Cultivating your Wisdom Ecosystem
Grown-ups growing up
Hello wise souls,
Hedge School is devoted to cultivating wisdom. A seed in fertile soil tended to by conscious gardeners devoted to growing up in their own lives. The origin of the word wisdom, 'wise' 'dom' is 'learned judgment'. As we grow up in our lives, we come to wisdom through experiences, deep immersion in life, and scaling to new vantage points to see the world through new eyes.
To increase our learned judgment.
Our mission is timeless.
An honourable path.
Hedge School began as a seed which I tend to every week to cultivate my own learned judgment. This has led me to explore deeply how wisdom is cultivated. Over the next two weeks, I will share some of the vantage points which have led to my own development
Building your Wisdom Ecosystem
Jean Piaget is one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th Century. His impact on the fields of education, growth, and development has been tremendous. He believed that the "mind is best understood as an evolving organism-living, growing, and self-regulating in a metabolic relationship to its environment."
We are nature nested in nature.
The origin of the word 'nature' is to be born. Nature is born into nature. We as an organism are born into a dynamic relationship with our environment. For many of us today, this relationship is fractured.
Disconnected. And so the first step towards cultivating wisdom is the repair of that relationship. For nature is a magical teacher.
Piaget's thinking lead to the concept of the 'mind as an ecosystem'. It is this metaphor that I will use to frame our path to increasing learned judgment.
Viewing our minds as an ecosystem gives us a lens to place our own thinking. A lens to capture a snapshot of where our thinking is. As well as possible paths to explore to develop that thinking.
Over the next two weeks, I am going to unpack the following components of our wisdom ecosystem
Organisms
Place
Relationships
Agency
Birth and Death
Universal Laws
Organisms
Contained in an ecosystem are organisms co-existing. Each organism is deliberately unique and individual but nested in relationship with each other and with place. Growth is the desired outcome. Our interaction with each other through relationship impacts the growth of all players. For better or if the relationship is off, for worse. Growth for us is learning. Implicit (aka indirect) and explicit learning (known) are always happening.
You are deliberately unique. Your path of growth is deliberately unique. You are a whole ecosystem and part of the whole ecosystem. You are in a constant relationship with the other organisms and places surrounding you. This is important to know. You have your own personal reality that is constructed based on your experiences and growth.
But your reality is only one truth.
You take in reams of information, both consciously and unconsciously. And from that information, your brain constructs your perceived reality. You interpret the world through what Lisa Feldmann Barrett calls conceptual lenses. Our brains reconstruct reality based on our experiences in the environment. These concepts are how we make sense of the world. When we are younger, we have fewer conceptual lenses to make sense of the world as we have had fewer experiences in the world. As we grow older, we have a richer palette of experiences and conceptual lenses to draw from.
Learned judgment comes from continuing to expand this portfolio.
For when we have no concept for an experience, we are blind to that experience. So the first path to cultivating wisdom is increasing the range of experiences that we have. And doing so with the knowledge that this is only one truth. We are blind to a lot of what goes on in our environment (I'll unpack this more next week when we talk about intuition).
To reduce our blindness, we need diversity amongst our ecosystem.
We need others. The following are some lines of inquiry for you to sit with.
Who are the other organisms in your ecosystem?
Who are the thinkers that you interact with?
What is the result of your interaction with them?
What is the impact of your interaction with them?
An important role in our wisdom ecosystem is the role of the Gardener. Or the Steward. Throughout history, Shamans have typically played this role. When we reach the edge of our current learned judgment, the shaman provides the wise counsel and transformative energy for you to initiate (aka begin) the transition from your old way of being to new growth.
Who meets you at the edge of your limits and provides this anchoring and energy?
Personally, Jiro Taylor has been a constant in my own journey. His insight cuts like a katana laced with love. And I am forever different as a result. And forever grateful.
Find your Gardeners to help tend to your growth. We need others to grow.
Diversity Matters
How diverse is your ecosystem?
A thriving ecosystem is a diverse one. A space where the dynamic dance of relationships ebbs and flows together. In our wisdom ecosystem, we need to sow diverse seeds. We need to find challenging viewpoints for we are blind to the totality of life through what our brains leave out. We cannot possibly take in all the information available so our brains make salient (or important) the information that best suits us.
We miss things deliberately.
It's a design feature that allows us to cope with the reams of data available. This is where we need diversity. We need other vantage points to help us see more. Our ability to tolerate dissonance and confusion is a sign of development. Confusion is a sign you are on your way. Being able to walk in another's shoes builds empathy. Which builds symbiotic relationships. Relationships that help us see beyond our blindness.
Place Matters
Learning is always situated in place. The place that holds us is beyond a venue. It is a container for transformation. We are in relationship with place. In the world of psychedelic-assisted treatment, set and setting are two pivotal pieces needed for transformation.
Set is our intention. The energy we give the growth we seek.
Setting is where we are situated. Transformation occurs in place. Where the person undergoing the change and the environment are both different as a result.
Where are the places that hold you?
When we are held in place, in rich crucibles of learning, our transformation is targeted through constraint. For the caterpillar, the chrysalis holds the energy of the transformation that is taking place. It enables growth to occur. To increase our learned judgment, we must honour the places where growth occurs. This for you may be an online community. It might be a garden. A library.
Be deliberate with where you situate your learning. In every environment, there is conscious and unconscious learning going on. The sensory factors at play are incredibly important. The sounds, lighting, ambiance are all important players.
How we transition to these places is important. Recently, my cousin Billy (shout out to a true wisdom seeker) returned from a Vipassana retreat. This transformative experience yielded rich growth for him. And the setting was deliberately intentional. It played a key role in his growth as a result. The container helped channel the energy required for dissolution. The energy required to shed the skin of old. So we can step into the new form.
Take note of the places you interact with.
What role do they play for you?
Are you present in their presence?
Do they have an entropic (negative) or syntropic (positive) impact on your growth as a wisdom cultivator?
Are you aware of the relationship that you have with each place?
Different environments suit different transformations.
Be deliberate with where you situate your learning. Be in communion with these places. Hold them in reverence. Rekindle your relationship with nature. Allow nature to hold the continuous birthing of your nature.
Get to know the organisms in your ecosystem. Get to know the nature you are nested in. Be in communion with them. This helps set the scene for transformation to occur.
Next week we will have a closer look at Relationship, Agency, and Growth. This is the energetic transformation that takes place in the ecosystem.
In other news, I’ve just recently launched a new online course on Gumroad. Mental Models for Optimised Thinking and Sensemaking is available for purchase by clicking on the below image. Clear explanations and practical application are the name of the game here.
Till next week,
Steve