Are we wise

[Yogi]

What makes all the difference between the cave man and today’s "civilized" man. What are we doing with this power to see or make fine distinctions or with the ability to judge what is true and right with insight. Do we really use the ability to decide responsibly? What is the present state of our wisdom & discretion

[kathycf]

Yes, we are much more complicated and sophisticated than our long ago ancestors. We can kill each other much more efficiently than ever before. Sadly, humans are a warlike species. We are not all bad of course. One can appreciate literature and other creative arts; these talents are among our admirable qualities. There are also many people that try to work to make the world a better place.


And of course there are advantages to technology. Horrible diseases are largely a thing of the past, and we can communicate with people from all over the world. I see that you, Yogi are from India and I am from the US. Even as few as 20 years ago, we would have never exchanged thoughts like we are able to do now.

I am willing to bet 1 lit-net dollar that this thread is moved to philosophical literature. ;)


*edit* I see I was correct...the great leap from general chat to philosophical discussion has been made. :)

[muhsin]

This doesn't need much explanation I think my dear.
Why? You yourself know that, the distinction is abvious.
Think.

[holograph]

I hold a firm belief that the only reason man is NOT evolving (at least not significantly or on a grand scale) is due to his cave-man/animalstic karma. We are like apes with wings: we have the ability to ascend, but are held back by our primal instincts. That is why yoga practices discipline and etc. to grow past those instincts and ascend to a higher plane of understanding. At the same time, evolution is spontaneous, and one way or the other must occur. Years ago, the average height was FAR smaller than it is today and so on, so we can tell that something is in fact going on. But we, humans, are overwhelmingly cave-man-like and cannot help it. Until we learn to stop needing food, water, sex, material objects, and express destructive emotions like anger, greed, lust, hatred, and envy, we will NEVER be able to change our animalism.

[Yogi]

Are we to abandon our natural instinct or about being indiscriminate. For example In the East, we can say, that due to fundamentalist influence women have been under great pressure and their morality is based on fear rather than freedom. In the West they have fought for their freedom, but what they have attained is the freedom to abandon all social and moral values.

What will happen if women from the East and West can rise in their own esteem and express themselves in such a way that they create high moral standards for their society, will they not rise to their full stature of feminine speciality.

[mono]

I would use the word 'wise' a lot more carefully, especially in this instance. I have some trouble thinking we could consider ourselves more 'wise' than many of our ancestors. Perhaps we may appear more wise through a more variety of experiences, but through acting, learning from mistakes, having good judgment, etc., I have trouble distinguishing us from our ancestors. Breaking down and analyzing every action feasible of humans, I would see the greed and envy of earning a CEO position of a large corporation no different from the desire of killing the largest animal able to find, only to later consume and boast with other cave-citizens.
In terms of knowledge, I would not hesitate to claim that we have made a lot of progress; humans have created every revolution in history, particularly the mere century-old industrial revolution, and the present technological revolution. Most importantly, we have developed multiple languages, and the mastery of even learning non-native languages. In knowledge, we have made much progress, but I would use the term 'wise' with some prudence, especially finding, in my opinion, that we cannot quite direct wisdom as we can knowledge.

[AimusSage]

I agree with Mono (well said :)) If we would have developed our wisdom as much as our understanding of knowledge, we'd be masters of the universe by now.

But we're not, we haven't mastered much of anything in terms of wisdom. It's not an easy thing to pass on. With knowledge it is easy to reach some consensus on what to teach, it can further our goals directly, but wisdom is far more disputed, it is not always apparant, it requires understanding. A caveman that figures out how to make fire only needs to repeat the exact same process. He might set his lovely cave on fire, but he knows how to make it. The next step for him would be to use it wisely, and that's where the debate starts. His cavewoman might want to use the fire to warm the cave, while he might want to use it to play a stoneage version of a pyromaniac and set the entire cage on fire including the woman inside.

