Blog theme--seeking wisdom

I've been talking with people about my newly created blog, and someone suggested to me that to write a good one, you need to have a theme. This is a great idea. One theme could be reflections on my work and experiences in Taiwan. But I'm currently not in Taiwan. So, at present I am more interested in the process of analyzing, writing, and reflecting. This is what I am doing in my "job" as teacher and adviser at the University of Oklahoma. And what comes from and through this process is the theme of "wisdom." How can wisdom be pursued, understood, and conceptualized? This is my theme.

My first reflection comes from notes taken from a wonderful book, Senses of Place (1996). Edited by Steven Feld and Keith Basso. The second chapter in this book, by Basso, is titled "Wisdom sits in Places." In it Basso discusses the process of learning and understanding wisdom from the point of view of the Western Apache of the Cibecue reservation. Below I'm pasting notes from this chapter:

What if scholars, such as those in the field of Communication, saw the world as the Apache do? How would this affect how they study communicative practice and belief? Would they be interested in the thoughts and behaviors of 18-25 year olds, who are mostly unmarried, who are not financially independent, who have limited life experience? No. This is a highly unlikely group of people one would look to if you were interested in pursuing, acquiring, and understanding wisdom. It would also mean that you would not want to look for the medium response, those within one standard deviation of the norm. Those who are considered wise are the few; hence they cannot be the norm. Rather, you would want to study the exceptional.

Now here is the Apache understanding of wisdom, a "folk theory" of the mind:

On page 71 Basso lays out this ethnotheory of wisdom: “Apache conceptions of wisdom differed markedly from those contained in Western ideologies. . . . Apache conceptions were grounded in an informal theory of mind which asserts that wisdom arises from a small set of antecedent conditions. Because these conditions are also qualities of mind, and because they vary from mind to mind, the theory explains why some people are wiser than others.”

Wisdom is a “heightened mental capacity that facilitates the avoidance of harmful events by detecting threatening circumstances when none are apparent.” It is “produced and sustained” by three mental conditions: smoothness of mind, resilience of mind, and steadiness of mind. “Each must be cultivated in a conscientious manner by acquiring relevant bodies of knowledge and applying them critically to the workings of one’s mind. Knowledge of places and their cultural significance is crucial in this regard because it illustrates with numerous examples the mental conditions needed for wisdom as well as the practical advantages that wisdom confers on persons who confess it.”

Such knowledge is contained in stories “attributed to the ancestors” that are symbolically linked to and expressed through places. Furthermore, wisdom is “present in varying degrees” “and only a few persons are ever completely wise.” Those with such wisdom have “unusual mental powers” and “are able to foresee disaster, fend off misfortune, and avoid explosive conflicts with other persons. For these and other reasons, they are highly respected and often live to be very old.”

We see in the above a number of cause and effect relationships:

Those who are “wise” are those with a heightened mental capacity that is “smooth, resilient, and steady.” They have acquired (through cultivation) knowledge of places and stories of the ancestors. This knowledge, which they understand, has the effect of serving them well, marked by the ability to avoid and fend off a host of problems.