PERSONAL WISDOM
At every moment in our lives we face some real-life situation, some fact-based reality. But what do those facts MEAN? And what’s the best thing to DO about them? Wisdom answers the first question by looking at the situation from a variety of helpful perspectives. It answers the second by bringing wise values into the decision-making process. There are many of these “wise ways of seeing,” and many “wise values.” In wise people these basic building blocks of wisdom combine in various ways to create an array of “wise attitudes” and “wise ways of being.” And because the mix of characteristics differs from person to person, each wise person’s wisdom has a distinctive character or “flavor.”
A key point is that personal wisdom is internal, embodied by persons. Words of wisdom arise from it. Wise behavior arises from it. Socio-Cultural wisdom arises from it. But wisdom itself is not its products. Rather, it’s a mode of cognition