So how does the caveman use his fire wisely? It's something he'll have to learn. And so will every single caveman that uses fire. They don't all have to invent the fire, others can show them, but they all have to learn how to use it wisely, because no matter what the other caveman tells them, they'll have their own judgement on how to use it. It is far easier for the human mind to forget wisdom than it is to master.

I'm not sure if that made sense, it sure didn't to me when I was done, I kind of lost track of the point I was trying to make, it's a bad habit, but as I was trying to say. It's easier to be knowledgable then it is to be wise.

[subterranean]

Wiki says:

The word civilization (or civilisation) has a variety of meanings related to human society. The word "civilization" comes from the Latin word for townsman or citizen, civis, and its adjectival form, civilis. To be "civilized" essentially meant being a townsman, governed by the constitution and legal statutes of that community. Roman civil law was gathered together into a consolidated body of the “Corpus Juris Civilis” in the 6th Century for Emperor Justinian (483-565 CE). Justinian's code was rediscovered and used by law professors at the first University established in Western Europe, at Bologna in the 11th century. From 1388 the word “civil” appeared in English, while “civilization” as a “law which makes a criminal process civil”, appeared in 1704, closely followed in 1722 with “civilization” - meaning the opposite of “barbarity” and coming probably from the French language.

So, perhaps we should all blame the French :D

[holograph]

haha. well said.

[Fat29]

Wise people are those who can lead useful and organise lives. The ability to distinguish right from wrong comes from wisdom, experience and knowledge. While experience and knowledge can be acquired, wisdom needs to be cultivated.

In my mind, wisdom can only be cultivated when one is reflective, calm and is able to have the cognitive ability to explore and understand the unknown or the unexplained. Hence, people of all ages from primitive times to modern society need wisdom to live organise and useful lives.

Just my response.


What makes all the difference between the cave man and today’s "civilized" man. What are we doing with this power to see or make fine distinctions or with the ability to judge what is true and right with insight. Do we really use the ability to decide responsibly? What is the present state of our wisdom & discretion

[blazeofglory]

What makes all the difference between the cave man and today’s "civilized" man. What are we doing with this power to see or make fine distinctions or with the ability to judge what is true and right with insight. Do we really use the ability to decide responsibly? What is the present state of our wisdom & discretion

What makes the cave man and the civilized one is the power of thinking.

[CognitiveArtist]

I find it interesting that civilization was brought up. Is civilization wise? Likewise, is thinking wise? Could it be that we have too much of each? Now to top off my rhetoric, can we have too much wisdom?

I'll define wisdom as knowledge which promotes efficiency, prudent usage and good organisation. From this definition it seems logical that wisdom should be well rationed. Just like moderation should be if I were to say "everything in moderation".

Civilization on the whole I consider wise, but I think by praising civilization people could become too civilized. Fortunately the 20th century did a fine job of preventing this. Now the risk is that it did too fine a job :).
As for thought, I think it's possible to be too thoughtful. But I don't think that will become a societal problem.

The contemporary man I find the better simply because that's so much everything today which can aid us. There is liberal thought now dominating societies (instead of existing in none) so people can freely go about their lives. Whilst on the other hand we have good institutions to provide fair security. Also we have good social mobility so people can do, eventually, almost anything they can think of. And we have expansive distribution of goods and services.
From the above, I take the contemporary man to be superior just because he/she has access to finding meaning and knowledge about meaningfulness. There is although the ironic threat that such vast possibilities have minimised actualities making meaning harder to obtain. Making fire or eating meat most people today wouldn't think of as being meaningful or a peak experience, yet it seems accurate that for cavemen these activities would of been meaningful.

[aabbcc]

Remember high school biology, Haeckel and ontogenesis being the sort of microworld of the philogenesis. What happened, essentially, you can track by focusing on the development of a single human individual, which is bound to go through phases of the development of the specie:

First you simply exist. You aren't even "alive" by any standards, you simply are, in the moment you begin to exist as the track of that which shall nine months later become a child.
-> Anorganic* reality, as the primary one.
You know, stars, planets, whatever. Something which exists, not necessarily being "alive" by the standards of biology. Something which functions on the level of an atom, something you can divide by atoms.

