“Collective wisdom is about our capacity to recognize interdependence and to make decisions demonstrating that we have a stake in each other, that we can indeed care for each other and the physical planet we share.”

Our language and symbols are always incomplete versions of a greater reality.

They are essentially commitments and attitudes that foster collaboration and positive collective action.

For an understanding that our immediate actions have long-term consequences, and for an appreciation that there are different ways of knowing and understanding situations.

How we navigate between false agreement and polarization is the kind of mastery that collective wisdom represents.

We also show how group polarization sets the stage for risky and even dangerous decisions to be made.

These stances are not abstract rules but tangible practices that must be renewed each time we are in groups.

Wisdom in groups emerges as a product of commitments we make with ourselves and to each other.

We seek guides and guideposts to ease the anxiety of the journey. But we also need to depend on our own insights and imagination to cultivate, from our own experience, a way to move forward.

Wisdom involves our accumulated knowledge about a subject but also a reverence for life.

Developing wisdom in community is to constantly learn and relearn that expedience in the short term.

Inquiry allows us to discover what might be outside the cave instead of arguing about the shadows on the wall.

Uncertainty engenders real opportunity as well as misleading choices, great leaders as well as false messiahs, and new ways of understanding the world alongside hollow maxims and deceptive promises. Understandably

We know that uncertainty creates anxiety and sometimes desperate attempts to find something to believe in.

Wisdom is not developable, as if it’s a matter of luck or personality or genetics. Well it’s just not the case.

The image is a great reminder how we create our world through interpretations made up of language and symbols.

Wisdom in groups is earned by gathering useful data, exploring diverse perspectives, respecting different viewpoints, and then shaped through critical reflection on behalf of tangible outcomes.