), I suggest you get comfortable on the couch because this will take a bit of your time.

✨ Let’s start with the etymology of the words.

“Sapienza” (wisdom) comes from the Latin “sapientia,” which has a double meaning: “wisdom” but also “to have flavor” or “taste,” thus highlighting that wisdom is also obtained by “tasting” that is, by experiencing reality and truth.

✨ Socrates used to say that true wisdom is not the accumulation of knowledge, but the awareness of one’s own ignorance. The wise person is in constant search of truth, and therefore of self-knowledge.

Socrates also associated the concept of wisdom with that of creative intelligence, affirming that we are capable of “birthing” wisdom at the same moment we create harmonious relationships in each dimension of reality. And these relationships are none other than dialogic activities, in which there is no individual affirmation of the thinking self (the “I”), but rather the opening of a dimensional space toward other realities, so that these may have the opportunity to express themselves in a spirit of “partnership,” to use a modern term. (from a lesson by prof. Lavecchia "History of ancient philosophy" - Udine University)

✨ Taking a step back through the centuries (~1200 BCE) and revisiting Rigveda 10:129 Nāsadīya Sūkta – the Hymn of Creation, one of the oldest and most important texts of Indian literature and religious thought in human history, we find wisdom described as the generator of cosmic intelligence the very concept that Socrates himself was inspired by.

This leads us to think that wisdom was something already pre-existing!

✨ In the Rigveda, wisdom manifests through a generative thought, whose embryonic origin is the desire to transform non-being into being.

This desire (from the Sanskrit word Kāma, meaning “desire in the heart” not a sexual desire) represents the first impulse, the first seed of the mind, which initially occurs through a rotational dynamic around itself and then expands outward, where all forms exist in their potential…

I’ve definitely gotten myself into a tangled thicket here!

✨ So, why did I mention the Rigveda?

I did so to explain that within each of us resides this primordial wisdom, and that accessing it, especially in the fast-paced world of today, seems almost impossible.

And here is where the “crisis of wisdom” becomes clear: we lack the ability to truly taste or savor life’s experiences, either because we don’t have the time, or because our perception is overly filtered through technology.

As a result, this lack of sensory connection prevents us from pausing to explore true wisdom, what the Greeks called “Sofía”, the pursuit of deep insight (including the primordial kind), which opens up the world within us and leads us to self-knowledge…

✨ And what about knowledge, then?

Instead of starting from its etymology, which I find less relevant in this case for explaining the concepts below, let’s look at how the idea of knowledge has been addressed throughout history.

✨ In the Rigveda, the concept of knowledge, ṛta, refers to the understanding of the universal order and the harmony among the elements of the cosmos, often described as a light that frees one from ignorance.

✨ Aristotle stated that knowledge is nothing more than a process that moves from experience to universal understanding, a journey that takes place through reason.

✨ Today, Wikipedia tells me that knowledge is “the sum of information, skills, and awareness that a person possesses regarding themselves, the world, and the relationships between things.”

As such, its definition becomes objectified into a procedure with specific steps to follow that necessarily include experience.

✨ And that’s exactly where I wanted to go…

Rigveda, Aristotle, Wikipedia, and surely many other thinkers (including ChatGPT) all speak of experience.

✨ The phrase “Welcome, Knowledge” in the title is meant to be provocative, because nowadays there’s a strong tendency to collect information very quickly (I include myself in this, of course!) and to proclaim loudly that we are the HOLDERS OF KNOWLEDGE just because we’ve read something here and there without first truly experiencing it..or, to use one of my favorite English term, without going through a process of embodiment on both a physical and intellectual level reworking the information we’ve received, making it our own, and enriching it with the ADDED VALUE of our uniqueness as wise beings journeying toward our true selves.

💜 Wishing everyone a lovely and deep journey within!