We live in a world awash with information,
but we seem to face a growing scarcity of wisdom
And what is worth we confuse the two.
We believe that have access to more information
produces more knowledge which results in more wisdom.
but if anything the opposite is true.
More and more information
without the proper context and interpretation
only more are understanding from the world rather than enriching it.
This barrage of readily available information
has created an environment where one of the worst social sins
is to appear uninformed.
Ours is a culture where it is enormously embarrassing
not to have an opinion on something
And in order to seem informed
we form our so called opinions hastily
based on fragmentary bits of information and superficial impressions
rather than true understanding.
Knowledge, Emerson wrote, is the knowing that we can not know.
To grasp the importance of this
we first need to define these concepts as a ladder of understanding.
At its base, there is a piece of information
which simply tells us basis fact about the world
Above that is knowledge
the understanding of how different bits of information fit together
to reveal some truth about the world.
knowledge hinges on an active correlation and interpretation.
At the top is Wisdom
which has a moral components.
It is the application of information worth remembering
and knowledge that matters
to understanding not only how the world works
but also how it should work.
And that requires a moral framework of what should and should not matter
As well as an ideal of the world which is highest potentiality.
This is why the storytellers are the more urgently valuable today.
A great storyteller whether a journalist or editor or film maker or creator
help people figure out not only what matters in the world
but also WHY it matters.
A great storyteller dances up the ladder of understanding
from information
to knowledge
to wisdom.
Through symbol, metaphor and association,
storyteller helps interpreting information
integrated with our existing knowledge
and transmute that into wisdom.
Susan Sontag has once said that reading set standards.
Storytelling not only sets standards
but adds its best makes one to live up to them to transcend them.
A great story then is not about providing information,
though it can certainly inform.
A great story invites an expansion of understanding
a self transcendence
More than that, it plants to seed for it
and makes it impossible to do anything but growing your understanding
of the world, of place in it
of ourselves, of some subtle or monumental aspect of existence.
At a time when information is increasingly cheap
and wisdom increasingly expensive.
This is the gap is where modern storytellers value lives.
I think of it this way..
Information is having a library of books and ship building
Knowledge applies that to building a ship
Access to the information...to the books
is a perquisite for the knowledge
but not a guarantee of it.
Once you build your ship,
wisdom is what allow you to sail it without sinking
to protect it from the storm that groups up from the horizon
in the dead of the night
to point just so that the wind breathes life into its sails.
Moral wisdom helps to tell the difference between the
right direction and the wrong direction in steering the ship
A great storyteller is the kindly captain
who sails her ship with tremendous wisdom and boundless courage
who points its nose in the direction of horizons and world chosen
with unflinching idealism and integrity
who brings a somewhat closer to the answer
to our particular answer to that grand question
By Dina Mohamed