Quote of the Day - 04/03/2012

Usually we think of wisdom in terms of lofty abstractions, not survival skills, absolute truths, not tactful equivocations. - Mary Catherine Bateson in Composing a Life

~~~~~

Today’s quote prompts some thinking about wisdom. I’ve diagramed the quote in green in the mindmap below.

'Lofty abstractions' and 'absolute truths' are on the right and somehow seem more commonly associated with wisdom than 'survival skills' and 'tactful equivocations' shown on the left. We think of wisdom as the highest level of knowing (i.e. the sequence being data --> information --> knowledge --> wisdom) but do we recognize it in all the forms it takes?