What is wisdom?

Wisdom is essentially the ability to discern right action and take right action. When King Solomon, often considered the wisest man to ever live, prayed to God for wisdom, God told him he had asked for, “understanding to discern what is right.” (1 Kings 3:11). He gave Solomon the ability to “discern good from evil” (1 Kings 3:9) and take the best action to help not only himself, but also his people.

What Does Wisdom Require?

Wisdom grows from experience. When you have an experience and you process and understand it, you gain wisdom from it.

As such, wisdom requires a deep humility. You need an understanding that you don’t know everything, either about yourself or about life or about the people with whom you’re interacting. You need a learner’s mindset to get the most from the experiences of your life.

Even more than that, wisdom requires a bone-deep understanding of the fact that you and everyone around you has the same immeasurable and intrinsic worth. You are worth the same as anyone else, not more and not less. When Solomon prayed for wisdom, he couched his prayer in a deep desire to do right for his people. He did not consider himself better than them, even though he was their king. Rather, he considered them to have incalculable worth of their own.

So why does wisdom matter?

Why is Wisdom Important: Wisdom Helps Us to Respond Rather Than React

The difference between responding and reacting is simple. When you respond, you’re taking what your spirit tells you is right action. When you react, you’re letting your ego run the show. 

Let’s say that your wife tells you that you spend too many hours at the office and she misses you. A reaction might be to lash out at her out of wounded pride. A response would be to listen to her and work to craft a solution that meets both of your needs.

When we react to a situation, we hurt ourselves and others. We lash out, burn bridges, and dump our emotional triggers on other people instead of handling them internally. Reacting to a situation makes our internal landscape worse, because it causes guilt and regret and anger and pain. Reacting also makes our external lives worse, by hurting our relationships with others. And finally, reacting has a high probability of hurting others.

Reacting essentially means: to take action without letting wisdom inform your action. Wisdom is important because it’s an antidote to reactivity.

Wisdom gives us the strength and the courage to respond rather than to react. The (often painful) experiences that go into building wisdom grant us perspective. The ego thinks that every problem is like the bite of a great white shark: it requires instant, angry, defensive action to relieve the pain. But perspective shows us that most problems are small, and even the larger problems are generally not life-threatening.

Wisdom helps us to see most problems as more like the bite of a puppy; they may not be pleasant, but they’re not life-threatening and they don’t require an immediate defensive reaction. This sense of perspective that wisdom brings can help us take a step back and deal with problems constructively rather than reactively.

Wisdom is also important because it helps us discern the right action to take. If you’re fighting with your partner, then the right action can resolve the conflict in a way that makes both peoples’ lives better. The wrong action can sow discord and animosity. The same is true if you’re debating leaving your job, considering buying a house, or dealing with a child throwing a tantrum. The right action will help yourself and the people close to you, and the wrong action can hurt yourself and the people close to you.

By accumulating experiences and by actively processing those experiences, you can develop a deep well of wisdom that informs your life choices and helps you take the right action.

Why Is Wisdom Important: Wisdom Helps Us Use the Powerful Tools of the 21st Century Well

In an interview with Valuetainment, clinical psychologist and former Harvard professor Jordan Peterson talks about the tremendous power of social media to harm ourselves and others.

One study, published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, looked at 143 students at the University of Pennsylvania to identify whether or not social media use was driving loneliness, anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues. The study put these students into two groups–one was told to keep using social media the same way they always had, and the second group reduced their social media time to 30 minutes per day. The second group saw substantial improvements in their mental health.

“What we found overall is that if you use less social media, you are actually less depressed and less lonely, meaning that the decreased social media use is what causes that qualitative shift in your well-being,” said Jordyn Young, a co-author of the paper and a senior at the University of Pennsylvania.

Social media lets us hurt ourselves–often without knowing it consciously–by making us more depressed and lonely. It also gives us powerful weapons with which to hurt others.

In his bestselling book The Coddling of the American Mind, social psychologist and New York University professor Jonathan Haidt discusses how teenagers–especially teenage girls–can weaponize social media to hurt peers. Haidt argues that teenagers–especially girls–suffer from what he calls FOBLO, Fear of Being Left Out. Social media lets bullies prey on this fear, for instance by posting pictures of a party on Facebook that they know will be seen by the girls who are not invited. Haidt hypothesizes that this is one reason that depression and suicidal attempts by teenage girls have both skyrocketed in the years since social media became widespread.

However, social media can also be prosocial. Nonprofits use social media to attract donations and raise awareness of the good they do. Facebook groups around mental health (like Mental Health Awareness and Support, with 136,000 members) provide a venue for people who struggle with mental health issues to share advice and receive support.

What’s the difference between using social media to hurt ourselves and hurt others, vs using social media to help ourselves and make the world a better place? In a word, wisdom. Wisdom is important because it helps us discern the right action and use these incredibly powerful tools for good rather than in service of our egos.

Why is Wisdom Important: Wisdom Helps Us Become Tribal Elders

As men, we naturally want to grow into tribal elders and pass on advice to younger men to help them live their best lives.

Wisdom is essential to being able to do this. We can’t just pass on knowledge to the next generation; while knowledge is important, knowledge divorced from experience (facts and statistics, for instance) does not constitute helpful life advice. And even the knowledge that could be helpful is already at young men’s fingertips due to Google.

What we can pass on is wisdom earned through our life experience. For instance, in his bestselling book Twelve Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson discusses a rule that he and his wife have. When they’re in the middle of a fight, they will go into separate rooms and each will identify every way–large or small–that they themselves contributed to the fight. Then they’ll share what they came up with with each other. This rule helps them preserve peace in their marriage.

This is wisdom learned through life experience, which Peterson is passing down to the next generation.

Wisdom is important because it is highly useful, and the wisdom of tribal elders is something that young men crave and need. However, it’s not easy to find–a simple Google search won’t do the trick. Cultivating wisdom gives us something meaningful to pass on to the next generation of men.

Cultivating Wisdom In Your Own Life

At The Evolving Man, we help men to cultivate wisdom. We build healthy, masculine men with a deep body of wisdom they can draw on whenever they need to.

Our online men’s groups put you in a group with other men who are working to build the best version of themselves. Our two leaders are tribal elders with twenty years of experience helping men live into their purpose.

If you’d like to join a men’s group and surround yourself with masculine men who understand the importance of cultivating their own wisdom, reach out today.

Fake news has reached epidemic proportions in the United States. In 2019, the top 100 fake news stories on Facebook were viewed over 150 million times. Millions of Americans have been exposed to such stories as Pizzagate (the idea that the Clintons ran a secret pedophile sex ring), the myth that Donald Trump’s father was a KKK member, and the lie that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar held “Secret Fundraisers With Islamic Groups Tied to Terror.”

Fake news is designed to appeal to our psychology, and the authors hack our brains to make these stories go viral. How do you, as a strong and integrous man, avoid believing and sharing stories that turn out to be false?

How to Stop Fake News Strategy #1: Recognize That the World Is Complex

The world is full of shades of grey, and is unutterably complex. The sheer complexity of a single tree (composed of billions of atoms) or a single human being (with millions of thoughts and memories) should be enough to humble us and beggar belief.

That same complexity holds when it comes to our society. Political events are rarely black and white. In the real world, mass shooters can be Bernie supporters (which doesn’t indict Bernie’s philosophy), race-baiting Donald Trump supported the First Step Act, and even the heroic Martin Luther King had affairs. Life is complex, and complex things are messy.

Fake news, on the other hand, is often tailor-made to look clean. Every detail points towards the same conclusion: that our team are the good guys, and the other team is the bad guys. Jussie Smollett’s faux hate crime is a good example. He alleged that two white men wearing MAGA hats accosted him, shouted racial and homophobic slurs (Smollet is black and gay), and tied a noose around his neck before leaving. Every detail fed neatly into the narrative that in “Trump’s America,” white Republicans would openly harass and assault minorities.

The problem with the story? Smollett made the entire thing up.

If you want to stop the spread of fake news, here’s a rule of thumb. If it sounds too good (i.e. too damning for your opponents) to be true, it probably is.

How to Stop Fake News Strategy #2: See the Humanity In Your Political Opponents

Most humans beings aren’t evil or stupid. Most of our political opponents are good, smart people who happen to see the world differently from us.

Fake news, however, tends to paint our opponents in the absolute worst light. The lie that Bill and Hillary Clinton ran a secret pedophile sex ring is a good example of this. So is the widespread lie that Joe Biden referred to Trump supporters as “Dregs of society.”

When you see a news story, ask yourself, “How stupid or evil would my political opponents have to be for this story to be true?” If the answer is, “very”, then proceed with skepticism.

A caveat here: some political actors do perform evil actions. Donald Trump’s attempted coup on January 6, 2021 is a good example of this. Assuming good intentions in your political opponents is a good rule of thumb, but shouldn’t be taken as an absolute law.

How to Stop Fake News Strategy #3: Be Complete In Yourself

Perhaps the best way to combat the spread of fake news is to be complete in yourself. Be strong, be grounded, and have a sense of identity that’s reliant on who you are, not who your political team is.

The moment we identify ourselves as members of a political team, our brains begin working overtime to “prove” that our team is good and the other team is bad. In his excellent book The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt uses the example of the elephant and the rider. The elephant (our intuitions and preferences) decides that X political team is good—it must be good, since we identify as part of it. The rider (our mind) is then tasked to seek out evidence that supports the elephant’s conclusions.

This can lead to extraordinary mental gymnastics, such as an inability to process information that would be harmful to your “team”. In a New York Times article titled, “The Real Story About Fake News is Partisanship,” Amanda Taub writes, “Americans’ deep bias against the political party they oppose is so strong that it acts as a kind of partisan prism for facts, refracting a different reality to Republicans than to Democrats.” 

Jennifer Jeret, a professor of political science at Stony Brook University, puts it even more bluntly: “You can have very high levels of news coverage of a particular fact or an event and you see little or no learning among people who are motivated to disagree with that piece of information.”

A study even found that partisans with strong math skills were good at solving a math problem only if the solution to the problem conformed to their political beliefs. Conservatives, for instance, struggled to solve a math problem where the conclusion was that gun control reduced crime (liberals similarly struggled when the conclusion was that gun control increased crime). 

How can we stop our brain from short-circuiting in this way? By developing a strong sense of identity that’s independent of our political team. That way, our elephant won’t automatically see the team as good, and our rider won’t jump through mental hoops to justify the team. 

Without an attachment to a political team, we can evaluate each news story on its own merits rather than whether or not it makes our side look good.

How to Stop Fake News Strategy #4: Seek Joy From Spirit, Not the Adulation of the Crowds

The biggest problem with fake news is how shareable it is. When we share a story that makes the other side look bad, we’re rewarded with lots of Likes and Shares and Retweets on social media.

It’s important to realize that social media was designed this way. Sean Parker, founding president of Facebook, says, “Whenever someone likes or comments on a post or photograph, we give you a little dopamine hit.” Dopamine is associated with feelings of euphoria, and the dopamine-inducing design of Facebook is one reason that social media addiction is on the rise.

How can we fight back? We can recognize that the adulation of the social media crowd, and the associated dopamine hits, are hollow. It’s euphoria, but of a very fragile kind. It is not true joy, any more than the temporary satisfaction of an alcoholic doing a shot is true joy.

True joy comes from following Spirit and your highest self. That will almost always involve a search for truth, since truth makes the world better. It rarely involves a clamor for external validation.

