Wisdom — The three axes needed for the future.
Let’s start with a rhetorical question:
Is there any difference between these three shapes?
How about these?
And these?
I suppose you have now understood that the 1, 2, and 3 are in fact the same objects in each example with the only differing being the angle between each picture, as seen better below.
Now, which of these three shapes would you choose if your objective was to make it roll down a hill with obstacles along the path?
Well, chances are the 1 — “Cylinder” would kind of suck right? The 2 — “Disc” could go on for a while given a good start, but would sooner or later tip as well. This would only be leaving the 3 — “Sphere” to be able to keep going out of the three.
-But what do these shapes rolling down a metaphorical hill have to do with our future? You might ask.
Well, you see, the future is just like a hill riddled with obstacles. The future goes down (like now, and all the time), and there are a bunch of seeming obstacles, like climate change, to mention just one. So, assuming we want to keep on rolling down because existing is quite fun after all, we want to be the Sphere to keep us going around and/or over these obstacles (1), quite simple, right?
In this post, I’ll try applying this hill rolling idea to show the value of three domains — Spirituality (Meaning)(2), Academics (Knowledge) and Business / Politics (Acting), and what happens when they are in balance, what I will call Wisdom.
Now, returning to the shapes.
Uneven distribution over the X, Y, and Z axes might look like this:
A bi-lopsided one like this:
Finally, with a balanced i.e. “Wise” distribution, we get this:
As with all things each domain can not be viewed in complete separation from the others because every person or group contains at least some aspects of each therefore all shapes are 3D.
However, I think one of the bigger problems we are dealing with today is that people, groups, and cultures are mostly striving towards one of the three, seldom but sometimes two and unfortunately very rarely all three. Not only that but most are also only striving in one direction in each of the domains and ignoring the other negative direction (3), thus resulting in terrible rolling capacities of the resulting shapes.
Here are some examples of what happens when this skewness is the case.
“Meaning focus is most often found in people and groups defining themselves as primarily Spiritually oriented.”
A striking example of a person like this would be a real (2.1) monk, sadhu, shaman, or any other contemplative, these often are highly perceptive people, looking both inward and outward at how the world and their minds are constituted and thus understand where and how they fit. But chances are, due to their lack of investing in the other two domains and thus lacking a way of adapting their messages to the receiver, that the little that comes out of them the form of words risks sounding like gibberish to most people. In the most extreme case of this, you get to things like Zen, a school famous for their cryptic statements.
In Zen, you can find phrases such as the one that philosopher Alan Watts was told by a monk when discussing the problem of translating Zen into English (from Chinese or Japanese) — “If you really understand Zen you can use any book, because the sound of the rain needs no translation.”. Examples like this abound in spiritual traditions and while they often indeed do point to something deeply meaningful (4) they are not all that we need to keep civilization going at this time (5).
Example of neglecting the negative: A spiritual person seeing someone less spiritually “evolved” as a lesser being, which is extremely paradoxical but still common in the space, it might also be that they themselves are not conscious of the act, but it is still taking place, this phenomena is often called “Spiritual bypassing”.
“Knowledge focus is most often found in people and groups defining themselves as primarily Academically oriented.”
A couple of different examples come to mind when speaking about knowledge as the main driver where one would be people that developed niche theories that might seem extremely deep in their theoretical consequences to the scientist and their peers but these discoveries never seem to surface and produce actual results (6). Others in this domain seem to totally lack the understanding that we as a species crave meaning, someone who embodied this would be Freud (7).
Another famous concrete example would be Spinoza, who was so deep and elaborate in his thinking that it resulted in constantly postponing acting, so much so that he never published what is now one of the most influential texts in the western philosophical canon (8). In other words, there are as seen also inherent faults when to much focus gets put on this domain.
Example of neglecting the negative: An esteemed academic disregarding anything that lacks empirical or logical grounds and this manifesting in a kind of anti-knowledge attitude. Not understanding that it might just be the case that this idea/claim or what have you might still be true and real but just not observable yet due to us lacking the methods or tools to study it.
“Acting focus is most often found in people and groups defining themselves as primarily Business / Politically oriented.”
Finally, we have the people that put their cards on into the action domain. People and the groups here always have to trade the other two for the constant constraints of time and resources, they have to act before the next quarter, board meeting or election and since these never stop, there is never any seeming room to take the other two in to account to any larger degree.
Here I guess Donald Trump (9) would be a good example of someone embodying this, he has no seeming deep relation to spirituality or the meaning in human lives while simultaneously seeming to lack any form of deeper thinking. But, that being said Trump is great at producing fast massive action, the man is a self-made billionaire, and he managed to get elected president, all action with no seeming second-guessing himself at any point. While Trump might just be an extreme case of this, many of the largest companies and states seemingly operate with “acting” as their main driver, not taking the time to understand the consequences this might have for the future and thus this is not a viable option on its own either.
Example of neglecting the negative: Taking action by changing a policy so that it can be utilized short term but has devastating consequences in the long run, or a concrete example from business is to run the machines or people so hard that they break, leading to less productivity and decreased action overall.
Now you might be thinking — “But based on these examples it seems to work out even if one is skewed? Trump is powerful, Freud and Spinoza got remembered and the contemplatives are at peace? So what is all the fuzz about?”
Yes, while the lopsided examples might have worked before, in the context of furthering civilization and keeping us rolling past the incoming obstacles up ahead, they simply won't.
A quick recap as to why we need all three:
The first one strives for meaning, and we do not want to live in a world without any seeming meaning. While we might and hopefully will Carbon catch, ASI, BCI, and UBI the shit out of the future, we still need to feel that this Technotopia is worthwhile. So as not to boost the already prevalent meaning crisis and the ensuing mental suffering and soulful voids that people are experiencing already, we need this axis.
