英语作文关于智慧写智慧,可以是寓言可以是成功的人

英语作文关于智慧
写智慧,可以是寓言可以是成功的人

1
Let's start with a dictionary definition:
"Wisdom is knowledge and good judgment based on experience; being wise. 2. wise conduct; wise words. 3. scholarly knowledge."
It seems to me that the dictionary's authors have relied upon an extraverted measure of wisdom based upon what can be known about another's thoughts and actions. However, a person's wisdom need not always to be seen for it to be present in significant measure. How, then, can one approach such an extremely complicated and ephemeral state such as wisdom?
One approach bases itself upon the fact that any concept which has a significant unknown aspect can be approached through antinomies -- the presentation of two sides which appear to be opposition with each other. When one defines the phenomenon of wisdom solely by measurable, earthly standards only one pole is used -- the material pole and the other dimension -- the spirtual pole, or what we might call the "its unknown dimension" that is present in any wise action whether it be in word or deed -- is ignored. While a one-sided definition may work in some situation, in others it distorts the reality of the situation. It is this "unknown dimension" of wisdom, what we might also call its introverted side, that I wish to emphasize now.
I might say without much risk of over-stating my case that the missing dimension in Western life is the acceptance that balanced wisdom, the term I am using to express wisdom that includes the above two poles, requires a transaction with wisdom's opposites, that is, its antinomian nature. I have presented five antinomies of wisdom for you to consider:
Earthly (material / instinctual / lumen naturae) and Spiritual (its unknown aspects / archetypal / lumen dei)
Individual and Collective
Knowledge and Relationship
Wisdom and Foolishness
Good and Evil
Traditional Judeo-Christian religion speaks much about wisdom, the chief text being embodied in the book of Proverbs, which I conside to be the "primer" on helping one understand wisdom's unknown pole. One cannot go very far in their understanding or growth in wisdom if they completely disregard a statements in Proverbs like: "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Prov. 1:6). Whether one is religious or not, an understanding of and a non-denigrating attitude -- toward wisdom's unknown pole demands an serious exploration of a relationship with the imago dei, for how else can one fully grasp that in the Scriptures, wisdom is personified or embodied. Through personification we can relationally embrace wisdom rather than it being solely an abstract knowledge or be left as only a "definable goal." It is my opinion that wisdom can be embraced and loved only when it is personified. One might call this "the engaging wisdom's heat" to distinguish it from the cooler aspects of embracing wisdom only as concept.
The quest for balanced wisdom is an elusive thing, much like going toward a destination to which one never arrives. Instead of this making one impatient, I encourage you to consider that all noble things are difficult, costly, and time-consuming. Furthermore, unlike the usual trips we take in life, wisdom's path often diverts us from our conscious intention; we find ourselves in unknown and disorienting places. These two aspects of the pursuit of wisdom are perceived intuitively as the tension between knowing that the path leads to greater connectedness and increase yet at the same time deconstruction and lack of definiteness. Without this uncomfortableness, inherent in its pursuit, wisdom cannot be manifested, remaining dead, or perhaps inert.
The pursuit of wisdom is, in part, a battle of the heart in which the pursuit of pleasure and lessening of discomfort, pain, or obligation continually pull us away from engaging its unknown pole. The Scripture, "out of the heart flows the issues of life," just touches the depths of such a confrontation. Concretely, the "issue of life" is blood without which there can be no further life or only a life that is stagnant. I encourage you to make the pursuit of wisdom as precious to you as your own blood and the blood of others.
2
What is wisdom? We hear the word a lot these days—the need for wisdom, the wisdom traditions, wisdom schools. We each would like to have more wisdom. And for others to have it as well. Too much human hurt and suffering comes from lack of wisdom. There is something about wisdom that we all aspire to. But what is this quality we hold in such high regard?
Various people have pointed to the progression of data to information to knowledge. Variations in patterns of data gives rise to information. Information from different situations is generalized into knowledge. Continuing the progression suggests that something derived from knowledge leads to the emergence of a new level, what we call wisdom. But what is it that knowledge gives us that takes us beyond knowledge?
