FACTS, INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE AND WISDOM

There is a process by which we humans progress in our handling of intelligence. When you read this, ask yourself where you are operating on the scale of processing the nature of the world through your own intelligence.

We operate from our senses, however many there are. I know there are the usual five, but psychological feeling and intuition can add to those as inputs to our thought process, and imagination may also fit in there somewhere. This already brings us to eight senses, if we choose to see things that way!

These are sources of the elements that we begin to process. We could consider them data, of which some are facts, some are opinions, some are impressions. Do we really know which are which - and is there really a difference? Can we really trust what we think we see, any more than we trust what we emotionally feel? To wonder about these may be the beginning of wisdom!

Facts are of no value in themselves, unless we put them into a framework, or context. Then they become information. If I say "A jeep is heading for a fence", that may be a fact (or not) but it gives you no context. If I say "Your son's Jeep is heading for your fence", suddenly the context makes it information for you.

Now, if you take the latter 'information', and add to it the meanings that you have attached to those things, both what your son means to you, what the Jeep means (e.g., a brand-new, valuable possession) and the fence (which you just rebuilt yesterday) and it becomes critical knowledge to you, especially if you have time to act on it in the moment.

When we can place knowledge into a wider philosophy, that becomes wisdom. Knowing when you should take quick action, and when there is no point, allows a certain level of calm that can be brought to all things in life. The essence of wisdom is to see the connectedness between all things, including between ourselves and the wider universe around us. When our sense of isolation and separation is seen as an illusion of the senses, then we have a new way to interpret and bring meaning to all that we see.