Cultivating Wisdom Is More Important Than Ever

Cultivating and expressing wisdom has always been a primary driver for human purpose and creativity, but in this information age, transitioning into a potential artificial intelligence age, I think this is a topic we need to discuss a little more.

I've been pondering this, reflecting on my personal beliefs, which you're free to disagree with. I'm just sharing my perspective. I was thinking the other day about an analogy of wandering in a desert, thirsty. When I browse the internet, with its proliferation of content-driven social media, I feel a similar thirst. I understand the irony here, as this discussion is part of that content. But I hope we can delve into something deeper.

When everything is driven by information, it feels like we're in a desert of information, yet we're all thirsty for wisdom. We're all thirsty for genuine okayness, for wisdom. But wisdom doesn't necessarily equate to intelligence, and I'll delve into that a bit more.

We're entering a fascinating new phase of the information age. With AI, information will proliferate even more, and it will start to become indistinguishable whether it's driven by a human or artificial intelligence. I believe this is something we'll have to live with. The cat is out of the box, so to speak.

It's incredibly important that we find safe ways to use AI and set up measures for a post-AI world. We're going to have not only regular spam but deep fake spam. More fun, right?

AI is just a tool. I don't believe technology is inherently good or bad. It's how we use it as human beings. AI can both become a boon to human development and a chaotic, traumatic, destructive vehicle. I don't necessarily believe that will be driven by AI itself. I think, at least in the beginning, it's more driven by us.

With the proliferation of AI tools, our relationship to knowledge, information, and wisdom is going to start to change. There's this desert, this dry, arid place we take to be wisdom, but it's not wisdom, it's fake wisdom. Information, even including this writing, is not wisdom. It's just something we can take away, develop a connection to, and mine our own wisdom with.

Wisdom, from my experiences, is born from rubbing up against our human condition. We might take some information or a meditation practice, or listen to someone else's wisdom, and we're going to take those ideas conceptually in and rub them against our own human condition. This includes our attachments, our aggression, our compassion, our love, our interconnection.

But where this becomes a desert and does not cultivate wisdom is when we just take information in, we conceptually confirm one of our own biases or move towards information that just reaffirms our own beliefs. We don't get anywhere; we just entrench ourselves further in bias. Another version of this is chasing wisdom via information, which puts us into a bind because we're mistaking information or conceptual knowledge for wisdom.

Developing wisdom is challenging. It's hard-earned because it has to come up against our own human experience, our own human condition, our own emotions, thoughts, identities, relationships with the world. And that's hard-earned because it's challenging most of the time.

For me, developing wisdom, when it's quick and easy, is a sign that it's not genuine wisdom. It's just something I'm bolstering my ego with or bolstering an identity with to feel secure, in control, intelligent, or worthy. I'm not as interested in engaging with my mind, my life, others, and information in that way anymore. Where information does help me is when I take it in, implement it, and grow a new relationship to something in my life, like my work, my Dharma path, my meditation, my relationships, or fatherhood.

There's all these things that I think become not only beneficial but help us to connect with wisdom. Now, at this point, maybe I should define wisdom. Wisdom, for me, doesn't necessarily have a singular definition. I'm going to define it from the Buddhist path perspective, as that's what I know a little bit more about.

In Buddhism, we have two kinds of wisdom. We have conceptual wisdom, which can be helpful. It's like intelligence, growing our understanding of ourselves in the world and then hopefully implementing more positive behaviors and more positive ways of working with our minds, emotions, thoughts, communications, etc. That's one type of wisdom.

Though what Buddhism is mostly after is the second type of wisdom, prajna in Sanskrit, which refers more to non-conceptual wisdom. It refers to our connection with the actual nature of things, how things are. From the Buddhist path perspective, we are not seeing things as they are. That is the premise of the Buddhist teachings.

The Buddha experienced this and then he said, "Hey, this is what I've seen. Check this out. Here are some practices to work with to see if you can come to the same conclusion." Not to reaffirm his conclusion, but to become free ourselves. His whole purpose was that he felt he had found freedom and then he wants to share what that might mean for others.

This freedom he talked about is connected to prajna wisdom, and it's connected to something that's not conceptual. It's connected to shifting our experience from a dualistic subject-object experience to a non-dualistic experience.

Read More: Buddhahood: The Four Seals of Dharma

When we think of wisdom, we think most of conceptual wisdom, which is fine. We also might think of someone who has cultivated wisdom. Often, the symbol of wisdom in many cultures has been old age. I think that's a wonderful symbol. It helps us in our societies to respect people as they age, to not just look at them as a burden to society but to look at them as sources of wisdom.

They've lived longer, they've gone through more stuff. They've had more time to rub up against their human experience and hopefully, out of that and some things they may have learned, they've managed to understand how to experience more happiness, more connection to the things that are meaningful in life.

To wrap this up, I just wanted to offer some thought here, some perspective. I know it's a little ironic that I'm talking about the limitations of information while offering more information here, but that's not my intention. My intention is to share some things I've been reflecting on around this, especially as we're coming into this age of AI and how scary that is for a lot of people.

I don't have all the answers, nor do I pretend to have all the answers about that. But what I do know is I think the information age is going to get more weird and more twisted. There's the potential for that at least.

What I want to ask you is to take whatever you got from this, if you got anything, reflect on it, and out of that reflection, hopefully, you are able to embody a little bit more wisdom, a little bit more experiential shift in how you relate to yourself in your life in a positive way. I hope so.

That's about it. I just wanted to share a few thoughts on this and let me know what you think. I really welcome your comments and feedback.