Very intelligent but wisdom... well

People often equate wisdom with intelligence or being knowledgeable; but all too often, it becomes apparent that being intelligent and being wise are quite different things. The world is full of brilliant people who intellectualise without really understanding the essence of things. In contrast, wise people try to grasp the deeper meaning of what is known and strive to better understand the limits of their knowledge.

As Mahatma Gandhi once said, 'Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.' Wise people are attuned to what constitutes a meaningful life. Being heated in crucible of life, they perhaps understand what actually matters and is only transactional requirement for managing life. Our daily distractions, financial and professional commitments add layers of hinderance to our quest for wisdom and in my humble student conclusion, it is the environment itself in which we nurture ourselves that can more fluidly put us in the "state" of readiness.

Wisdom implies more than merely being able to process information in a logical way. Knowledge becomes wisdom when we have the ability to assimilate and apply this knowledge to make the right decisions. As the saying goes, ‘knowledge speaks but wisdom listens’. Wise people are blessed with good judgement. In addition, they possess the qualities of sincerity and authenticity, the former implying a willingness to say what you mean, the latter to be what you are.

Wise people are also humble; their humility deriving from a willingness to recognise the limitations of their knowledge. They accept that there are things they will never know. By accepting their ignorance, they are better prepared to bear their own fallibility. People who are wise know when what they are doing makes sense, but also when it will not be good enough. Ironically, it is exactly this kind of self-knowledge that pushes them to do something about it.

I have seen people at the very top saying to very young me, " I don't know.. why don't you try it? That way, I will also learn & be able to contribute in some ways..". I have rarely seen wise people seeing things in perspective of absolutes i.e. Success or failure.

Wisdom is understating that in a world as complex as our, such generalisations ( Success ..failure) are a sign of naive, unsophisticated or even malevolent analysis.

Knowledge is understanding that we are always and simultaneously at point 'a' (which is less desirable than it could be), moving towards state/point 'B' (which we consider better in line with our implicit values and aspirations). Wisdom is understanding that as we continue to close on point 'B', we never really reach it, as everytime we touch, it metamorphose into point 'A'. Its understanding that we always encounter the world in a state of insufficiency and seek it's correction lifelong.

Wisdom is what the sages in Vedanta mentioned about limiting desires in order to be happy in personal life and that's why teachers, knowledge seekers (Brahmins) though dirt poor, continue to be respected.

Wisdom is in understanding that the future is like the past only albeit with a little crucial difference. As prof Jordan Peterson said, "The past is fixed but the future.... it could be better. It could be better , some precise amount. Happiness is to be found in the journey uphill and not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at next peak.." ( 12 rules of life).

Now imagine the implications of this differentiation in corporates. What differentiates great &successful CEO with a good CEO. former understands being a CEO is a width job, upholding principles.. building alliances, helping people coordinates/collaborate. Later is a master of function and pivots organisation to what he knows personally & is a master.. knows the depths.

Thank god, my wisdom tooth has stopped aching for few week now.

Social media, being ordinary & happiness

 

Greatest calamity ushered in by social media is shunning of 'Ordinariness'. People don't understand that media is an eyeball game (mostly) & only extremes make eyeballs possible as none would watch ordinary. Social media addicts need to understand, 'Extreme' is not the norm. By the way, 'Ordinary' is NOT deformity, it's the NATURAL state of being. Genius is an anomaly. The way media glorifies genius or our social news feed shows people enjoying life with endless surfing in hawaii to dancing on pier 39 in frisco almost every single day, we have started assuming this as normal.

People like me, Ordinary, mostly at home on Sundays reading books or doing household chores, trying to break fights among children in our old T-Shirts and shorts have started looking like anomaly. We have somehow been thrown into an abyss of being 'losers'. our images of coming out of crammed trains/tubes, rushing to catch an auto to complete last mile to office are not 'Facebookable' with sweat beads & sometimes crumbled creases. Wearing a tie with fine cut suits (may be once in a month) in an office is real work, rest all of us ordinary men/women are failures.

This is dangerous & cutting the young from reality of everyday grind. The reason why lot of millennials are not able to hold jobs for long is the dissonance & dichotomy between the pictures of their friends/cousins in offices (nice fine suits in AC offices) messes up their heads.

This 'facebookable' fad leads to more and more entitlement, breeding more and more unhappiness in search of a new high.. This is what is killing relationships by creating this 'Outrage Porn' on social media platforms everyday. This brazen victimhood mentality & then demanding entitlements from society is creating a class of happiness junkies in search for another high through outrage or outrageous.

Dear Young graduates, everymen like me do succeed as well. Superstardom is not the perverse of genius alone. There is a way, ORDINARY man can do it also. Its called WORKING HARD & being disciplined. Though what success means to you is different to me but yes all can succeed basis our feet on ground.

Path to greatness exist but what is great depends on your value system. I am happy being the prophet (my measure of success), being 'God' is not my idea.

capitalism, stories and social media

Standard economic theory requires that consumers and businesspeople pay close attention to a vast array of prices, quantities and other information. Because keeping track of this flood of information is very costly, it makes sense to think that people economize on what they pay attention to. That kind of economizing is called bounded rationality, a term coined by polymathic social scientist Herbert Simon, himself a recipient of the Nobel.

Statistics are useful to the extent that we find their insights more persuasive than stories.

But we often don’t.

Data takes effort to contextualize. Stories offer instant gratification. With social media proliferation, everyone is a story teller and has access to publication at no cost.

Capitalism’s success rests on a belief that, given the right incentives, people can work together to solve problems. It’s the greatest story ever told. To understand this better, we need to understand human behaviour. Our brain stores information in bits & pieces as it tends to economise usage of energy. Given that our roughly 2.5 kg brain uses 25% of our overall energy consumption, it become all the more imperative to economise memories or analysis. Stories akin to experience, are a very useful way to believe..

• Stories are often wildly disconnected from our productive capacity.
• We confidently convince ourselves of absurd stories. 

As morgan housel says," The growth of anything -- an economy, a company, a market, a career -- has two parts:

• A technical ability that can solve problems and add value.
• People’s propensity to believe in that value.

It is intuitive to believe that most of what drives success is the first point. Real skills add real value. But the second point, the stories we tell ourselves about those skills and values -- can play the deciding role. Stories can infuence the production of real skills themselves, effectively becoming the pilot of our economy "

Think about stock valuations in 2017 for a minute... What is driving this boom?

Not actual problems being solved. No new laws to date actually solve people’s problems but mostly disturb the cosy status quo.

The boom is being driven by a booming belief in the boom.Stories of reforms being fundamental in nature (GST, RERA, Bankruptcy code), drove the optimism about future and thus increased our ability to take immediate pain.

 The higher bitcoin’s price goes, the less people think it’s a bubble. A four-fold price increase caused a 12 percentage point drop in those who believed it was a bubble, and a doubling of those who found it undervalued..

These stories can be healthy. Like the optimism bias, we wouldn’t get out of the couch if we believed otherwise. But we should acknowledge that they are stories, susceptible to change and often disconnected from reality. 

We must encourage application of the techniques of “scientific” study of the past to analysis of complex ongoing situations and estimates of likely future events. Just as rigorous analysis could cut through the gaps and ambiguities of information on events long past. Analysts shd be self-conscious about their reasoning processes..shd think about how they make judgments and reach conclusions, not just about the judgments and conclusions themselves.