Written by Mathew
Naismith
I had a very
interesting rebuttal in regards to my quote. "It is wise to be
influential, it is unwise to be predominantly influential for there is no
wisdom in one's own influence".
The quote is referring
to it's wise to be influential, why be aware and wise without sharing it? The
last part of the quote is also referring to it's unwise to be egotistical in sharing
in one's own influences, "My own influence is the be and end all". How
many ideologies have taken this view? "This is all the knowledge you need
which of course negates all other ideologies". This view in my mind isn't
true, where is the wisdom in just knowing of one view when the world around us
is of numerous influences?
Predominantly knowing
about one ideology only tells us of a certain influence within our environment,
would a truly wise person then ignore all other influences within their
environment? Not to me.
The rebuttal I received
in relation to this quote was extended and quite analytical, to them, my quote
was totally grammatically incorrect so made no sense at all. The following is
part of the reply I received from this person.
Firstly, influences do not make you wise. In fact, the
more you are influenced, the less integrity and strength of character you have.
You should never, never, never be influences by anyone or anything. You
should analyze everything yourself until you arrive at your own
conclusions.
My own experiences
have indeed made me wiser which are mainly based on other people's influence on
me, for example, school teachers influenced me so I could read a write for
starters. I also certainly don't believe in analysing everything myself, this is
an indication of the ego being in control. Vast amounts of knowledge usually
turn into egotism not wisdom unless we are aware of this. Many people thinks that wisdom can only come from knowledge
and not from other people's influence upon us. I can myself analyse too much because
of the knowledge I have, but because I'm aware and not just knowledgeable, I am
often aware of how my analytical reasoning can, and most often does, influence
me to incorrectly egotistically judge and analyse.
Knowledge allows
one to analyse, awareness then allows one to analyse free of egotism, wisdom then
tells us this is but the tip of the iceberg, no knowledge is the be and end all
as everything is always evolving as the environment around us tells us. It is
wise to be influential and being aware that knowledge is always evolving, what is
known today wont' be known tomorrow as this knowing is always changing.
I think we can
put too much emphasis on knowledge and being educated especially to the point
when the ego takes complete control of us. A brain predominantly based purely
on analytics most often replaces our intuition and our natural instincts. At
this point, we will only analyse our environment purely based on analytics and
the knowledge we have at hand at that point. In this case, we are foregoing any
influence of our own intuition and natural instincts giving us a totally different
perspective of all things.
As of this post,
a lot of my posts come from other people's influences upon me, if I only relied
on my own insights and the influences I have had in my life, my posts wouldn't
be worth reading. It would be like dogmatically following a certain ideology to
the bitter end no matter what. My own wisdom tells me this action would be daft,
an action of no relevance towards a constructive outcome.
As we become spiritually
aware, we will become open to other influences beyond human perceptions, should
we then ignore these influences because our analytical analysis can't perceive
beyond human perceptions? We must remember, human knowledge is limited to it's
own human perceptions, further knowing can only be obtained through perceiving
beyond these human perceptions that at first make no sense. This takes one to
be aware of perceptions and knowledge beyond our own human perceptions and analytics.
This is fundamentally why knowledge isn't the same as awareness or that knowledge
can bring on awareness or wisdom, it can actually be limited to it's own perceptions,
you don't get this with awareness because you are aware of this for starters.
If I analysed all
the quotes I have read through human perceptions and knowing, very few of the
quotes I read would make sense, in actuality, a lot of the quotes I have read
seem to come from a perceptions beyond human analytics and perception.
Can we become too
analytical? Most definitely as all analytics are based purely on human perceptions
which are limited, sorry ego.......Analytics are based purely on comprehension,
if the analytical mind doesn't comprehend it, it just can't exist or it makes no
sense.
Should everything
we are open to make sense? I hope not,
if this was the case I wouldn't be evolving. Fire didn't make sense to cavemen,
did they then put the fire out because their analytical minds couldn't work out
how fire actually existed? What they relied on was intuition and their natural instincts,
their egos didn't need to know any more than this.
I think it's wise
to be aware that knowledge alone will not bring on wisdom, if this was the
case, we wouldn't be as destructive as we are now, it would be quite the opposite.
Wisdom can't destroy, especially what it relies on for it's existence, but knowledge
used on it's own can and most often is highly destructive. It would certainly
seem our knowledge is ignoring the influences around us otherwise we would
indeed change our ways. To me it makes
no sense in ignoring the influences we have around us but that is what a lot of
us are obviously doing.
This is purely
based on that knowledge gives us wisdom and the influences around us don't. In
a sense this seems correct, we have all this influence around us but we are no
wiser!! In actuality, a lot of us are wiser specifically because of the
influences around us. The only people who seem to lack wisdom are the people
who wholly rely purely on human knowledge and perceptions to obtain wisdom. I
would myself rather rely on the influences of people and other sources around me to make me
more aware of wisdom, human analytical perceptions just don't do it for me,
they are way too limited but each to their own.
