Wisdom/Curriculum

T. S. Eliot asked:

This Applied Wisdom Curriculum is being designed by asking how we can best prepare ourselves to solve the great universal problems that prevent us from realizing and enjoying all that is most important in life. Knowledge has not been enough; we need the broad scope, human perspective, and good judgment of wisdom.

Shih-Ying Yang writes: “In the last analysis, individual actualization of conceptions of wisdom in real life, and the positive impact of these wise decisions and actions, may be the vehicle of the advance of human civilizations.”^[1]

This curriculum is based on the simple premise: If folly brings us problems, then perhaps wisdom can bring us solutions. The goal of the curriculum is to help you develop a tough mind and a tender heart.

Attribution: User lbeaumont created this resource and is actively using it. Please coordinate future development with this user if possible.

Pursuit of well-being is the unifying theme for these courses, eudaimonia.

The collection of wise affirmations can help you live more wisely each day. The Wise Living Toolkit assembles various resources that can help you live wisely.

Please choose courses from this curriculum and study them in any order that suits your interests. The Living Wisely course calls on these courses in a particular sequence intended to allow each new course to build upon concepts learned from previous courses. The currently available courses are listed below in that sequence.

• Wisdom for the ages - Practical advice for living wisely
• The Virtues — Attaining intrinsically valuable character traits
• Social Skills — Building Relationships
• Earning Trust — Relying on Another
• Unmasking the True Self — Exploring the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves
• Practicing Dialogue — Thinking Together
• Clarifying values — What we find most important
• What Matters — Identifying what is truly most significant to you, your family, community, nation, and world.
• Sleep Soundly — Attaining essential rest and restoration
• Stoic joy — Seeking tranquility.
• Courses from the Clear Thinking curriculum. — Become more accurate and consistent in thinking.
  • Facing Facts — Embracing Reality
  • Evaluating Evidence — Seeking Reality
    • Media Literacy — Identifying reliable sources
  • Seeking True Beliefs — Excellence in the Quest for Knowledge
  • Exploring Worldviews — Challenging our deeply embedded assumptions
  • Deductive Logic — Tools for evaluating consistency
  • Recognizing Fallacies — Describing inconsistencies
  • Thinking Scientifically — Reliable ways of knowing
  • Knowing How You Know — Developing and applying your own Theory of Knowledge.
  • Intellectual Honesty — Seeking Real Good Together
  • Socratic Methods — Seeking real good by questioning beliefs
    • Street Epistemology — Exploring the basis for belief
  • Exploring Social Constructs — Constructing Reality
• Finding Common Ground — Aligning concepts with reality
• Natural Inclusion — Experiencing the world from nature.
• Beyond Theism — A real basis for hope
• Global Perspective — Applying our Wisdom to meet the Grand Challenges
• Courses from the Emotional Competency curriculum:
  • Emotional Competency — Developing the essential social skills to recognize, interpret, and respond constructively to emotions in yourself and others.
  • Studying Emotional Competency — a path for studying the emotional competency material
  • Dignity — Improving our world by learning to preserve dignity for all people
  • Recognizing Emotions — Know how you feel
  • Forming beliefs — Evaluating what you accept as true
  • Resolving Anger — Resolving an urgent plea for justice and action
  • Resolving Dominance Contests — The classic show down
  • Confronting Tyranny — Resisting abusive power
  • Overcoming Hate — Learning acceptance
  • Appraising Emotional Responses — Explaining Events
  • What you can change and what you cannot — Gaining the wisdom to know the difference
  • Attributing Blame — Analyzing Cause and Effect
  • Coping with Ego — Confronting the prime mover
  • Apologizing — Expressing remorse.
  • Forgiving — Choosing to overcome your desire for revenge
  • Foregoing Revenge — Deescalating conflict
  • Communicating Power — Projecting power as we speak
  • Earning Trust — Relying on Another
  • Practicing Dialogue — Thinking Together
  • Candor — Gaining Common Understanding
  • Understanding Fairness — Your interpretation of what is fair is likely to be arbitrary and biased.
  • Transcending Conflict — Resolving contradictory goals
  • Unmasking the True Self — Exploring the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves
  • Finding Equanimity — Calm throughout the storm
  • Cherishing awe — Connecting with vastness
  • Alleviating Loneliness — Reconnecting
  • Creating Communities — Belonging
  • Toward congruence — Attaining alignment and agreement
• Pursuing Collective Wisdom — Improving collaborative decision making.
• Grand Challenges — The great problems and opportunities facing humanity
• Courses from the Possibilities curriculum:
  • Creating Possibilities—Navigating problem space
  • Unleashing Creativity — Welcoming new and useful ideas
  • Thinking Tools — Boosting Imagination
  • Problem Finding — Discovering the real problem
  • Solving Problems—Creating solutions
  • Embracing Ambiguity—Keep thinking
  • Transcending Conflict—Resolving contradictory goals
  • Playing — Enjoyable Activity
  • Envisioning Our Future — Describing your vision of our future.
  • Coming Together—Becoming wiser together
  • Evolving Governments — Unleashing collaboration
• Dignity — Improving our world by learning to preserve dignity for all people
• Wisdom — Choosing Humanity
• Assessing Human Rights — Essential protections for every person
• Moral Reasoning — Knowing what to do
• Living the Golden Rule — Treating others as you want to be treated
  • Understanding the Golden Rule — Treat others only as you consent to being treated in the same situation.
• Practicing Dialogue — Thinking Together
• Understanding Fairness — Your interpretation of what is fair is likely to be arbitrary and biased.
• Transcending Conflict — Resolving contradictory goals
• Limits To Growth — Recognizing the earth is finite
• Envisioning Our Future — Describing your vision of our future.
  • A Journey to GameB — Life as it could be
  • Intentional Evolution — Choosing our future
  • Level 5 Research Center — The Next Big Thing
  • The Wisdom and the Future Research Center — How can we wisely create our future?
• Finding Courage — Value-based action despite temptation.
• Doing Good — Take real good action.
• A Quiet Mind — Controlling Discursive Thought; cultivating Pure Awareness
• Guided Meditations — A selection of guided meditation scripts you may wish to practice.
• Living Wisely — Enjoy seeking real good throughout your life.
• Natural Inclusion — Experiencing the world from nature.

