Wisdom is a fascinating word. To be wise is not summed up adequately by the word intelligent, or experienced, or skilled. It demands the integration of words to begin to frame it; intuitive and knowledgeable, perceptive and experienced, for instance. To come into its possession seems also to call for integration. Specifically, the integration of mind - spirit awareness before we can access the grace of its gifted moments.
"In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it, thou art a fool."
Rabbi Ben Azai
Wisdom, perhaps is best integrated and described in business terms by what we now call "emotional intelligence," a concept made popular by the groundbreaking book by Daniel Goleman, and based on years of research by numerous scientists such as Peter Salovey and John Meyer just to name a couple. Their studies conclude that people with high emotional intelligence tend to be more successful in life than those with lower EIQ even if their classical IQ is average. Emotional Intelligence, Salovey states, is the ability to identify, use, understand and manage emotions. This was brought to the forefront of my mind when I read a fascinating study in Fast Company recently:
"Consider a provocative series of experiments conducted by Chen-Bo Zhong of the University of Toronto. He put test subjects into interactions with an anonymous partner where they had two options: to treat their partners fairly or to lie to them. If they decided to lie, they would gain at the expense of their partners. Before making the decision to cheat or be fair, the test subjects were given some guidance. Some were encouraged to think rationally about the situation and to ignore their emotions. Equipped with this advice, the great majority (69%) analyzed the situation and concluded that they should screw their partners. Others were primed to "make decisions based on gut feelings." Their guts were pretty trustworthy: Only 27% lied.
The implications for improving emotional intelligence and deepening the ability to be wise, described in biblical terms as the ability to not only think with the mind but with the heart, seem rather compelling in today's environment!
For the full article from Fast Company: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/137/made-to-stick-in-defense-of-feelings.html
As always, I look forward to your insight and comments.
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1 comment:
I think that the "Emotional Intelligence" sometimes lumps together two related but different concepts. On one hand we have the "desire of one's heart", the emotions laying somewhere between one's body and one's mind. They are what psychiatrists identify as "subconscious" - the voice of desire which we suppress all our lives and which tends to break through at the most inconvenient moments. On another hand we have "yearning of our soul", which lies somewhere above our mind and below the reality the religionists call "spiritual". If psychiatrists would ever espouse this idea they might call this "superconscious". It is important to differentiate between these two because at any given moment we may experience simultaneous pulls from the basic emotions, intellectual conditioning and spiritual call. Understanding relative values (for yourself) of all three and reconciling their conflicts does wonders to your level of energy (you have a later post on the subject of energy), which is otherwise wasted in your struggle to keep yourself together. Karen Horney has done awesome job describing such a fragmented personality in “Our Inner Conflicts: A Constructive Theory of Neurosis”.
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