WISDOM AND MODESTY

In our current culture, which reveres information, knowledge and expertise, wisdom is usually seen as an especially acute intelligence. Human cultures are specific sets of beliefs and collective wisdom, developed and accumulated through time. Human attention and knowledge are becoming increasingly focused, but we need wide views, understanding, and wisdom to survive as a species. In our intoxication with the near future, we are losing the layered wisdoms of time and past life. The world of art is a field of endless present tense and interaction, and the history of art is an irreplaceable source of estheticized wisdom and grace. Imagination is an integral part of wisdom, as the wise person is capable of imagining and imaginatively living potential situations without words and concepts. Wisdom is primarily an existential gift – it arises from existential poetic and ethical intuition – and it is undoubtedly the highest and rarest of human qualities.