How can we become wise?

We can’t help but repeat it continuously: we human beings are intelligent but not wise. We have develo

ped the most advanced technologies, but we have used them to destroy one another. We have learned how to call someone on the other side of the globe, but we do not know how to love those who are close to us. We have gone to Mars, yet we still do not know how to live on Earth. So, when will we learn to become wise?

Perhaps we keep repeating the same thing because we are asking the wrong questions, or rather, we are not asking the right ones. If we stop for a moment to reflect, asking ourselves "when” we will become wise implies assuming that at some point, after having learned numerous hard lessons, we will become so. Probably when it’s too late. Yet, we know that the history of humankind is cyclical. Previous generations have repeated the same mistakes as those before and after them, albeit in different contexts and using different tools. Rather than learning from our mistakes, it seems that humanity has learned over time to make them better.

Some among us are wise because life has made them so, others are on the path to becoming wise, while some may never achieve it. This is as true today as it is for every generation we take the trouble to analyze. So, rather than asking when we will become wise, maybe it’s worth asking ourselves, “how can we become wise?”

Today, our society rewards individualism and those who aggressively strive towards the top; our system allows those who violently destroy the environment to enrich themselves immensely and encourages war, which is more profitable than dialogue for resolving conflicts. We have created a system that rewards the most intelligent, but also the least wise among us. But if the system is the problem, it can also be the key to the solution.

Imagine a world structured in such a way that the only way to achieve success is to cooperate with one another, where the only way to gain wealth is to respect nature, and harming it is penalized; a world where the only possible path to peace is through dialogue because the use of weapons is less accessible. Imagine a world where acting with wisdom is the most advantageous and rewarding way.

In such a world, even the least wise would have to adapt and change and, in fact... become wise.