Is wisdom the accumulation of knowledge, or is it the ability to let go of what we think we know?

Q: “Is wisdom the accumulation of knowledge, or is it the ability to let go of what we think we know?”

Both play some part, the latter more than the former; but there is another more important capacity that supports wisdom, and one that we see every day, in detail and on the world’s biggest stages. This is the capacity to tolerate ‘not knowing’ which is quite different to ‘letting go’ of what we think we already know.

‘Letting go’ of what we already know applies more to those who already know stuff but has little resonance with our infancy (since knowledge in infancy is different - not primarily cognitive - not bound by language - and so little available to let go of). Tolerating ‘not knowing’ - by contrast - is crucial in infancy, and throughout life, and our mothers/carers do what they can to make it as tolerable as they can, so that we can internalize this capacity. An inability to tolerate not knowing hinders all learning situations and reinforces itself in a recursive fashion - the less we can tolerate our ignorance, the less we put ourselves in learning situations and the more ignorant we become.

I mentioned the world’s biggest stages because Donald Trump is a classic example of someone whose intolerance of ‘not knowing’ is transparently displayed in every one of his communications, and has in a sense dominated his life, although of course such an intolerance will not have been an intrinsic property, but will have been generated from his earliest experiences, which were not facilitating, whatever they were.