Excerpt #23 from my book, Interconnected, Interrelated & Interdependent, Like It or Not:
DEMOCRACY AND WISDOM — WISDOM
In the high-tech digital information and communication age in which we live—an age growing exponentially—that enables us to transmit information almost anywhere instantly, we have available at our fingertips unprecedented amounts of data and knowledge.
Our sophisticated probing into every aspect of our existence continues to provide us with an ever-expanding volume of information.
Despite it all, curiously, there remains a body of questions the answers to which have remained persistently puzzling.
These address the nature of life itself.
Through time there has existed some people who, sage-like, have been able to cut through life’s complexities.
It was as if, somehow, they had managed to lift the veil, glimpse the blueprints of life, and understand the simplicity behind the complexity of it all.
As a consequence, those with this ability were able to state simply—often profoundly—that which most people find to be inexplicable.
They spoke with a clarity that penetrated the human psyche and struck a harmonious chord.
In their teachings, there existed an instinctively recognizable ring of truth.
Men are four: (Arabic Apothegm)
He who knows not and knows not he knows not, he is a fool – shun him;
He who knows not and knows he knows not, he is simple – teach him;
He who knows, and knows not he knows, he is asleep – wake him;
He who knows, and knows he knows, he is wise – follow him!
At times, those with insight and ahead of the time in which they lived, spoke out even at the risk of persecution.
Some of what they shared with the world has endured and helped humanity to advance.
Many of these teachers understood long ago that which we are only beginning to realize now: that within the web of life, we are all one, interrelated, and interdependent.
They attempted in their messages, to alert us to the joys we would experience or the sorrows we would endure as a result of our chosen courses of action.
Some of their teachings, passed down through centuries, can be measured against the test of time.
The degree by which we have embraced or rejected their wisdom colors our world.
It may be that we do not have far to look for the meaning that is absent from many of our lives.
As the present caretakers of Earth, and the heirs and students of some of these teachings, along with what we now know, let us further consider the origins of our present circumstances.
The essence of the wisdom presented to us is as enlightening as it is profoundly simple: We stand in our own way.
Men do not trip over mountains; they trip over molehills. (Confucius)