EP 3662 Knowledge vs Wisdom

0:00Hey guys, welcome to today's podcast, so he's episode knowledge versus wisdom. So knowledge is knowing what to do, wisdom is knowing whether to do it. I think obviously it is two things, whether you have knowledge or you have wisdom, there are two separate things and unfortunately I think quite a few people might have reason on knowledge about a thing, not many people seem to develop wisdom on those things. And wisdom by virtue of life experience increases with age, of course. I realise now I have far greater wisdom in my own humble opinion, which is probably not very humble at all, than I did a number of years ago. I have far greater wisdom than I certainly did 30 years ago when I was 25, Jesus, that makes me sound old, 26. But when I look at, and as a side note, as a side note, I didn't develop the wisdom

1:02consciously until the last few years. And even then my focus wasn't consciously on developing wisdom, my focus was on trying to evolve and become more effective as a person, for the end goal of having more peace and or happiness. So for me now, knowledge on things is important, like as I get older and older I develop more of a thirst for knowledge. I love learning new things, I love understanding things, I love, you know, understand the nuance of different things, just knowledge is something I really enjoy, and I certainly enjoy developing. Wisdom is a more recent, and probably the last, I don't know, 10 years, where I've actually been focused more intensely or single-mindedly focused on actually trying to develop the wisdom. And I wouldn't have always called wisdom. It's just like knowledge, skill, experience, understanding, it's nuance of different

2:07things, these are all the things that I can see that as wisdom. And what I find as my life continues in the direction of this heading, where I feel very fortunate to have a life that I really enjoy, it's quite peaceful, I have amazing people around me, I'm very particular in the way that I do certain things. I'm someone that works pretty solidly, I'm just being somebody who understands myself, better understands how I do things, more effectively understand why I do things, understand why other people do things. It's just this incessant sort of drive and understanding of human nature and how that interacts and how that works. And as a result, I think I developed more and more wisdom. That's just because I have slowed down enough to really get the understanding at the point that I have a reasonable amount of knowledge, but it doesn't make me good at executing that knowledge in any effective way.

3:09So it's sort of a little bit of a done-in-creator effect, where people who know a little bit about something, I think they're geniuses, but the more people learn about things, the more you realise what you don't know. So for me, that's absolutely the case, as I go through life learning more and more about things on my holy shit, there's so much I'm going to clue about. That many years ago, I probably would have considered I was pretty smart with, and that's just the virtue of a little bit of age and a lot more wisdom, and a lot more in a comparative sense than what I had before, which was a fuck all. And the thing that I find really interesting with a lot of people is, they don't seem to have a lot of wisdom. They seem to have a lot of ideas, they seem to have a lot of half-formed ideas, a lot of ideas that aren't based in any evidence or fact, that really don't have any ability to withstand a reasonable amount of scrutiny or pressure. Their ideas fall apart as soon as you get below the surface level, and that will be people who have ticked up as their primary source of geopolitical information, for example.

4:11I'm using that example, based on my daughter, who's 18, when she was 17, she's been 16 I come in and out. I went downstairs to a room one day and there was one of her friends, one of her girlfriends who was a beautiful kid, Molly. And her Molly is sitting there and my daughter says, I don't know, Trump's trash. I said, is he done? I said, what makes you say that? She has eyes on it on TikTok, I was like, that is a great place for you to get to a geopolitical information. So because I'm sure my darling, there is great nuance in their perspective on the policies and the behaviour of Donald Trump, she goes, what? I said exactly. And she just looks at me and goes, whatever bro, he's trash, I was like, yeah, cool. And my gorgeous 16, I think your old daughter at that time is just a beautiful young woman. But unfortunately, there are plenty of people who are 40, 60's of age that have a similar level of wisdom or execution of their knowledge or depth of knowledge around particular circumstances.

5:11I don't give a shit whether you like Donald Trump or not, it's irrelevant to me. To me, the things that I believe in, it's probably not even the right word, I would suggest I'm probably more driven towards understanding something than even believing in it these days. I understand that there are nuances and decisions made on particular circumstances around all sorts of topics that are just based on what's the better situation at the time in the opinion of a particular person or group of people. It was a very weird statement. But so basically, I look at it and think, you know what, I'm not sure, I don't believe many things. I think I understand a few things and I continue to educate myself so I have a better understanding because I believe to me is a dangerous thing. The belief is the knowledge. Belief is knowledge. You're like, I have a knowledge about a thing and I believe it to be your way and that's the way it is and it's black and white and it's very, can be very tribal, can be very polarising

6:15as we have with left and right politics in Australia or the US or wherever. Whereas to me, the believing in the knowledge is the part that's dangerous, the understanding in the wisdom which go hand in hand. I think what's the most important. I want to understand things better. I want to understand things. I want to have the wisdom around them. The knowledge to know a thing or believe a thing by very definition of the words. I don't know many things. I have some understanding of it, I have some beliefs, I have some opinions, but I'm also very open for those opinions to be challenged because the knowledge, you know, is the knowledge is information on the thing, I guess the wisdom is the understanding of the thing and the understanding of when it should or shouldn't be used or how it's best affected or not or executed or not. And this can be around the simplest things that are most difficult and complicated global things. So for instance, I look at my life and go, cool, I'm pretty good, I've reached more

7:19knowledge on physical violence in the sense of I've been in a lot of physical altercation as I've got. I'm doing Jiu-Jitsu, I've done some Muta-ai, I know a little bit about fighting, so I've a reason for that knowledge. But what's more important is the wisdom on when to use that. That answer is rarely. I use it in Jiu-Jitsu classes, but I don't use it in the supermarket when someone is frustrating with it. That's the wisdom. And then the knowledge to understand what's right and wrong around a particular idea or ideal societally. But then the wisdom to go, well, what's the nuance and how do I understand that better so I can understand the execution of it or how that plays out in my life or what that is liable to create for me and just so many far more important and intricate nuance understandings of things that I just can't have on a great, huge, broad range of topics.

8:22And it's funny to me when I talk to people, I'm thinking of someone particularly in my life at the moment, who has very strong ideas on many things, but their knowledge is about five millimetres deep. In the minute that I push back on any of the ideas and go, no, I absolutely disagree because I've seen this and that and the other thing, they're like, oh, well, well, and they don't know. And I think it's a little bit of a, you know, what's the nightly news, read the newspaper, listen to a, you know, a particular viewpoint on a podcast even, and that's what is the basis of all of your belief system. If I had one source of information that I took all of my knowledge from, then I would naturally be calibrated towards that person or that institution's belief and wisdom around a particular thing. So if you, it is to absolutely expand your knowledge, but more importantly, work on your understanding and wisdom of things, how does it apply? What's it mean from your own viewpoint and your own life?

9:23It's a little bit of an esoteric topic this one, but I think it's so important. People get, you know, snippets or they hear headlines or whatever and they just keep spitting that shit back out and you're like, what the fuck are you talking about? You've got no idea what that is. So if you don't have the wisdom and understanding of a topic, maybe shut up. It's a simple, simple concept. Have an epic day. I hope you enjoyed this episode, always remember, if you want the results, you have to do the work. If you want to know more about how I can help you and my story, go to www.thupstronglifeproject.com.