For consideration: WISDOM article for Sergio

We have a problem — a really BIG problem!

We live in an unwisely governed and unstable world. The proof of this is on display all around us as a multitude of failures. Our modern world is the product of many generations of leadership who have, through the use of greed, violence and deceit, eschewed the higher universal wisdom and purpose of sustainable processes that lead to stability.

• Sustainability is a transient process, composed of numerous steps and approaches designed to promote stability through applied wisdom. Sustainability is not the goal, but a tool to assist in reaching the goal.
• Stability is the ultimate goal. It is the combined and settled result of all the successfully applied sustainable processes as guided by wisdom.

In the broadest sense, sustainability refers to the ability to maintain a process continuously over time. However, sustainability is not the goal. The true goal is stability, and that requires a global approach to the kind of wise collective decisions that can lead to planet wide stability needed to overcome the grave mistakes of the past and present, and to propel us safely forward into a world grounded in love, peace, ethics, education and unity. In this sense sustainability processes MUST be subservient to wisdom. Sustainability without wisdom can lead away from stability and miss the goal entirely. For example, war can be made sustainable (without wisdom). As our violent history clearly demonstrates, war can, and has been sustained for thousands of years, perpetuating an ever growing environment of instability, that is directly opposed to the higher divine concepts.

A divided civilization that lives under the constant threat of war and destruction does not logically make any plans for the distant future while it operates in a defacto survival mode. Instead, it uses narrow self-centred intelligence instead of broad wisdom, and that promotes constricted, short-term and unstable goals. This is not healthy for a civilization's longevity. Our civilization, as we currently cultivate and experience it, lives for the present and the past, and does not worry about the future generations. It can be summed up in one word: unstable.

A wise civilization will cultivate the continual improvement of its collective mental capacity and direct its thoughts more and more into the future while it operates in a cooperative and mutually agreed upon progressive maintainable mode, using broad intelligence and collective wisdom that promotes all-inclusive, long-term stabilizing goals. This kind of unity can ensure a civilization's longevity and indefinite survival. It aims to create a stable civilization on a clean planet, where the balance of man and nature can be maintained for unlimited time; where people live for the future, and expect great things from it; where people are constantly occupied with making the world a better place for everyone to live. This can be summed up in one word: stable.

The root of the problem

In the brief coverage above, we have used words like unwise and unstable, narrow, short-term, divided, self-centred, threat, and war. These all describe certain aspects of the problem, like the branches of a great tree, but the problem goes deeper, all the way down into the soil. The root of the problem has to do with free will, which can also be called — unforced choice. In this case we are referring to the contravention of free will, or forced choice on a grand scale! 

• Free will is one of the greatest laws of creation, so important it is that not even the Creator will contravene it.
• Free will does not mean license to do anything one wants even to the detriment of others, and consequently;
• Free will exists within certain boundaries, but within these boundaries free will has free expression to the extent that it causes no harm, which means — our individual rights end where another's legitimate rights begin.

The great failure of our world's leadership has been the large scale and persistent contravention of personal free will within its clear and simple boundaries. Instead of honouring and protecting our God given free will, the world's greedy, violent and deceitful leadership has labeled us as "useless eaters". In their eyes we are little more than animals needing to be corralled and culled.

Free will and personality are like two sides of a coin. You can't have one without the other, and that unity is what makes it sovereign in its own right. The two cannot be separated. Free will cannot be stripped away or its potency reduced in any way. That is why free will can only be personal. You cannot detach free will from personality and graft it onto an impersonal group or system. There is no such thing as group free will. The popular term "group think" is not the same as free will. True consensus is a collective by-product of free will and can inherit a degree of sovereignty, but it is not free will. Groups are never imbued with free will. Groups can only inherit delegated authority from the sovereign free will individuals that compose it.

Continuing with the tree analogy, leaves can fall off, branches can break off, yet the tree can live on and grow more leaves and branches. But, if the roots are cut or pulled out of the soil and exposed to the air, the entire tree will surely die. Roots must be grounded, because they are not designed to live in the air. Therein lies the source of our civilizational problems. Countless leaders who have uprooted the sovereignty, and trespassed on the free will of individuals — and there is a long list of selfish, misguided, and stupid reasons why they did and continue to do so. The end result is always the same. Some kind of failure, only failure, always failure.

Free will is the one great law that can never be broken or trampled on to produce successful results. The opposite of free will is always failure!