Through knowledge we learn how to act in our own better interests. Will this decision lead to greater well-being, or greater suffering? What is the kindest way to respond in this situation? Is it coming from love, or insecurity?
Wisdom reflects the values and criteria that we apply to our knowledge. Its essence is discernment. Discernment of right from wrong. Helpful from harmful. Truth from delusion.
The wise are able to discern their true interests from those of the ego mind. They are usually regarded as kind, content in themselves. They tend not to aspire to greater material wealth or fame. They have learnt what is important.
At present, humanity has vast amounts of knowledge, but still very little wisdom. Buckminster Fuller called this time our final evolutionary exam. Is our species fit to survive? Can we develop the wisdom that will allow us to use our prodigious powers for our own good, and for that of many generations to come?
The question then arises: What can we do to facilitate the development of wisdom? This is where the wisdom traditions—the spiritual traditions found throughout human culture—have their value. They are often seen as simply religions, but most of the great religions were seeded by wise people, people who had, in one way or another, awoken to the deepr truths of life and then sought to share their wisdom with others.
Today we need to re-discover for ourselves the wisdom that inspired so many of these traditions. And discover how to enliven that wisdom in ourselves.
3
There is a report today (I think first offered in the Huffington Post) that David Brooks, the gifted New York Times columnist, has described Sarah Palin as a "fatal cancer" and part of a larger pernicious conservative trend:
But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.
Brooks then praised the logorrhea of Joe Biden in his interview with the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg as the proper antidote to Palin:
"[Biden] can't not say what he thinks," Brooks remarked. "There's no internal monitor, and for Barack Obama, that's tremendously important to have a vice president who will be that way. Our current president doesn't have anybody like that." Brooks also spent time praising Obama's intellect and skills in social perception, telling two stories of his interactions with Obama that left him "dazzled".
In truth I don't quite know what Brooks himself was trying to say, inasmuch as Reagan was written off by intellectuals as a "dunce", Truman was demonized by the Stevenson crowd as an intellectual embarrassment, and Ford reduced to a football-damaged jock in contrast to the "nuclear engineer" and social moralist Jimmy Carter.
But Brooks' reflections about Biden, at least according to the reported transcript, are telling. We had a debate between the two Vice Presidential candidates. Biden was superficially the more impressive with his recall of facts, anecdotes (most of them not mysteriously with Biden at the heroic center), and broad assertions.
In contrast, Palin was direct and perhaps repetitive in her focus on lower taxes, less government, and individual responsibility (especially for personal debt) — and I suppose what Brooks would call populist in her vocabulary, tone, and Fargo-mode of expression. But when they were through, Palin proved the more truthful and pragmatic, inasmuch as the glib Biden turned out to have misled in almost everything he professed, from our own Constitution to Hezbollah's presence in Lebanon. Even the folksy reference to his hometown diner was inaccurate. And that raises the age-old Euripidean question, "What is wisdom?" or maybe those general Hesiodic warnings about the dangers of moral regress that sometimes can accompany intellectual progress.
Wisdom can be, but surely is not confined to, or even assured by, degree certification, rhetorical brilliance, or the ability to talk off the cuff about Niehbuhr — or the wit to write Brooks and advise him about his own ethical conduct, which Obama did and which now impresses Brooks:
"For the next 20 minutes, he gave me a perfect description of Reinhold Niebuhr's thought, which is a very subtle thought process based on the idea that you have to use power while it corrupts you. And I was dazzled, I felt the tingle up my knee as Chris Matthews would say."
This is sad — since everything from the faux-seal with its vero possumus pretensions, the Greek temple backdrops, the efforts to speak at the Brandenburg Gate, the mantra "we are the change we've been waiting for," the messianic idea that the seas and planet will likewise heel to His wisdom, and the inane 'hope and change' banalities do not suggest real wisdom at all, but a dazzling veneer that overlays a great deal of megalomania.