If you want to stop the spread of fake news, learn to differentiate the true joy of following Spirit from the false joy of external validation. Avoid seeking out the latter, online or offline.

Conclusion: A Deeper Cut

Lots of smart people write articles with tips for how to combat the spread of fake news. They talk about the importance of checking Snopes and of reading articles before you share them (Twitter actually rolled out a feature recently to discourage people from sharing articles they haven’t read).

There’s nothing wrong with these tips, but we wanted to take a deeper cut.

Fake news is hardwired to appeal to the ego. It targets our “us vs them” mentality, our ego’s desire for external validation, and our ego’s wish to see the world as a simple place of black and white. 

The integrous and grounded man has his ego under control. For the healthy masculine man, the ego is a servant, not the master. When you are grounded, you feel no desire to believe or share fake news, because its siren song holds no appeal for you.

We specialize in helping men develop strength, integrity, and groundedness. To that end, we offer online men’s groups and 1-on-1 coaching. If you would like to build more strength and inner resilience, and master your ego, reach out today.

The world is overrun with fake news. We have partisan extremists on every side, from Antifa to the alt-right. We have cable news and endless op-eds telling us that every issue is black and white, and “those people over there” who don’t see things the way we do are responsible for all of the problems our country and our world face.

These are the turbulent currents of our time. Building a firm foundation of knowledge can help you be a rock for yourself and your family so you don’t get swept away. If you want to develop as a strong, integrous man, then scholarship is essential.

What do we mean by scholarship, or knowledge more broadly? Do we just mean more partisan facts (Obamacare increased the cost of insurance by XYZ%, the Trump tax cuts created $ABC in national debt)? No. True knowledge is deeper, and involves learning enough about the world to buffer you against extremism.

It doesn’t matter what your political ideology is. It doesn’t matter if you’re Woke or a Trump supporter, a Christian or an atheist. Acquiring knowledge is ideology-independent; it’s not about helping you win battles for your side, it’s about helping you live your best life.

Two Essential Types of Knowledge

In his landmark book A Celebration of Discipline, pastor and scholar Richard Foster lays out two important types of knowledge:

– books (to which we can add, any long-form high-information media such as documentaries)

– The world itself (that which we observe by living)

Both types of knowledge are important. Books and other long-form media can help you understand historical trends, which inform where we are today and where we as a country (and as a world) are going. Observing the world itself—everything from the ladybug on your windowsill to how your neighbor who’s a different race talks about his children—can help you develop empathy and humility and a bone-deep understanding that, one way or another, we’re all in this together.

Why Is Knowledge Important? Benefit #1: With Knowledge, You Can Avoid Getting Caught Up In Extremism

There is no shortage of extremist causes looking for new recruits. Postmodernists insist that there are no objectively valid facts; everything is subjective. The alt-right insists that people who don’t look like them are somehow lesser. Anarchists insist that we should destroy the government by sometimes violent means, and Antifa shouts that words are violence and that ideas they dislike must be met with fists.

Each of these strains of extremism posits a narrow and selective view of the world. They look at a world that is dizzyingly complex and full of shades of gray, and they tell us that it’s all black or all white.

A firm foundation of knowledge is important because it can help buttress you against the siren song of these groups. A knowledge of history shows us that there are, in fact, objectively valid facts. In the 1940s, 1.1 million people died in Auschwitz. That is both objectively true and objectively evil. 

A knowledge of how human societies have historically behaved in the absence of government (Stephen Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature provides a solid overview) shows us that, while governments can grow too big and too powerful, their total absence is generally a bad thing.

And history is replete with the dangers of curtailing free speech as Antifa desires.

The scholastically well-rounded man sees the world in shades of gray, and understands the danger of black and white thinking. That buffers you against the demands of extremists. This is essential for your own life. Extremists tend to be deeply unhappy, and to inflict their misery on others. Both social justice warrior extremists and alt-righters live in levels of mental Hell that most of us find difficult to imagine.