Remember always:

• Every man and woman is born free and deserves to live and die free.
• Everyone is responsible for him or herself, for what we think, and what we do.
• With every right comes a responsibility.
• Our individual rights end where another's rights begin.
• Rights and freedoms that are not exercised are moot.
• When we enslave another, we enslave ourselves.
• We are responsible for directing those we employ.
• If we don't like something, it's up to us to change it.
• If we see an injustice, it's up to us to correct it.
• If we want peace, it's our duty to keep it.
• If we are bogged down, it's our job to climb over or dig under.
• If we cherish our own rights, we must cherish the rights of others.
• If we cherish our own freedom, we must cherish the freedom of others.
  (this list was borrowed from: www.annavonreitz.com)

What is wisdom?

Wisdom regards what is progressive, durable and stabilising as a societal process.

Any strategies and procedures that can safely help society move foward should be seen as wise processes.

The substance of wisdom is the melding of knowledge + experience to formulate best practices.

Wisdom comes in two spectrums: experiential wisdom, and revealed wisdom.

There are also wisdoms that are midway between these two spectrums, or mid-wisdoms. Hybrid combinations of experiential and revealed wisdom.

The difference between intelligence and wisdom

Intelligence is the ability to achieve goals, and all forms of intelligence have something to do with modeling — with trying to create a proxy of some limited section (scope) of reality that our intelligence can then use to inform our forecasting, our choice-making, and our goal-achieving efforts. But models tend to optimize for a narrow set of sense making, instead of the whole picture, and so they tend to blind us to what’s outside our models.

Wisdom is related to wholes and wholeness while intelligence is related to a usually narrow sense of relevance applied to achieving a usually narrow short-term goal. We need civilizational systems where the intelligence in and of the system is bound by and directed by wisdom.

A way forward, towards the real goal of global stability, must be anchored in, and guided by wisdom. It could even be said that wisdom is the language of stability, In contrast, the path provided by, and grounded in, the reductionist corporate codes and profit driven strategies, at the exclusion of wisdom, and in blatant disregard of free will, always leads to one inevitable conclusion, failure.

In other words, the totality of the story (holism) is always more complex than what we say or think about it. There’s something very important and sacred about that fact. Because when we make a model that separates everything out (reductionism) and then improves that model's effectiveness (in pursuit of the corporate bottom line), the chances are high that we're going to start harming something that we don’t even realize we're harming because it isn’t in our model. What we're optimizing for is not the whole thing. This type of process is not helping us be wise. Models that win in the short term can — and so often do — generate long term, broadly horrible and dangerous outcomes.

This brings us to the crux of the problem, the shortsighted nature of mortal life. With an average life span of only 70 years, man has neither the time, the vision, the wisdom, or the long term continuity required to envision and plan a truly balanced, reliable and safe way forward, with conviction, clarity and certainty. This is the folly of man, to assume that building a truly stable civilization can be accomplished with only the toolset provided by our limited biology. The process of civilization building can only succeed as a co-creative effort between shortsighted mankind and farsighted Divine wisdom, through a formal Covenant, which in this context means a process of revealing a fundamental and Divine plan for mankind.

Once equipped with a basic plan (vision and wisdom) that meets the long term requirements, and coupled with inventiveness and intelligence, mankind now has at its disposal the core toolset needed to "work the plan".

Sustainability and stability

• War can be made sustainable. We have been doing that for centuries.
• Organised crime can be made sustainable. We have been doing that for centuries too.
• Institutionalised deceit can be made sustainable and has been going on for many centuries.
• Elitism can be made sustainable and it has been that way since ancient times.

Yet war, crime, deceit and elitism can never contribute anything stabilising to a growing civilisation. They may drive expansion, but can never produce stability. No matter how sustainable we make them, they only have a destabilising effect on mankind. Stability is the opposite of this.

Sustainability can support	Stability can only come through
War	Peace
Organized crime	Brotherly service
Institutionalised deceit	Truth
Elitism (greed and imbalance)	Fairness and balance

Periods of growth are inherently unstable, that is the nature of growth. But growth must be sustained (kept going) long enough, despite its unstable nature, for the growth process to complete itself. Once a period of growth is completed, sustainability must then give way to a period of stability, otherwise unmitigated growth will invariably lead to deformity and collapse.

Although certain negative aspects of sustainability are being discussed in this article, it must be pointed out that sustainability can also have positive aspects. When applied positively (for everyone's benefit), ethically, and guided by wisdom, the implementation of sustainable methods can be a helpful factor in progressing towards stability. But sustainability without the moral compass of ethics and wisdom, without the vision of stability, can become a destructive force in the hands of immoral men and women.

True stability

Our planet's civilisational progress has now reached the point where we must begin transitioning into a new mode of operation.

