The HOW project
HarmonizingOurWisdom

Peace by PEACE & CARE-ROOTS!


Born here 050415. Born again 060727.

Please participate! This is an experiment. I want to see if we can start to HarmonizeOurWisdom using a method suggested by a very short story called "Stone Soup". In the story, some hungry men, with only a stone to offer, tricked some innocent villagers into making a very hearty soup. All they did was invite them to help them make some 'stone soup'. The curious villagers willingly provided a kettle & some water. Then their curiosity did the rest! So, what I want us to do is to try to make some 'SURVIVAL Soup'! Our survival may depend on it!

In this experiment, this invitation is like the stone they started with. This webpage is like 'the kettle & the water' in which the 'soup' is prepared. Then, after the first 'stone' (the invitation) is put in the 'pot', all the rest of us will need to do is just to keep adding (like the villagers did) our own 'speciality flavoring' (our own bits of wisdom) to the 'pot'! The more different flavors we get, the richer will be the result!

Now, according to my dictionary, "wisdom involves sound judgment & the ability to apply what has been acquired mentally to the conduct of one's affairs." But that definition doesn't satisfy me completely!
Here's what I would add:
Wisdom is also what actually worked (at least once) to make the world a better place for all life!
Unfortunately, wisdom can never guarantee that what worked once will ever work as well again!
I'm sorry, but that is just the way the world works as far as I can tell. And here's why. There are over 6 billion of us doin', doin', doin' all the time & none of us can ever know in advance what will result when your doin' interacts with my doin'.

So wisdom can only be a wise starting-point for future projects.
We will all always have to wait&see the actual results before we can tell if it really was wisdom!

So, as we make our 'soup', we must 'taste' it often. Wisdom can be determined only by testing!

Here are some of my 'starting-point wisdoms':

Number one on my list is avoid absolutely all arrogance about our knowledge of the future! Why? Because to claim (when we differ about the future) that I am right & you are wrong, completely ignores one of the most fundamental aspects of the reality we are all immersed in. The future (our future) is always uncertain! It is physically impossible for us to predict the details of our future with any accuracy. That's why I always recommend a patient, open-minded wait&see policy. That's also why I have made it a rule in my life to welcome every disagreement as an opportunity to refine the accuracy of my own understandings of reality! If you don't believe me, try me. ( rex.barger@hwcn.org)

It is important for us all to review our experience of reality often (& in depth) so we are able to put our current understandings of that reality into words. Yes, we need to talk about our understandings so that we can be refining them continually.

[I believe that we can tell when our understandings are becoming more accurate when we experience a sudden jolt in our nervous system (sometimes called an "Ah-ha!" moment).]




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