Nor does Brooks grasp that recall of Niehbuhr apparently offers Obama little ethical protection from the close association with the virulently racist Wright or warns him not to talk after 2001 with the now boastful and proud ex-terrorist Ayers, and no judgement about the moral course in the earlier conduct of his disturbing Illinois campaigns, or principled consistency in his ideas about NAFTA, FISA, campaign financing reform, drilling, the surge, Iran, taxes, abortion, or capital punishment — or even the abilty to distinguish between maintenance of proper tire air pressure and the need to expand American oil production. Perhaps salmon fishing or moose-hunting might have been of value in reifying the more abstract wisdom found in Niebuhr.
In the present financial meltdown, mostly caused by some of the brightest and most educated of our own on Wall Street and DC, it is not anti-intellectualism to wonder what the Harvard Law School educated Barney Frank was doing, when, as a key overseer of Fannie Mae in a now much viewed House Banking Committee session, he pompously waved off his moral responsibilities and gave the disingenuous Harvard Law School educated Franklin Raines a pass to continue to milk the venerable institution on its road to perdition.
In regards to Bush, it is now the standard fare of the times to offer the appropriate put-down, and Brooks paints him with the usual yokel, anti-intellectualism brush. Yet those who once supported the decision to go to Iraq (many like Biden or Fukuyama dating back to the Clinton days), were among our most educated and brightest. But like a chorus of a Greek tragedy, almost all of them not merely abandoned their once zealous support, but (again, like Biden) at periodic intervals prepped their ongoing commentary on (always changing) perceptions about pulse of the battlefield. Bush, to his credit, went with Petraeus and thus Iraq was stabilized — but not by a President's seeking out the convenient position of the hour, but by supporting the surge and its ancilliary tactics when few others in the Bush coterie did.
In this regard, the eloquent, sensitive philosopher Obama, despite his current protestions about Iraq and an insistence on his principled and long-standing and unflinching opposition to the war, during that brief euphoria over its elections and in his eagerness not to seem out of sync with the then Democratic mainstream, in July 2004 gushed, "“There’s not much of a difference between my position on Iraq and George Bush’s position at this stage.”
4
这里有一篇有关智慧的论文：
http://www.wisdompage.com/rollinstalk.html
5
举例一些智慧的例子,一些名人的：
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,800748,00.html
6
As I have come to understand it, we become wiser people in two ways: by exposing ourselves to wisdom-fostering INFLUENCES, and by energetically dedicating ourselves to helpful PRACTICES. That is, we intentionally practice, with effort, the behaviors and attitudes that we someday hope to become effortless expressions of our deepest, truest selves. If we want to become wiser people, we can become "Sages in Intention," then "Budding Sages," and develop the characteristics of wisdom — the relevant perspectives, and values, and intellectual knowledge — and incorporate them into our lives. Let's consider some tools that can help us do that:
1. A CLEAR UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT WISDOM IS. There are many views on the subject. Read about them. Get a sense of the wisdom characteristics you would like to develop, and start working on it.
2. COUNSELING AND VARIOUS KINDS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY. Becoming a wiser person is an exercise in inner development, and there are activities that can help us along the way. Counseling and various forms of psychotherapy can, if needed, help us reach the starting point for advanced work which we might call responsible adulthood or mature ego. A person at this stage is free of psychoses and crippling neuroses and has developed emotional control and empathy to an ordinary degree. There are many forms of therapy, including life management counseling, therapies to help us get over fears, therapies to help us manage anger, therapies to help us get over compulsions and addictions, and others.
3. INTELLECTUAL KNOWLEDGE RELEVANT TO THE KND OF WISDOM WE ARE TRYING TO DEVELOP. Reading about inner development can be very helpful for anyone who wants to become wiser. To go beyond normal healthy adulthood — "that starting point for advanced work" — many people turn to writings that discuss the further reaches of human development. Such writings, in turn, lead us to do-it-yourself practices: mind-quieting practices, self-knowledge practices, ego-transcending practices, and oneness-realization practices. Reading about these things is not a substitute for the practices themselves, but reading can help us understand them and perhaps motivate us to try them.