From the start of the industrial revolution up to now the mode of operation has been one of rapid development, construction, and global scale expansion. The focus has been on building increasingly bigger, more complex, and more powerful systems. Mankind was instructed to "go forth and subdue the earth". Mankind has finally accomplished that, but the incessant and rapid speed of development of the industrial revolution, and now the technological revolution have often resulted in abuses, inferior quality, and misguided plans.

Yet, we have managed to build a global civilisation, because we now have adequate infrastructure systems to support such a civilisation, albeit one that is sprinkled with a variety of problems that cannot be adequately corrected by the incessant march forward of aggressive industry, obsession with materialism, uncontrolled expansion and development.

These varied problems we speak of now require a different type of approach for their resolution. This approach is one that gradually starts shifting our civilisational focus from subduing through aggressive expansion and development, and more towards wise administration and maintenance through ethics and wisdom, that is in accordance with the Divine guidelines for our planet.

Expansion and development can never be totally eliminated, but it must be gradually and wisely transitioned to a level that is balanced with the needs of administration, and maintenance requirements.

Once this balance is achieved, stabilized, and shown to be durable, then we will have reached a point as a great civilisation where we can effectively maintain Life (rather than focusing first on systems to the detriment of Life, as we are now doing), and we can do so in harmony with the Light of the Divine plan, in fulfillment of the Covenant.

Some characteristics of wisdom

Author Tom Atlee, founder of the Co-Intelligence Institute has crafted an excellent overview of the main characteristics of wisdom.

Wisdom is applied appreciation of the wholeness of life. Someone or something is wise to the extent he, she or it arises from and embraces life's wholeness. Through wisdom we become vehicles or channels for wholeness on behalf of life.

The better we understand wisdom, the more we will be able to understand its applications to (and in) our democratic systems. With such understandings we, as communities and nations, can then apply democratic wisdom to the pressing problems we face in the 21^st Century. Some of the hallmark characteristics of wisdom are:

It embraces the BIG PICTURE — in any situation, it seeks to take into consideration the long term, the full story, both objective and subjective worlds, holistic and system sciences, Spirit, context, and other deep, broad realities.

It uses MULTIPLE WAYS OF KNOWING — for example, it uses heart, intuition, story and Spirit as well as facts and reason — and often arises out of authentic dialogue among diverse people or perspectives.

It is INCLUSIVE AND OPEN — to diversity, novelty, otherness, nuance, disturbance, and other things that are often ignored, excluded or suppressed, thus being particularly fair and comprehensive in its approaches and mindful that "there is always more to it than that."

It is INSIGHTFUL AND APPROPRIATE — even as it is inclusive and vast in its embrace of reality, it cuts to the essence of what needs to be understood in a situation — the most relevant realities that need to be worked with — particularly the underlying dynamics, the hidden resources (often masquerading as problems) and the long-term consequences.

It is HUMBLE AND RECEPTIVE — recognizing the limitations and relativity of all perspectives and knowledge, it tolerates (and even appreciates or surrenders to) uncertainty, paradox, mystery and complexity, and so is able to entertain (and is often interested in dialoging with and learning about) diverse viewpoints, information and possibilities, while being unattached to any particular one, disinclined to blame and lighthearted about the efforts of life.

It SERVES LIFE — caring for and appreciating the sacredness (or unique integrity and value) of all beings and living systems, it tends to focus on where life (and passion) are most vivid, and on what is important for life's healing and flourishing, and so it tends to produce (or catalyze) broadly beneficial outcomes.

It is GROUNDED IN RELATIONSHIP — appreciating, practicing, embodying and nurturing interconnectedness among all things, it serves harmony, balance, dialogue, co-evolution and healthy feedback that supports and creatively uses diversity and authenticity.

It has an ELEGANT SIMPLICITY — using no more (resources, words, force, etc.) than necessary and often economizing through cooperation (seeing problems as resources and enemies as allies) and elegant alignment with the realities of the situation.

It has INTEGRITY — embodying courageous commitment to truth — particularly one's truth to oneself and one's experience — which can manifest as steadfastness or flexibility, depending on where the alliance with truth leads.

It has PRESENCE — a hard to define but compelling quality of imminent, centered, mature realness that is grounded in deeper/higher realities (such as experience, Spirit and silence) and so naturally evokes respect, resonance, trust, and the stirrings of greater Life.

Source: https://www.co-intelligence.org/WisdomCharacteristics.html

We can make the path beautiful

Working through conflict, toward harmony

Our world is making progress, although it is currently in a broad transition period between older approaches to solving conflicts, and newer methods for reaching harmony. It is a large arena wherein much confusion and much reaction takes place. This transitional phase can seem like the phrase "one step forward, two steps back". But in reality we make three forward and experience one back.

