Knowledge, Intelligence and Wisdom
"I know that I know nothing" is a saying derived from Plato's account of the Greek philosopher Socrates. It is also called the Socratic paradox.
"ipse se nihil scire id unum sciat"
When writing in my blog I never assume myself wiser or that I know better than my readers. I do not intend to impose my beliefs or my way of life on anyone as better than theirs, for beliefs and lifestyles are a very personal matter. I hope my point of view, my opinion and my exposed understanding of what knowledge that (I believe) I acquired in close to 30 years of existence might help others seek or gain more knowledge, encourage intelligence and benevolence to create wisdom in the end.
Discussions, readings , practicing skills and exposing ourselves to art lead to experience and knowledge. But having stagnant, sterile, cold knowledge isn't intelligence. One could have read and memorized the entire collection of a library and yet not understand a single word they read or the message behind each book. One could learn to play every single piece written by Chopin on a piano while being incapable of writing their own music.
Intelligence is pushing ourselves to turn our knowledge or skills into expression of one's abilities: art,craft, magick, philosophy, creativity, ...
Knowledge is lemons, when life gives you lemons and you make lemonade, heat activated invisible ink, or a lemon tart, that is where your intelligence shows!
One of the many things that amaze me are intelligence and creativity.
*Challenging yourself and pushing yourself takes curiosity and an open mind because you need to know that there is more than what you can do, take or understand. this is when you from lemonade to "what else can i do with lemons"?
*It takes courage to get over risk of possible failure based on your knowledge (data,information, statistic...), it takes resilience. We all know lemons are acidic and you might want to pick a certain kind of lemo, may have to rethink, rectify and perfect your recipes before it actually taste the way you want it to.
*And finally it takes experience and humility to be able to accept your mistakes, failures and f*ck ups and turn it into wisdom.
Wisdom is a delicious ultimate perfect chef's special lemon tart. It doesn't take lemons alone, it doesn't take the intelligence, the creativity and the skills alone. It takes a lot more ingredients.
Wisdom, sapience, or sagacity is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight. Wisdom is associated with attributes such as unbiased judgment, compassion, experiential self-knowledge, self-transcendence and non-attachment, and virtues such as ethics and benevolence.
To me, there is nothing more valuable than wisdom, and yes lemon tart is my favorite cake, although key lime pies are also excellent!
Is a pie a tart, and are those cakes?
lemon tart picture:
