Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

People want to think they have wisdom in their DNA, not that it comes from knowledge, experience & self-awareness, because those things require tremendous effort & time, and there’s lots of people with more than them. Wisdom is defined as breath of knowledge times depth of experience times-self awareness. Looking into a person’s history, we can usually discern these metrics: educational degrees & professional licenses demonstrate breath & depth of knowledge; entrepreneurship, responsibility, ambition, travel & art demonstrate experience; and a happy & fulfilled life indicates both internal and external awareness. By measuring these things we can determine that, historically, Benjamin Franklin & Richard Burton were wise; as was Francis Bacon, Leonardo di Vinci, Marcus Cicero, Herbert Simon, Imhoptep, Francis Galton, Albert Schweitzer, Avicenna, Baha ad-Din al-Amili, and many others that we don’t know because they weren’t famous.

In fact, most people confuse fame with wisdom. Steve Jobs wasn’t wise even though he appeared to be because he was earth-shaking. Gandhi, or any guru, preach only confusion, and live empty lives. Dian Fossey was certainly not wise; she lived alone in Africa and knew nothing about anything but gorillas. A lot of people have self-awareness, entrepreneurship, experience & knowledge in one or two areas, but don’t know anything about anything else; or have limited travel & life experience, which means they couldn’t synthesize advice from the entire panorama of life. It’s actually easy to identify wisdom but quite difficult to find wise people; however, I'd like to know more about Elon Musk?