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Wisdom Paradigm Part 3

Welcome back to our third and last session talking about the Wisdom Paradigm. The better you know the Wisdom Paradigm, the more successful you can be in all aspects of your life—at work, at home and with your family.

For thousands of years, the Wisdom Paradigm had us on the right track developing towards goodness and Happiness—until we took a wrong turn a few centuries ago into the Modern Paradigm. We’ll talk about that wrong turn, what happened and the Modern Paradigm in our next podcast.

Here’s a little review of the Wisdom Paradigm so far.

The Wisdom Paradigm teaches us that times and cultures and technology change, but human nature doesn’t change. Human nature has been the same throughout history and will remain the same in the future. Our DNA is what makes us a homo sapiens. Our human nature is what makes us human.

We all have the same purpose, the same destination in life—Happiness. Happiness comes from good relationships.

If you want to be happy in life, become a good person who develops good relationships.

There is an objective morality with moral facts—like it’s a fact that the Holocaust and slavery are wrong. It’s also a fact that if you practice virtues like honesty, justice, wisdom and love, you’ll become a good person with good relationships who achieves Happiness.

All human beings are social beings who thrive in relationships. We are at our best in Wisdom covenant relationships where the good of the individual and the good of the team are the same. The more you put into the team, the more you grow your skills, character, teamwork and leadership. The more the team invests in its people, the better the team gets.

Covenant relationships are the highest trust, highest stability and highest performance relationships.

Wisdom is knowledge plus character. The more you know about the Truth and the better you live that Truth—your character—the more wisdom you will develop in life. Wisdom is really knowledge about life itself.

So, life itself is pretty straightforward. Become a good person who has good relationships and you’ll be happy in life. It’s that simple.

Why are we so burned out in our society today? Why are we unhappy and anxious? Why have the depression and suicide rates skyrocketed—especially for young people?

Because we lost our focus on good relationships and Happiness, and got distracted chasing things like money, fame, social media, status, technology, immortality and technology.

Anything that distracts us from the fundamental Truth of good relationships is going to eventually lead to unhappiness, anxiety, depression and other bad outcomes.

With these lessons in mind, let’s jump into our last blog learning the basics of the Wisdom Paradigm.

WORK

Fisher, smith, shoemaker, miller, weaver, mason, carpenter…  What are these?

In the Wisdom Paradigm, and in earlier times, if your name was Smith, you were probably the blacksmith in town. If your name was Weaver, it was probably because your family wove fabric. Miller was the man who milled the grain into flour. You can probably figure out Fisher, Shoemaker, Mason and Carpenter on your own.

Smith was not a job, not something that you did just for money. It was more of a vocation, a calling, a fundamental part of who you were. Smith was a fundamental part of your identity. As the smith, your work represented you personally. Your work was your reputation, your identity, who you were.

As the weaver, the quality and finish of your fabric reflected you directly. Your work contained, expressed and embodied you. Your work was you and you were your work.

In contrast, today, work is a job. A job is about earning money, making a living, so you can eventually retire and do the things you find fulfilling. We don’t think of work and fulfillment as going hand in hand. We’re often told that we’re not supposed to find our work fulfilling.

Today we divide everything into our professional-work life and our personal-private life, but in the Wisdom Paradigm, there is no such separation.

The Wisdom Paradigm understands that everything in life is focused on becoming good and achieving Happiness. Work is one of the best places to practice the virtues, become good and develop relationships.

Any work, no matter how grimy, nasty or subordinate, is honorable, good and dignified if it gives you the chance to practice the virtues and become good.

Remember, you become what you do. You become what you practice. Better to be the lowliest worker in the nastiest job who practices honesty, justice and love and develops good relationships than to be a billionaire CEO who practices greed and exploitation.

In the Wisdom Paradigm, work is a fantastic opportunity to practice the virtues, become a good person and develop the strong relationships you need for Happiness.

WHAT ARE RULES FOR?

Rules provide us guidance that helps us get better faster than if we had to figure out things on our own.

Let’s say you want to learn how to play cricket. You could walk out on the field with a willow and a bail, and try to figure out on your own what is going on with the creases, wickets, bowling and the googly. While this is an option, it is probably going to be a long time before you have a clue what is going on in a match, and even longer before you can play cricket yourself.

A much better option is to find a cricket expert, a coach, and ask him to teach you the game.

The coach will teach you the Laws of Cricket and show you how to be a striker, how to play as a fielder and how to bowl. He will teach you how to hold the bail, make your run up and use your wrist in your bowling delivery. He will have you practice the techniques you need to become the best cricket player you can be in the shortest amount of time.

The same is true of just about any activity you want to learn.

If you want to play piano, you find a good piano instructor who will teach you the rules of playing good piano. You will learn and practice the scales, then play works ranging from simple to complex.

In basketball, the coach will teach you how to dribble and shoot the ball, and how to play defense. He will also teach you other rules of thumb of the game—like not making long, cross-court passes.

Knowing and practicing the rules will make you a better pianist or basketball player than if you tried to figure it out on your own.

We all know that the best way to learn anything is to find an expert, a master of that activity, who can teach us the rules we need to be good at that activity. If we listen and practice those rules, we might become masters of that activity ourselves.

A master of an activity is one who intuitively understands all aspects of the activity and how they fit together. A master can feel the flow of the activity and can see where things are going, how things are unfolding, long before others.

