Dear Friend of Wisdom,

 

                                     I would like to thank all those who have replied to my request for ideas as to how we might get a campaign for wisdom-inquiry underway – especially those with helpful suggestions as to how we might do it.

 

                                     Before I attempt to summarize what has been said so far, there is one crucial distinction I need to make.  There are two quite distinct campaigns before us, namely:

 

(A) To help make progress towards a wiser world (or, more modestly, to help promote wisdom in the world).

(B) To transform academia so that it puts wisdom-inquiry into practice.

 

                                   My concern is with (B).  Friends of Wisdom was founded over ten years ago with (B) in mind.   Or rather, with a somewhat more modest (though still immodest) goal in mind, namely to create awareness, within and without academia, of the urgent need to transform academia so that something like wisdom-inquiry is put into practice.

 

                                   (A) is the campaign we all care about.  All sorts of groups are struggling to put all sorts of aspects of (A) into practice all over the world: groups concerned with peace, justice, civil rights, the environment, the economy, global warming, slavery, poverty, hunger, preventable disease, democracy, individual liberty, the flourishing of wisdom, and so on.  (B) is primarily a means to the end of (A) – yet another potential contribution to (A).  What makes (B) so important, however, is that (1) it is vital that humanity possesses wisdom-inquiry if it is to learn how to make progress towards a better, wiser world, but (2) hardly anyone appreciates this point, and hardly anyone is actively engaged in the task of helping to transform our institutions of learning so that they do put something like wisdom-inquiry into practice.

 

                                 We are, above all, the species that learns.  We really can learn how to make progress towards a better, wiser world.  But in order to do that, it is essential that our public institutions of learning, our schools and universities, are rationally designed for, and devoted to the job.  For what we require, above all, is social learning, public learning, learning of our institutions, our corporations, social arrangements and governments.  Our problem is that academia as constituted by and large around the world, shaped by what I have called “knowledge-inquiry” is profoundly and damagingly irrational when judged from the standpoint of promoting human welfare (or helping us make progress towards a better world).  The argument is spelled out on our website at http://www.knowledgetowisdom.org/basic_arg.htm .  (For a more detailed summary of the argument see http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/16142/1/16142.pdf .  For a list of things that need to change if knowledge-inquiry is to become wisdom-inquiry, see http://www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom/whatneedstochange

).

 

                              I do not think we stand much hope of making real progress towards a better, wiser world if we continue to have in our possession institutions of learning damagingly defective when judged from this standpoint, as at present.  Indeed, in terms of one entirely legitimate notion of “cause”, the cause of our current global problems is our long-standing implementation of knowledge-inquiry, our failure to implement wisdom-inquiry.  (The astonishing success of modern science and technological research leads to modern industry and agriculture, modern hygiene and medicine, and so, along with much that is good, all our current global problems.)

 

                             We need to do many things in pursuit of (A).  One vital, much neglected thing we need to do is successfully achieve (B).  It is (B) that should be our concern here.

 

                             And I would like to suggest that we take the campaign (B) as characterized on our Friends of Wisdom website, as our starting point at least, since it is that which has brought us together.  If wisdom-inquiry, as it has been characterized, does not seem to be what we should be aiming for, in some respect or other, then arguments need to be put forward as to what is wrong with it, and why such and such would constitute an improvement.  But, until there is general agreement about some improvement, we should take our goal to be what our Friends of Wisdom website advocates (at http://www.knowledgetowisdom.org/index.htm ).

 

                           In my next email I will try to summarize responses to my request for ideas as to how we might get a campaign underway, and try to see what the next steps might be.

 

                       Best wishes,                             

 

                            Nick Maxwell

Website: www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom
Publications online: http://philpapers.org/profile/17092
http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/view/people/ANMAX22.date.html