Techniques vs wisdom

Techniques are unnatural; they are discovered probably by some kind of accident or deep logical deductions followed by trial-and-error. And it might not always be the most straight-forward or easy way. That’s why they are meant to be perfected, mastered through practice. This is an idea that I got from Seth Godin.

Insights, wisdom are not techniques. You can become really good at something because you master the techniques. For example, you can go quite far with some really good scripts to be used for sales. But more often, you need to know what to do when new situations arises, when new questions you have not anticipated arises. And wisdom is by definition the sort of intelligence involving application of knowledge, awareness from older, historical contexts into new situations and contexts. You cannot master wisdom, you can only grow it through encounter, by going through different experiences, dealing with different things.

In that sense, wisdom is natural. It is like a landscape formed by the elements, the rinsing and washing from the water, the blowing of the wind, the changes in the temperatures, the shifts in the plate tectonics. You cultivate wisdom also through observation and studying the patterns in the way nature is ordered. This is why even the uneducated can be wise. In fact, often, education can stand in the way of cultivating wisdom.