Several of the courses in this applied wisdom curriculum include lectures or assign essays to read as part of the course work. Those lectures and essays are listed here, in alphabetical order.

• Advance no Falsehoods
• Ambiguity breeds schisms
• Aligning Worldviews
• Authentic Humility
• Being 99.9% Ignorant
• Beyond Olympic Gold
• Choosing my beliefs
• Coping with Abundance
• Divided by epistemology
• Does Seeking Real Good Transcend Metamodernism?
• Doubt and our Bayesian Brains
• Earth at One Billion
• Economic Faults
• Fair Enough
• Friendly Persuasion
• From Demagoguery to Dialogue
• Genesis of Debt
• Good Government
• Height of the Eiffel Tower
• How can you change another person?
• Luck, Land, and Legacy
• One World
• Perceptions are Personal
• Pinnacles
• Real, Good Insights
• Reality is our common ground
• Reality is the Ultimate Reference Standard
• Resolving a Vital Paradox
• Science is like a living tree
• Seeking Real Good
• Significance
• Simply Priceless
• Spontaneous Conflict and Deliberate Restraint
• The Hearing
• The role and limitations of scientific reduction
• The World We Want in 2075
• Tobacco Road
• Toward a Global Perspective—seeing through illusion
• Toward Compassion—Unleashing the power of kindness
• Transcending Dogma
• Tyranny of Evidence
• What Fish Don’t See
• What there is
• Wisdom, Intelligence, and Artificial Intelligence

Several research projects are associated with this Applied Wisdom curriculum. These research projects include:

• The wisdom and the future research center
  • Causes of Suboptimal Life Experiences
  • Improving our Social Operating Systems
• The Level 5 Research Center is helping to shape the next big thing.

Related Courses, some still to be developed, include:

• Determining What is
  • Evidence
    • The Tyranny of Evidence
  • Logic and logical fallacies
  • Theory of Knowledge This is now available as the course Knowing How You Know. This course covers many of the topics listed above.
  • Street Epistemology Learning to conduct genuine conversations that examine the foundations of belief.
  • Using the metric system
• Seeking Real Good
  • Scientific Method
  • Taxonomy of Reality
  • Deep Pragmatism
  • Ethics
  • Knowing what to do -- Getting from is to ought.
• Developing Accurate Empathy -- Why are they feeling that way?
• Systems Analysis
• Systems Design
  • Problem Seeking
• Rational Decision making
  • The Analytic Hierarchy Process
  • Using decision matrices
  • Quality Function Deployment
  • Choosing Excellence!
• Critical thinking
• Root cause analysis
• Understanding Risk — Estimating likelihood and consequence.
• Problem solving
• Creativity
• Big History — An integrated history of the universe from the Big Bang to the present
• Emotional Competency
• Marriage Excellence
• The nature of social constructs
• Designing social constructs for greater well-being
  • Debugging Social Constructs
• Money Architectures — exploring implications and alternatives to national fiat currencies.
• Collective Wisdom — This is now available as the course Pursuing Collective Wisdom.
• Forecasting using Bayes Theorem
• Inner Growth
• The wisdom of ubuntu.
• Biomimicry and sustainable design.
• Effecting change - How change propagates, or fails to propagate, through an organization or society.
  • Influencing beliefs

You can help by becoming a student, improving the above list, or by developing one of these courses.

1. ↑ Yang, Shih-Ying. 2001. “Conceptions of Wisdom Among Taiwanese Chinese.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 32(6), November:662-680.