The second for knowledge, because while meaning is essential, it does not remove CO2 from the air, restore the pH level of the oceans or invent all the mentioned cool abbreviations, so we need this as well.
And finally, the action, while I for one have spent the majority of my adult life in the two first domains I am working on this and very much understand and respect that this is final part is also needed because if we do not have people that know how to take action, we will not make it in time, as simple as that.
In order to keep rolling, we have to value Wisdom, i.e. getting all three in balance.
Fully given, this is not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination, but if we don’t figure it out we won’t make it down the hill.
What I have been talking about here is very much influenced by an idea that Jordan Hall calls “Sovereignty”, mixed with some of Ken Wilbers “Integral” — theory, Daniel Schmachtenbergers “Civilisation emerging” and a touch of my own “Wanting to try Paint 3D”.
If you found this at least somewhat interesting check those out and also visit some of my closest friends over at World of Wisdom. They are working to making this very thing happen in the form of co-created local/global and online meetups!
(1) More on obstacles — The shape of the obstacles also greatly affects how well we are able to roll past or over them. A so-called Great filter out of the Fermi paradox would be an example of a really hard (maybe impossible?) obstacle. While it might just be the case that global civilizations all reach the point we are at right now and self terminate, that is just a boring and uninspiring thought, so even if that is the case, I for one think we should still try.
(2) More on spirituality — Spirituality is a really tricky word to write about since it comes in so many flavors, some of which I love but most I have a problem with. In this post, I’ll be talking about it limited to a phrase that I really resonate with borrowed from Wikipedia — “deepest values and meanings by which people live”.
(2.1) More on real spirituality — Real* in the sense that the problem now that since spirituality has gone mainstream many hoaxsters have found their way into spirituality so you have all kinds of self-acclaimed “very spiritually evolved people” promoting themselves on Instagram just to make a quick buck. Most of the real OG’s of these domains are still to be found in caves, huts, and monasteries and are seldomly if ever interacting with any part of the world you or I will ever hear of or even less likely visit. I am not saying that this is the case universally, but it is, unfortunately, true in more than 90% of cases.
(3) More on the negative sides — After I had published this post I was struck with the realization that I had a real problem with the basic my geometry. Because assuming the axes start from origo (as they do), this would result in the fully integrated and wise “sphere” to be the shape of a quarter of a dome. And I can imagine quarters of domes sucking at rolling as well, so it made for a really bad analogy..
So that got me thinking, should I remove this whole post? I was just about to do it when I came to a somewhat neat ad-hoc solution that might just be valuable and take this post from being quite commonsensical to more insightful, at least for me. See, the negative sides of the graph are important and indeed very real. For anyone familiar with Carl Jung they have surely heard of the notion of the shadow, for anyone who has not, you can think of it in that very real and literal sense of the word, a dark thing that follows you wherever you go. Jung himself was adamant in having the Shadow as an integral part of his groundbreaking (at least in my view) “Individuation theory”. So the negative side of each axis is the understanding of the shadow side accompanied by each of these domains and the understanding that this side can be, if neglected, antithetical to the other side and thus leading to a suboptimal overall outcome.
(4) More on spiritual sayings — They are to work as cues to “seeing true reality” i.e. clear of any mental labels or conceptions. Transcendent experiences like these are often ranted as some of the most meaningful in one's life and can provide a sense of purpose long after they have been had, even if just occurring once.
(5) More on not everything we need — Even Zen masters themselves acknowledge this fact by calling enlightenment “The gateless gate”, pointing to the fact that once you fully get this understanding the message of Zen you simply find yourself where you were the whole time. The phrase “Before enlightenment, bring water, chop wood, after enlightenment, bring water, chop wood” is a striking example of this notion of finding yourself where you were, thus while you will no longer be looking for meaning - since meaning is then to be found in everything, you will still be keeping many of the same struggles of normal life even after enlightenment.
(6) More on no actual results — A phrase related to this I recently came across that represents this was “Ivory archipelago”, building on the previously used “Ivory tower” to talk about the loss of communication and collaboration between academics and the rest of the world. The archipelago captures the now even more fractured nature of science itself where one sub-field is so deep and hard to grasp that one can barely keep track of what is happening in other related sub-fiends which in turn leaves even less room to notice what is happening in other fields and finally making it impossible to say what we know at large and to act from this.
(7) More on Freud — To be honest, I have yet to read any original works of Freud, I have however consumed quite a lot of writing about his ideas and as far as I have understood, he was a bloody genius and I know that some parts of his theories still stand. But that does cloud the fact that he also got so caught up in his thinking and missing to perceive that he thought everything in life was about pleasure which I as well as most now living psychologists would say, it is not. This also led to him ignoring some of the seminal theories his students/colleagues such as Adler and Jung.
(8) More on Spinoza — Spinoza died without ever having completed his magnum opus — “Ethics”, it would have forever been lost had it not been for a relative of his finding it in it’s almost finished form in his apartment. While it could be debated (as most things) if it constitutes one of the most influential texts in western philosophy, I for one hold it to be the case.
(9) More on Trump — I try to be charitable but Trump is a hard case. The only thing I can come to think of that he got going for him is that I know that Peter Thiel (whom I would consider a smart man) has at least some higher thoughts about Trump, so I guess I’ll count that as “might be smart by association” or something, although I for one have a really hard time seeing it.
I’ve heard stories about it not being entirely true that Trump was “self-made” but rather had a very privileged background in that his father helped him, but with or without help, he has made a lot of money and that you can’t do that while sitting on your butt so he stands as a good case for action in my view.
