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Bring your insight and vision to the Wall of Wisdom behind the Wisdom Cafe. We will have specially prepared pads for participants to offer their personal viewpoint, their personal creative input into the collective vision. Pin these to the wall and at the end of the Festival we will collect them, edit for clarity and publish a book. Or, just get the marker and draw your vision onto the Wall directly. We’ve all heard of the Berlin Wall and the Wailing Wall but this wall will be a Wall of Wisdom, where the emerging wisdom culture can be visualized and italicized and highlighted with our collective intention.
Come to the table at the back of the Exhibit Hall in the Wisdom Cafe and share your wisdom. In these brief 60-minute sessions you will have an opportunity to express your personal point of view and to experience collective wisdom in a group setting. It's great to have leaders to represent us, but there is also a synergistic wisdom that emerges when we come together, with our diverse voices, to share common concerns and create new choices. The wisdom that comes from giving people time to reflect deeply in a supportive setting allows for ideas and possibilities that would never emerge otherwise. Choose from four 60-minute sessions, at 12:00 noon or 2:00 pm on both Saturday and Sunday. Learn about and experience new techniques for ensuring that all voices are heard, at the same time that you have a chance to express your own wisdom and hear what other Wisdom Festival participants have to say.
Sharda Claudia Miller, M.A., uses The Listening Path methodology and Nonviolent Communication.
Laura Wells, M.Ed, is an activist for participatory democracy.
.JPEG)  There’s an old Stephen Stills’ song, recorded by Buffalo Springfield in 1967, whose opening line is: “Something’s happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear...” The song goes on to describe an anti-establishment protest in Los Angeles at that time. But now, in the early 21st century, the words might morph into: “Something’s happening here, what it is, is becoming clear…”
What’s becoming clear is the rapidity with which the world is changing. This acceleration is demonstrated in countless ways- social, political, economic, spiritual, ecological, geological. As residents of Ecotopia, we might be more aware than most of what these significant trends look like. Needless to say, every day we witness signs of a changing world. Maybe not fast enough for some. Maybe too fast for others. But something’s happening. Something is definitely happening.
What’s happening is the emergence of a new world culture. Paul Ray, who coined the term “cultural creatives” in 2000 in his book of the same name, is calling this new cultural phenomena a “wisdom culture”. This description is both apt and compelling. The cultural creatives, brought up on anti-war songs and unified field theory, began to emerge in world culture fifty years ago and now number over 70 million adults in the United States. This community is even more numerous in Europe and around the world, surpassing the previous cultural groupings, what Ray had termed the moderns and the traditionalists. The values, beliefs and activities of this new social group are the basis of an emerging wisdom culture.
What are these values, beliefs and activities of this new culture? The emerging wisdom culture can be defined through the significant social and economic trends held as core values for this emerging demographic- ecological sensitivity, personal transformation, political independence and social justice among others. This new culture speaks to a global civilization, at once sustainable, just, non-violent, spiritually integrated and joyous.
The word “wisdom” itself is used in our society in a multitude of ways, describing everything from ancient Buddhist and Hebraic scripture to kitchen table advice from a concerned grandparent. Greek philosophy made an important distinction between a theoretical wisdom based on knowledge and experience only and a practical wisdom where that knowledge and experience leads directly to appropriate action in our day to day activity. This latter definition clearly applies to our post industrial digitally connected world and is a cornerstone of the emerging culture. We don’t have time to sit around and theorize about global warming. We have to do something, take action, but action based on a broad understanding and knowledge of what we are dealing with. Also, we know, it is non-violence which leads to peace; social justice which frees all of us; global prosperity which makes us all rich.
The emerging wisdom culture has taken a strong foothold in specific geographic locations including the Bay Area, Sedona, Portland, Seattle, Austin, Santa Monica, Asheville NC and in many other cities and isolated neighborhoods around the world. Something’s happening on a global scale. In chemistry there is the concept of solution, saturated solution and super saturated solution. This is an ideal metaphor to describe the emerging wisdom culture. First little pockets of the “new thinking” and the “new way of being” arise and grow. Then more individuals, more households and more communities begin to shift into the new paradigm. Slowly the solution, i.e. contemporary culture, becomes saturated. Then, all of a sudden, in one indeterminable moment, the saturation point is exceeded and the solution crystallizes.
We are the midwives at the birth of this new culture. We can already see the outline of what the emerging wisdom culture might look like. Something great is happening.
Go to Jim Garrison; Wisdom and Civilization
Go to Paul Ray; The Emerging Wisdom Culture
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