Then you start to live. Debatable when precisely, sometime during your mother's pregnancy, you start to show signs of that which is by the standards of biology (whose primary intent - let's not forget, bios + logos - is to study life) alive.
-> Organic* reality, as the secondary one.
Something which exists not only on the level of atom, but also on the level of cell, and whose form of being goes through all the processes of the living thing.
Plants, whatnot. Amebas. Stuff like that.

Then you start to react. You're born, your interaction with the world; it can't be said yet that you think, it's more about emotions and impulses.
-> Psycho-organic* reality, as the tertiary one.
Something which exists as the biologically living creature, determined by its biological nature in the world, but also lives as opposed to the world, reacting on the Other and getting some sense of the self, but not conscious sense of that sense of the self yet. The level of instinct, emotion, reaction.
Animal level, in altri termini.
The level of young child.
And, again, the level on which predominately our ancestors you speak of functioned.

But we evolved, and the young child evolves. From psycho-organic reality, through language, acquisition thereof and education, it moves on the
-> Sopra-organic* reality - the cultural reality - the quartiary one.
Something which exists on all the former three levels, in addition of the sphere of the symbol with which it can operate and have a conscious sense of the self, the Other and, for the first time, can transform the world not only materially.
Humans.
Art, complex language, anything which requires a symbol, symbolic reality - that is what we evolved to.

(* I'm using Kale's distinction, and he uses term "organic" and its variations very freely, I know, so please all of you chemists and alike don't attack me now for being imprecise. :D)

A huge techical advance and everything else is directly a product of the "shift" to operating with the symbolic reality, that is technically what makes us different than our ancestors, who still predominately functioned as animals on psycho-organic reality, when the sphere of symbols was just under development (via language, art, etc).

Being "civilised" in sense of "living in town" has, in my opinion, little to do with it; after all, we are zoa politika, right? We've always lived in some form of society; it isn't shift to society which made a change; but being "cultured" is what made a change.
Look at the small kid. Technically the overall process of upbringing a kid is based on teaching the kid off the "natural behaviour" to 'cultivate' them into, technically, something innatural. That's the catch, as that "innatural" is the product of the shift onto the abstract thinking (allowed by mastering the sphere of symbols, which are prerequisite for being able to form a concept and think in abstract manner - and we got that mainly through the language; for the language evolved from concepts and rendered them possible to express; the language focused on the universal, not the specific).
That's what makes us different from the cavemen. And that's why, if we're wise, we can only be wise differently.

However, I still think it's more about being knowledgeable than wise. If knowledgeable is "know what" (e.g. I know what to say in certain situation), and wise "know if" (e.g. I 'know' to make a decision whether to say that in certain situation under certain circumstances or not); I still think that on the level of emotion/reaction wisdom can exist too (sort of instinctively, but still). So I think it isn't about being wise, but simply about knowing more things on the abstract level we gained through the development as a specie.

// Disregard. :D I've probably written a bunch of crap above, I was just visited by Muse. Or I just drank too much?
Absinthe is a liquid state of death.
A death consumed in little drops, sort of.
Are the purple rabbits dancing a sign that you're in heaven? :D

[blazeofglory]

What makes all the difference between the cave man and today’s "civilized" man. What are we doing with this power to see or make fine distinctions or with the ability to judge what is true and right with insight. Do we really use the ability to decide responsibly? What is the present state of our wisdom & discretion
e
Today it is our ability to rationalize things or weave ideas and indulge in imagination that we are different than our ancestors.

We are distinct, for evolution in ideas, and revolution in inventions and discoveries had put us much ahead of our ancestors.

[dramasnot6]

If we were truly any "wiser", why would the expression "I'm only human" be used to describe our times of weakness(often seen as lack of wisdom)?
We are certainly more developed as a species, we have achieved some pretty remarkable things. But,going by my personal interpretation of "wisdom", we are no wiser. We still start wars, knowing how they are going to end. We are destroying the world just as much as we are building on top of it.
Our actions in the next few decades, defined by major crises like global warming, will have a lot to show for "how wise we are".

