Climate Movement Values: Wisdom
Introductory Series Post #10.6
There is an ineffable quality to wisdom. It can come from experience, but not all gain wisdom from experience. Some also seem to be predisposed to having wisdom, as if born wise, or born gaining much more wisdom from experience than others.
What is wisdom?
For us wisdom is the ability to discern:
how to balance our values with one another and the circumstances;
the best course of action to take when what choice to make isn’t clear;
how to balance organic and strategic change;1
gifts and abilities in others;
our limits;
who can be trusted;
when to take risks;
when to compromise, and when not to;
when to retreat, regroup, and live to fight another day.
All of this is essential for a movement to be victorious.
We think of wisdom primarily as something an individual has. But wisdom can also be found in a group such as your Climate Action Team.2
Wisdom also helps us maintain our integrity. It keeps us true to ourselves, to who we are called to be. Wisdom helps us know when a compromise costs too much and retreat is the better path.
Wisdom isn’t clairvoyance. It doesn’t know the future. It doesn’t always get things right. The world is too complex for that. But wisdom improves our odds of taking the right course of action towards ultimate victory while maintaining our integrity.
Wisdom guides us in our search for victory with integrity.
So, in a nutshell: wisdom guides us in our search for victory with integrity. This is a profound source of inspiration for action. It’s hard to beat a victory with integrity, and when we do achieve it we want more.
And those are the kind of victories a moral movement like the Climate Movement must have. For if we lose our integrity we will cause great damage to our ability to achieve our vision, purpose and Major Goal. If we heed not wisdom and lose our integrity we will steal our own hope.
But if we follow wisdom’s counsel we can begin to emerge from the fog of confusion and uncertainty and see what the next step should be, and the next and the next until our path is clearer and we are running the race that leads to victory as we make hope happen and turn our vision into reality. Wisdom is an essential guide in making the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful as we make our future come faster. Join us!
Remember to check out the other posts in this Introductory Series, including the values of Love, Justice, Beauty, Freedom, and Creativity. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.
Balancing organic and strategic change is one of the seven characteristics/imperatives/goals of the Climate Movement, and will be discussed more fully in upcoming posts in our Olympian Fields of Action Series.
I will have more to say about Climate Action Teams in upcoming posts. Stay tuned!