True Wisdom

How people conceive ideas and actions as wise or ignorant is culturally determined, ideologically imposed, or driven by power. Science often subserves social trends instead of guiding them. If one understands this, one would know that wisdom and ignorance are not like light and darkness. Ignorance is not the absence of wisdom; both have their respective social foundations, nurturing ecologies, and they coexist. They inhabit the same space. As there is nothing intrinsically worthwhile or worthless about either, they are not only in a conflictual relationship of domination and defiance but also in one of cooperation and co-option.

What is the takeaway from this predicament? True wisdom begins with self-scrutiny—examining all ideas with empathy, and then taking a stand, only if required. One who calls another foolish may themselves be mistaken, merely asserting a position of superiority. Wisdom is not about dismissing someone as a fool or something as foolish, but about uncovering the causes and conditions that place people in such states. True wisdom does not allow people to become devils, thereby forcing good people into mortal combat with them later. That is not wisdom. Wisdom lies in preventing evil, not in fighting it.

The message: If you are truly wise, you do not find a fool.

— Niraj Kumar Jha

Who is an idiot?

Originally, idiocy meant disinterestedness towards public affairs. As such it is still a valid categorisation of unworthy people. Nowadays, it is a word to demean people by swearing that they are of discrepant mental state. On the contrary, the word betrays a discrepant social order instead. It works as follows in the next paragraph.

A superior in any setting castigates those people as idiots who do not comprehend their wishes and obey duly. Idiocy is not the intrinsic lack of quality, it is a relative disadvantageous positional vulnerability of getting humiliated. A person with a slavish mentality and machine-like efficiency is considered intelligent. A more humane and natural human person may be held as an idiot. In the general social milieu a person not at home in the mainstream ideology is seen as an idiot.

Are 'wise' people, who see others as idiots, wise? If you are not an idiot in the original sense, i.e. lacking in public interest, you know now that such people are not truly wise.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Speculating on Wisdom

  Intelligence may be, but the wisdom I think is not for ego gratification or personal glorification.  Wisdom may even not be about contentment or happiness. I guess, wisdom rests in understanding things and sharing them for the general good. And, it is about the feelings of pain and suffering or relief and happiness, not being placid, and more than anything it is about being one with others. Wisdom does not seek special treatment for the bearer or impose itself over others. It only seeks considerations of ideas for the betterment and does not propagate a better idea. At ideating, it is not about fixities but about possibilities. Though it is almost useless to talk about what you do not know, I think I can speculate on how wisdom works or on what a wise person may be like. I hope somebody can be of help in making me understand what wisdom really is.  

Niraj Kumar Jha 

On Understanding

Great gems of wisdom, which we see plastered on any writable surface, real or virtual, mean nothing. Mostly these are useless pieces of information serving no purpose.

Understanding is not something which comes on a platter. Knowing is doing, experiencing, suffering, and to be precise, it is efforting. It is basic and basis without which no understanding can accrue to one.

Nonetheless, it is not sufficient. The structure of understanding comes from the eyes of the mind. One must have an informed and trained mind, and efforting must not exhaust that mind. Thereafter, the furnishing comes. That is articulating, expressing, and sharing ideas, and thus examining the validity of the idea.

Constructing the structure of understanding is a professional job. However, it is their job to go into real-life situations and feel the intensity of existential reality, and then only share their understanding with the addressee. Understanding is a conscious, enabled and collective effort.

Niraj Kumar Jha

The Business of Knowing

One who is in know, knows that knowledges are illusive. Thence, when wise persons speak and act, they think of and are watchful of the effects, the counter-effects, and the after-effects of their words, decisions, and actions for long term. Such people are very alert readers of the past and of the contemporary social processes, and when they speak up or take up anything, that is a studied measure. And they are always ready for course –correction and even reversal of any measure. Constant watchfulness is their credo. If one judges, the person rarely finds many of the wise men so designated and more so of their followers fitting this criterion. Over generations, great numbers of human beings have been sacrificed or violated in the name of the wisdom, which turned out to be or remain misconstrued. 

Niraj Kumar Jha