We have,almost unquestionably, evolved dramatically in terms of intellect and ability. However,in the case of wisdom, it all goes down to the old question of "it's not what you have,but what you do with it".

[blazeofglory]

What makes all the difference between the cave man and today’s "civilized" man. What are we doing with this power to see or make fine distinctions or with the ability to judge what is true and right with insight. Do we really use the ability to decide responsibly? What is the present state of our wisdom & discretion

Indeed the cave man was closer to nature and his stress level is much lower than what we have in point of fact.

[wilbur lim]

The unequivocal disparity is that modern people are more berserk,sentimental,greedy,and competitive than past people.These features are what happens now,and there is no remedy at ALL,if only humanity can terminate the excess and redundant of pollution,and others.What we done,we harmed ourselves.

[Scheherazade]

We are wise as long as we don't start to think we are wise, I believe!

;)

[blp]

We are wise as long as we don't start to think we are wise, I believe!

;)

So because you don't think you're wise, you're wise, which means you think you're wise, which means you know you're not wise, which means your wise?


The unequivocal disparity is that modern people are more berserk,sentimental,greedy,and competitive than past people.These features are what happens now,and there is no remedy at ALL,if only humanity can terminate the excess and redundant of pollution,and others.What we done,we harmed ourselves.

This is simply unrealistic and unsubstantiable nostalgia. Throughout history, people have believed that their own time represents a decline in values and a fall from grace, but the the myth of a fall from grace is thousands of years old.

'History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.' - Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses

[blazeofglory]

This is simply unrealistic and unsubstantiable nostalgia. Throughout history, people have believed that their own time represents a decline in values and a fall from grace, but the the myth of a fall from grace is thousands of years old.

'History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.' - Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses

I finds great elements of truth in your statement in point of fact. You are right that we are obsessed with everything past and we see our past comparatively better but in fact the reverse can be true at times.

[blp]

I finds great elements of truth in your statement in point of fact. You are right that we are obsessed with everything past and we see our past comparatively better but in fact the reverse can be true at times.

Thank you blazeofglory.

This process may be ascribed in part, at least, to what is sometimes called 'the filter of history'. Partly, we remember what is best in the past because it deserves to be remembered. But also, at a deeper psychological level, it seems we have a tendency to assume a simpler, more orderly past.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Interesting question and some excellent points already made (and then I come along and spoil it, sorry).

I think little has changed at all from those good olde days of cave dwelling, maybe standards have dropped a little. I think “wisdom” and the “wise” are rare things and people indeed. Ultimately, we are all utterly selfish and always have been. The main thing is self-preservation and passing our genes to the next victim in line, for that is life summed up in its harshest light.

I think that in order to understand who we are now we need to look at the “caveman” closely and think about those early social groups. On top of this we need to look closely at the social groups of primates and other related species, for this is how we can really understand the people of today and who we are as individuals.

The typical “office” environment is exactly the same as a social group from one of these early evolutionary groupings. People fight for power and status within that environment, they look up to those “above” them, and look down to those “below” them, etc, etc, it is all very ugly and primitive.

True wisdom rises above all of this nonsense, even above self-interest and personal greed, but those that can achieve this are few indeed (and I am not one of them). Maybe the Buddhists are the closest to achieving this? I don’t know, I am just rambling on, sorry again, interesting question though.

aabbcc – send me some of that absinthe, I have been longing for that recently ever since I tried it years ago:flare:.

[Scheherazade]

So because you don't think you're wise, you're wise, which means you think you're wise, which means you know you're not wise, which means your wise? Exactly! Perfectly explained.

Your wise, my wise, his/her wise... whose wise it is matters little really! ;)

[kilted exile]

we no, me yes

[blazeofglory]

In fact all we can say about this is that man has inherited the selfish gene. The DNA of man is totally selfish, and if man does show any good demeanor is by accident only. But in reality man is a selfish thing.

Man has survived not just because he has been altruistic or benevolent just because he was capable of fighting off the rest of other forces in nature. Indeed man has been the fittest and strongest in fight against other forces in nature to come to a state today he is in. He survived against the rest of other species pushing them behind.

[blp]

Richard Dawkins, the originator of the selfish gene idea, does not believe it means people are also naturally selfish or that the entire way of the world is selfishness. In fact, he's appalled by attempts to use his thinking to prove this, for instance, as a way of justifying free market capitalism and denigrating the welfare state.

Conversely, he argues that, in attempting to preserve themselves, our selfish genes select for kindness, empathy and the ability and willingness to co-operate precisely because these are more conducive to human wellbeing, health and survival.

So there.


Exactly! Perfectly explained.

Your wise, my wise, his/her wise... whose wise it is matters little really! ;)

Nuh unh. Because my wise is better than your wise. And if your wise was any good, you'd know it.

[blazeofglory]

Selfishness is a protective gene and as a matter of fact it was necessary to be selfish when it comes to a matter of survival, and without selfishness one could not survive.

Man's idea of saving or accumulating is primitive in nature. It was so hard to find foods primitively, and as such man became concerned for saving and accumulating. And that is why this behavior of man to save and accumulate is out of necessity. Therefore the selfish gene man has is owing to the fact that it was a socioeconomic necessity.

In the east there is a tendency of saving more and this is out of necessity also, for people are insecure economically. In Nepal for instance parents keep on accumulating for their children's future is totally insecure. They have no surety of getting jobs Therefore parents keep on amassing more and more properties in order to fortify their children's future.

Therefore selfishness, covetousness were of necessity keeps on prevailing in different in different socioeconomic situaitons.

And it depends upon the family structure too considerably as a matter of fact. In Nepal parents beget too many babies. For example my mother birthed 11 children and out of that only 7 survived. My father therefore was compelled to amass more wealth for his children. There was no economic certainty and the government did not guarantee employment. Therefore all he could do is work hard, cut on expenses or reduce the size of family budgets. I am from an agrarian background and as such we had to work hard.

This case is a little different in the west. First parents plan their family size and structure, secondly governments assure jobs. Therefor they do not have to worry too much.

I got swayed by something other than the topic of discussion. But ideas came automatically.

[Scheherazade]

Nuh unh. Because my wise is better than your wise. And if your wise was any good, you'd know it.That goes against the first rule of wisdom: "You will not think that you are wise."

If I knew it, I wouldn't be wise... Or if you think your wise is better than mine, than it is no longer so.

[NikolaiI]

Blazeofglory you are always saying that if we are kind it is accidental. But science shows that when you receive, give or witness and act of kindness, there is a serotonin increase in the brain, and simultaneously there is an increase in your immune system. The same is true with laughing, hugs, and smiles. So we are if not evolving towards this, then we are experiencing it now. Evolution can always go in whatever random way, but it is quite possible that we could continue to evolve in to more and more empathetic creatures. Which would be a good thing if it meant spiritual increase.

[blp]

That goes against the first rule of wisdom: "You will not think that you are wise."

If I knew it, I wouldn't be wise... Or if you think your wise is better than mine, than it is no longer so.

I didn't say I was wise. I said my wise was better. Anyway, that rule is just something you made up and you're not even wise.

[Scheherazade]

I didn't say I was wise. I said my wise was better. Anyway, that rule is just something you made up and you're not even wise.Oh, I am the first one to admit that I am not wise!

;)

[blazeofglory]

Oh, I am the first one to admit that I am not wise!

;)

Man is not wise. Or else won't keep on destroying nature.

[Scheherazade]

Man is not wise.How about woman?

;)

[LitNetIsGreat]

They are certainly not wise for they often marry men.

[wilbur lim]

Marrying is not mandatory unless woman are obliged to,Neely.
The word 'man' chiefly refers to humanity,and not comprehending it leads to a misintepretation.

[blazeofglory]

They are certainly not wise for they often marry men.

marriage is out of choice and they could be if they make a proper choice.