How might any one of you contribute to making it through this transition? Events of the world are on a scale that do not directly impinge upon your personal sphere of activity, although there can be certain indirect influences. For example, the increasing cost of material goods, inflation, may have an impact on you, but it in no way reduces your ability to put into practice the Golden Rule and do good unto others, and forgive those who trespass against you.

We are all in this adventure together. Let's always remember that as we sometimes collide with one another, we are actually transferring our energies to each other. We are providing changes in direction for one another. It all can be viewed as positive contributions to the entire system. The typical pattern exhibited today is that when collisions occur, conflict ensues. We can certainly do better, in fact we must! 

This global stage is still rife with conflicts. These conflicts can be incentives to grow. It is comparable to the pleasurable experience of consuming food, but it still requires energy exertion to digest. This world would improve significantly if familial, civil, religious, economic situations were viewed as collisions that contribute to growth, rather than reasons for conflicts.

For any advanced and stable civilization to emerge requires that its citizens first change the way they think and act — they must first have a realization that moves them toward a more homogeneous way of seeing the world and all the peoples that live in it. This will require a bonding process that brings unity in brotherhood with all people. Something so profound that petty differences will take a backseat to the greater need for understanding global problems, and finding solutions that will benefit all of mankind. In that moment, you will see yourself and everyone in the world as being as human and interconnected as yourself.

What many people fail to understand is the fact that we are all brothers and sisters, and we all share our humanness by living together on the same planet. The failure to understand this is the one thing that separates us from one another. Those of you that do understand this know that you are brothers and sisters, and can go anywhere in this world and find brotherhood with any person that also understands this regardless of culture, race, nationality or social status. If you were to visit with those in another country who also have this viewpoint, you would love and befriend them for their openness and kind respect. This is where we want to go — to the brotherhood of mankind where all people understand and respect each other's right to think independently, while maintaining a common ground — our feelings for those things and values that make life worth living.

How do we get there?

Do you think we can do it via the approach that religion has taken by setting up creeds and rules for acceptance into the "club" of enlightenment? Surely history will tell you that this only creates more separation and disunity. How then would this come about? How would it begin to unfold? In the past ages of tribe against tribe warfare, "the enemy of my enemy is my ally" mentality prevailed. This thinking only brought about temporary unity that would soon fall apart when the self-interests of the group became more important than political alliances.

What would happen if the enemy was not flesh and blood and there was no one to hate or negotiate with? What if this enemy could not be reasoned with and we had to pull all our resources together to fight this enemy because it threatened our very existence? We, as the human race, would need to use our collective will and consideration for all people to work together to defeat this enemy. Those differences that now divide us would then be seen as diversities of thought that could perhaps solve a part of the problem needed to defeat this enemy. It would take an unparalleled effort of collaboration and communication on the part of all nations and peoples to understand each other and how they might work together.

With this scenario in mind, can you now see that faulty thinking is the enemy that cannot be reasoned with — that it threatens our very existence — that it does not consider the human condition as it applies to all people? It controls and divides and conquers, using the sophistries that we need these systems of control to protect us against those that are different from us. And by its very divisive nature, it keeps its control over us, because we believe we need it to live, that there is no other way but the 'Us versus Them' way. To see this in yourself is the first step. It begins in the mind.

The mindset

What enables a people to progress into a stable and durable civilisation is a collective mindset oriented toward progressive thinking.

It would be wise for us to consider the Golden Rule as a universal understanding — an agreement that would be helpful to keep in the forefront of your thinking. But in application, on a world conditioned by chaos and confusion, the Golden Rule is mostly thought of as a Utopian idea that only comes after your neighbor adopts this thinking. The Golden Rule is a state of being — simply being in a relationship of goodness with your fellows.

The application and expression of the Golden Rule mindset is not something unattainable or afar off in the distant future. Many people are already living with this mindset — they wake each day and apply this thinking throughout the course of their day. They are naturally attractive in their energy, and draw others of like mind to themselves. Herewith, a synergy begins to organize, and they become moved to solve some problem of inequity in their lives, their social circles; and engage the world with an attitude that they can make a difference. They are not interested in self-indulgence or self-recognition — no, but in the recognition of the problems and inequities to be solved. These people often come from very humble or troubled beginnings and have made a decision — they use their mind and willpower to choose how they will live their life going forward — a thinking that anything is possible and achievable.

Some will see these people as gifted or ingenious, but mostly they are quite ordinary in intelligence — they see the world differently, and they do not follow the same thinking that creates suffering in the world. They recognize that opportunity is a co-creative process whether they see it coming from within, or through collaboration with others. You can be this way — you can begin today if you are willing and decide not to wait for your neighbor to adopt this thinking first. Take your co-creative thinking to the next level and become the change you want to see in the world. See the world, not as evil, but as being guided through co-creationism, and if that's too big of a word then think of it as collaboration. Waking up to recognize co-creative/collaborative guidance in your own life will empower you to work together with your fellows to move the world closer to that peaceful, stable world we all want.

Conservatism and liberalism are the us versus them mindset that exists as the antidote to the other, and rarely will they become unified to solve any problem — they naturally create separation —  us against them thinking forming a two party tyranny. Unity is found in the intersecting values both sides already agree on, but use different language to describe it. Look for the intersecting values that are true, beautiful, and good for all people. Unconditional understanding and communication are key to finding the intersecting values. Too much listening to the opinions of others without having any discerning thoughts of your own is what keeps one stuck in a narrow polarized mindset. Recognize this polarized view and choose not to follow after it. Learn to recognize the 'us versus them' thinking of separation and apply forgiveness and mercy — seek for the higher ground, and consider the possibilities that a way forward can be found that benefits all sides.  

The Golden Rule is already here on this world. Look for it and you will see it, you will recognize it, and you shall become more sensitive to those narrow polarized mindsets, the way of thinking that creates separation or acts immorally. Think about those rare instances where two polarized sides courageously stepped aside from their positions and reached out with a handshake in hope of finding a way forward. It makes headlines and there is a warm feeling of goodness that pervades the space around such courageous consideration and the recognition that both can co-exist while having differences, yet respecting the other while solutions are sought. Why are these events so rare? Each side is waiting for the other to move first.  

Purposeful intention

This way of thinking is not reserved for future generations, but for you in this moment. The Golden Rule mindset is simple, and the application of it is something that you work at everyday of your life here and hereafter. It is born from the mind — your thoughts and your neighbor's thoughts, it must also begin with you, and it begins when you arise each day. Each new day brings new opportunities.  

You cannot go backward in time to seize the missed opportunities of yesterday. Today is the day to begin anew! Because the Golden Rule mindset is a progressive way of thinking, it requires you to clear your mind of old concepts that simply have not moved you into achieving a better way of life, or a life with purpose. It is also a collective mindset, but one that requires each individual to contribute to the betterment of the whole by finding purpose in your own life. Therefore begin each day with a purposeful intention, to see that you are contributing to the Golden Rule regardless of whether or not your neighbor is contributing. Acknowledging and accepting that you cannot control how others will think and act, focus instead on being the captain of your own energy — your thoughts and actions, and how you hold yourself (moral goodness) in the world while working toward some purposeful goal — that goal should include bringing a greater understanding of your purpose to others.

This Purposeful Intention becomes the theme of your day. It is to be thought of as a co-creative and guided process. It requires an attitude of gratefulness and a curious mind to explore new concepts — even accepting that you may see beyond those static concepts of truth that you have come to believe. Purposeful Intention is a statement of personal empowerment by a mind and personality that chooses to become something greater. It becomes the inner light of opportunity, the seedbed that allows the co-creative powers of the universe to spring forth from you in a moment of clarity, and in the synergy of your participation. Co-creativity is cooperation with your own inner guidance (knowing within), and therefore requires that you state your intentions to develop your purpose, and trust that you will recognize the signposts that lead to its unfolding — for without purpose, there can be no guidance.

It is said that experience is the greatest teacher. While this may be true for you in the particular moment of that experience, you have not experienced all things. And is it not also true that what you understand today may be revised tomorrow through another experience? Accepting change is the greatest opportunity for growth any individual can achieve. Purposeful Intention requires the acceptance of change in your own beliefs. A Golden Rule mindset is already within you and can be realized by unlearning what you have been conditioned to accept by a world in conflict. There is within each person a compass that points to what is good, and it will lead you there if only you follow after that inner knowing. Learn to recognize this inner knowing and also recognize your own habits of sabotage — to prove yourself better or right, rather than follow the goodness that you know within.

I cannot tell you what your Purposeful Intention is — that is something that you create each day, but I will admonish you to wake each day and take time to create this open, hopeful, and expectant way of engaging your day, following after the inner knowing of what is True, Beautiful, and Good for you and for your fellows. This is something you can do today and everyday for the rest of your time here in this world, and rest assured that you will have made this world a little better than it was, had you not participated. This is how the Golden Rule becomes your reality and the reality of your neighbor. It is the essence of wisdom.

Peace is achievable.