Unconventional Wisdom

Unconventional wisdom, the title of the article in Time magazine on which this essay is based, is misleading. All true wisdom is unconventional, involves divergent thinking and often receives a reaction from the convergent-thinking majority. In short, wisdom calls for change and that’s the last thing most of us want to hear. So-called inner wisdom has, of course, been around as long as human beings have been self-aware and has been effectively ignored by the mass of humanity from the first utterance of, “Perhaps there is a different way of looking at this problem.” What are the chances that this situation will change any time soon? Not good!

Let’s take a look at a couple of best-selling books that contain some pertinent observations. Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink is an investigation of human nature that argues that our subconscious judgments are often correct. The popular book Freakonomics by Steven Levitt, finds human error everywhere. “We aren’t very good at judging risk, assessing causality and avoiding temptation,” he observes. If we could learn to rely on feedback from our connection to the implicate order we would become much better at “judging risk.” If we could learn that the human intellect, as wonderful as it is at solving conventional problems in the world of physical and ideational form, is limited in addressing the profound questions concerning how to create a sustainable human community on our planet.

Gladwell’s observation is referring to what I would call intuition which is indeed a more profound way of knowing. (See the distinction between intuition and intellect in my book Simple Reality: The Key to Serenity and Survival.) In a postmodern culture based on science, the intellect and reductionism, there is no way we are going to trust our intuition. Levitt’s conclusion bears repeating. He said that we aren’t very good at judging risk, assessing causality, or avoiding temptation.

So why do I think the wisdom regarding human nature that these two authors have addressed will fail to be used to alter self-destructive human behavior? In a word: worldview. As human beings we do not have a profound context in which to place wisdom, any wisdom. Wisdom, our inner knowing, does not “fit” into the old paradigm so it is simply, albeit unconsciously, ignored. We can’t “use it.” It appears to us as a baseball bat would appear in a polo game. We “see it” as useless—not relevant. But the fundamental problem is that we fear altering our worldview because it requires a fearless examination of our human behavior—behavior that we mistakenly believe gives us security, pleasure and control over our destiny. Nothing could be further from the truth but we are not yet ready for wisdom. We prefer to rely on conventional ignorance.

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