learning experience designer @MissionU, facilitator @StanfordBiz, ex-exec coach @thecenter, ex-creative catalyst @ideo’s @Teachersguild, amateur jazz pianist
This view, too, falls apart in the light of history. We find a breathtakingly different story: Human nature, far from being fixed, is read differently from age to age. These different readings give rise to totally new ideas for institutions. And these new readings and new institutions seem to reshape us. Often, what works out in practice would have seemed impossible on the previous views. Furthermore, the traits we are supposedly balancing — autonomy, collective responsibility, equality, etc — are themselves changing. They, also, are expressions of one view of human nature or another.
Wisdom refers to the slow accumulation of personal values that work well for people living in different kinds of ways. In ideal circumstances, each generation can reconsider the collective wisdom from the previous generation, discarding some values which no longer serve (due to changes in ways of life or because even better values have been found). In these conditions, wisdom accumulates.