For the same reason, not giving into extremism is good for your family. When you pursue your best life instead of living in service to a partisan agenda, your woman and children benefit.

It is also essential if you want to improve the world, because there are many paths to being a better citizen but none of them go through extremist causes.

Why Is Knowledge Important? Benefit #2: Applying Knowledge to Integrous Action

Action without knowledge is like a ruined car: it’s unlikely to get you where you want to go.

If you understand history and human nature, then you can better understand where we are as a country and see the directions (both good and bad) in which we are heading. This can help you to take integrous action as a citizen to set the nation on a better trajectory.

Imagine that you’re a US citizen in 1942, and there are rumblings about locking up Japanese-Americans to prevent them from aiding the enemy. A thorough grounding of history would show you examples of other civilizations who have let war inflame their passions against the out-crowd. You would understand why civilizations in war are prone to this, why it’s happening now, and what might be the consequences if the nation followed through on this urge.

From there, you could stand up against the prevailing tides and warn people. You would know where the road the US was considering walking would end, and could encourage the nation to walk a different path.

What applies to the nation applies to the state and the smaller community. If you see your community going down a path that history suggests will end poorly, then you can more effectively speak up.

Why is Knowledge Important? Benefit #3: Knowledge Is an Antidote to Prejudice

There are any number of groups in the US and the world that encourage us to see one group of humans as better than another group. White supremacists cry that only white people are fully human. Social justice extremists believe that it is a sin to be white. Alt-righters despise women, and Sarah Jeong (former New York Times editorial board member) tweeted “Oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.”

Each of these beliefs relies on prejudice and an ignorance of the “other”. But when you deeply study the world—not just books, but your fellow man—you come to realize that there is no “other”. When you observe how your neighbor of a different race loves his children, you see that skin color is only skin-deep. When you have close relationships with both men and women, you understand that neither gender is superior to the other.

When you live deeply in the world, and observe the poor and the wealthy, the white and the black, the immigrant and the native, you come to realize how phenomenally similar we all are. Underneath our superficial differences, you see that we are all human.

Why is knowledge important? Because it is a powerful antidote to racism, sexism, and every other sort of prejudice.

The idea that knowledge of people different from us can counteract prejudice isn’t just nice-sounding theory—it actually works. Darryl Owens is a black man who has spent 30 years befriending members of the KKK in order to convince them to give up their robes. As NPR reports, “He (Davis) says once the friendship blossoms, the Klansmen realize that their hate may be misguided. Since Davis started talking with these members, he says 200 Klansmen have given up their robes.”

By observing other people, and developing a deep understanding of them, we can protect ourselves and our families from being swept away by the treacherous currents of fashionable prejudice. 

Knowledge Is Important, But Not Sufficient

If you want to be a solid, integrous man, then knowledge is important. But it is not enough on its own. The world is full of highly-educated partisans who sell or buy into extremism to the detriment of themselves and their families.

What else is required? The integrous man needs wisdom and discernment. You don’t just need knowledge, you need to know how to use it.

You also need a solid sense of identity. In order to protect yourself and your family from getting caught up in fashionable extremism, you need to be fully grounded in yourself. Extremists prey on people who have a weak sense of identity. This has always been true; many of Mussolini’s Black Shirts were young men who felt dissociated from their culture and looked for a sense of belonging.

If you already have a sense of belonging in your own skin, and if you already feel complete in yourself, then extremism can’t get a handle in you. If your identity comes from who you are and not your political tribe or what you believe, then you’re less likely to throw your life away in service to an extremist cause.

That’s what separates the grounded, strong man from the partisan hack. Both have plenty of knowledge. But the former uses that knowledge in service of his own best life and the good of his family, community, and country. The latter just uses their knowledge to push an agenda.

If you would like to go deeper in cultivating strength and groundedness, The Evolving Man can help. We use men’s groups and 1-on-1 coaching to build healthy, powerful men. If you’d like to take the next step on your path, reach out to us today.