Take Michael Jordan on the basketball court or Wayne Gretzky on the ice.

Jordan and Gretzky were accomplished masters of their sports. They knew where all the other players were, how they were playing together (or not), and therefore intuitively felt the flow and direction of the game. They knew when opportunities were opening or closing. They could feel to a split second when the ball or puck had to be passed or shot. They had great vision. They knew what was going to happen in the game before anyone else did.

When you are really good at your sport or music or art or writing—when you have learned and demonstrated everything about that activity—you become a master. As a master, you get artistic license to experiment with the rules. You can experiment by playing the musical piece in different ways. You can experiment with color in new ways on the canvas.

As a master, you are in the best position to teach—to coach—others on that activity.

In the Wisdom Paradigm, rules are really the wisdom of the masters expressed in a simplified way to help us become good at something as quickly as possible.

Good at raising a family. Good at work. Good at cricket.

And, with enough commitment, practice and perseverance, good at life.

In the Wisdom Paradigm, rules exist to help you become good.

FREEDOM

Freedom has several important meanings in the Wisdom Paradigm.

First, we must have freedom to pursue Truth and goodness. Wisdom requires being free to make and learn from mistakes.

Second, freedom in the Wisdom Paradigm means freedom from the vices and addictions that can so easily own us. The more you practice the virtues, the less likely you are to be caught up in life-destroying addictions like drug use, alcoholism, gambling or sex addiction. Freedom means freedom from the chains of addiction.

Finally, we all possess different qualities, talents and interests. Some people have talents and interests that make them good physicians. Others possess talents and interests to be business people, serve their nation in the military or public safety, or be artists, parents, coaches, ministers or practice a trade.

In earlier times, people were often limited by class structure, race, ethnicity or education in the work they could pursue, and the talents they could develop.

A big part of achieving fulfillment in life is the opportunity—the freedom—to pursue your talents and interests. The freedom to pursue your life in terms of your talents is where fulfillment and Happiness are maximized. It is the place where the greatest discoveries and insights about life occur.

It is important that people have the freedom to develop their talents and pursue their interests.

In the Wisdom Paradigm, freedom means the freedom to make mistakes, freedom from addiction and freedom to pursue your path to Happiness.

Most important, Happiness is only possible and meaningful if it is the result of our own free choice to become good. That means you must be free to choose goodness and Happiness.

WRAP UP

So let’s wrap up these last three blogs on the Wisdom Paradigm before we begin learning about the Modern Paradigm.

No matter what time or culture, the Wisdom Paradigm argues that all people have the same human nature, and therefore the same destination and purpose in life: Happiness.

Happiness is all about high-quality relationships. People in good relationships are not only happier in life, they are healthier and live longer.

Our destination, our purpose, in life is Happiness. Reason tells us how to get there. Reason tells us to practice virtues like honesty, justice, courage and love to become a good person, have good relationships and achieve Happiness.

There is an objective morality with moral facts—like it’s a fact that the Holocaust was wrong. Reason tells us it is a fact that if we practice the virtues, we will become good, have good relationships and have the best chance for Happiness in life.

Each of us is the lead character in the story of our own lives. Your life is the story of how you use your unique gifts and talents to build relationships, and achieve goodness and Happiness.

Everything we think and do in life should be focused on goodness, relationships and Happiness. That includes work, family, church, athletics and hobbies.

The best relationships are covenant relationships where the good of the individual and the team are the same. The more you put into the team, the more you develop wisdom, teamwork and leadership. The more the team invests in you, the better the team gets. Covenant relationships are the highest-trust, highest-performance and highest stability relationships possible.

Finally, in the Wisdom Paradigm, we seek the Truth about life by pursuing Wisdom—the combination of knowledge and character. The process of developing wisdom is called formation.

The more you know and live the Wisdom Paradigm, the better you will understand and life and the better prepared you will be for good relationships and Happiness.

You will understand human nature and covenant relationships, and be in the best position possible for leadership and success at work.

And you will be in the best position possible—whether its at work or with your family—to lead others to success and Happiness as well.

___________

For the last few thousand years, the fundamental concepts of the Wisdom Paradigm have been the core of most of the world’s great religions, philosophies and cultures. This is certainly true of Western civilization, the Judeo-Christian religions and most of the classical philosophy upon which Western civilization is grounded.

I am not arguing that a Western civilization ever historically contained or successfully embodied all these ideas at the same time. Far from it. Most communities lived aspects of the Wisdom Paradigm while also inheriting or accepting characteristics that were inconsistent with the paradigm.

The Wisdom Paradigm has been the dominant understanding of life across cultures for thousands of years. That changes in the 1500’s and 1600’s when religious wars devastate Europe. Those wars force people to take a hard look at life, society and what they believe.

The result is a new way of understanding life—the Modern Paradigm—that deeply influences Europe and Western cultures into the 20^th century.

This new, Modern Paradigm, is going to change the foundation of thinking about life from purpose plus reason to just reason alone.

The Modern Paradigm will bury our understanding of life as a unified whole and teach us to live split lives, separating our public, work life from our private, personal life.

And the Modern philosophers will move from covenant relationships where what’s good for you and what’s good for the team are the same, to contract relationships where what’s good for you and what’s good for the team are opposite.

There’s much more to this new Modern Paradigm which will fundamentally challenge the Wisdom Paradigm as the best way to understand and live life.

Stay tuned for the next session.

I’m Pete Bowen.