Novels and biographies are valuable resources for the development of practical wisdom because they present us with countless examples of wise and unwise behavior, skillful and unskillful handling of life situations. Biographies of wise people can be especially helpful. How does their behavior differ from ordinary? What values guide their lives? What perspectives and interpretations of life situations do they make use of?
For those who would like to develop existential, metaphysical, spiritual wisdom, the world's spiritual literature is a vital intellectual resource. There is also an extensive literature on specific go-see-for-yourself spiritual practices that take the practitioner to deeper levels of understanding than reading can. Also helpful in developing the "Big Picture" view are books that deal with the nature of mental and physical reality, the cosmos, and evolution.
If we want to be effective change agents, then we need to select resources relevant to the kinds of change we are trying to bring about. Among the possibilities are the "new disciplines," including the sciences of complexity, cosmos-wide evolution, and the human brain/mind system. Important for many would be learning more about human cultures, economic systems, and the biosphere. Of general importance is an understanding of ethics and techniques for changing ethical perspectives; probability as a decision-making tool; the techniques of conflict resolution and effective persuasion; and information on current transformational activities.
4. FULL AND VARIED LIFE EXPERIENCE If we are open to learning, life itself teaches us. Having many and varied life experiences obviously teaches us more. We not only need to structure our life so that we have many kinds of experience, but we also need an open, curious, inquisitive, appreciative mental stance so that we get the most out of whatever experiences we have. Travel; getting to know people with different skills, outlooks, and values; engaging in different kinds of work; taking up a variety of hobbies — all these things enrich our life and potentially take us further down the path toward wisdom.
5. FEEDBACK AND COUNSEL FROM WISE PEOPLE Hanging out with people who are already living the values we'd like to make our own can be most helpful. Where do we find such people? Groups like Unitarians, Quakers, and Buddhists that focus on personal growth and doing good in the world are a best bet. Local and online discussion and activist groups are another possibility. Some of these focus on psychological or spiritual growth. Others focus on various social issues. We can experiment, and when we find groups that feel right, get involved.
6. THE OBSERVATION OF BEHAVIOR — OUR OWN AND OTHERS People all around us are struggling to up level their lives — some skillfully and successfully, others very unskillfully and unsuccessfully. The world's literature and films present us with countless additional life stories. What can we learn from them? Can we pick out the strategies and behaviors that work and those that don't? Can we start to sense some general "laws of life" behind the specifics? And can we learn to pay attention to our own behavior, and become aware of the underlying values?
7. PRACTICES THAT HELP US INTERNALIZE VALUES Becoming clear about the values we would like at the center of our lives — the values we want to make truly our own in a deep and powerful way — is the first step. The challenge then is to move these values from our head to our heart and our guts. In psychological terms, we must internalize them so they are not merely nice thoughts, but actually guide our behavior. Doing this takes effort, and during one of his trips to North America the Dalai Lama gave an example of what we need to do. He spoke to an audience about the need for everyone to internalize that key value of wisdom, compassion. His advice to those who wanted to develop compassion was to put themselves in challenging situations and then, despite the natural reluctance to do so, behave compassionately. By making the effort to engage in value-based action — again, and again, and again — we eventually internalize the value. Expressing the value in action gradually takes less and less effort until it becomes part of our outlook, part of our natural way of being, part of who we are.
8. BODY–AWARENESS PRACTICES In our culture we fill our waking hours with discursive thinking. We think about the past. We think about the future. We plan. We solve problems. Wisdom, however, demands that we spend a lot of time paying attention to what is happening in our immediate situation. Body awareness practices such has Hatha Yoga, Tai Chi, Vipassana meditation, and many sports can help us break the mind-tripping habit.