Wisdom – Week 2
In 2025, I will explore the four cardinal virtues from the Aristotelian, Stoic and Catholic tradition – wisdom, moderation, justice, courage – in thirteen cycles of four weeks, and share my learnings in the form of a reflective meditation.
If justice has been the hardest virtue to practice, wisdom is the hardest to write about. At least it has been so far. No surprise here. Of all things, it would be quite awkward to say silly things about wisdom. So I went for the old trick of starting with the long view. What were the connecting threads in this second round? Pace, pause, power, purity. And with this, let us begin.
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Accelerationism is on the rise in Silicon Valley. My friend shared this last year after a fundraising trip there. I’ve heard echoes of it from various sources. I’m coming back to it over the week. What is it about? Commonsense really. First you set a goal – in this case, I believe, the goal is a version of “how might we develop technology so that we never have to die” – then you look for ways of reaching that goal as fast as you possibly can. Who cares about the risk, if there’s a chance we might avoid death altogether? In fact, any delay would be positively criminal. In short, accelerationist wisdom says we must go fast to reach escape velocity. Infinity beckons.
Over the week-end, I read The Corporation in the 21st Century. Looking for new ways of describing productivity gains, the author turns to sports. Over the past century, we’ve seen a ~10% improvement in sprint, as a result of better equipment, nutrition and coaching protocols. The 100m race used to stretch over 10 second. It has now fallen to 9.58. Progress is more impressive yet in the marathon, with almost an hour shaved off from Hayes’ ~2h55’ record in the 1908 Olympics to Kipchoge’s – unofficial – 2019 ~1h59’ in Vienna.
It would be tempting to say that a racing mentality dominates our present times. But then again, how do you measure success in a race? Back in philosophy class, almost thirty years ago, I learned that the original Olympians didn’t look to sheer numbers. Judges considered not only who crossed the finish line first, but pace and graceful execution. The prize went not to the fastest, but the most elegant athlete.
Shift the measure, change the world. Dropping off is not a good look. Rejecting competition altogether, whining against speed, defending slow for its own sake, it’s all a dangerous gambit, most likely to finish in resentful self-marginalisation. But articulating a genuine alternative – now here’s a form of wisdom. A quest for ever-increasing efficiency dominates our world. Let’s embrace it, but in the oblique: not faster, not cheaper, but at better pace.
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As part of my daily practice for the year, I set myself a morning routine of light exercise. I started with 6 reps, and gradually raised the number by one a week. It took the resolve of courage week not to give up when I reached nine. Wisdom prompted me to acknowledge that adding numbers ad infinitum was not going to work for me. I tried a different route, focusing on intensity. For this second cycle, I will stick to six reps of each exercise, but do them more slowly. Meaning, I will spend more time working up my muscles as I defy gravity. Not to mention, a slower pace will give time for self-awareness, boosting my neural connection as I slow-squat, slow-crunch and slow-push-up. By the end of the week, indeed, I could feel that my body was becoming stronger. This may not be sufficient to ward off death forever, but it’s been good for back pain, and a general sense of vitality.
Adding decades of healthy lifespan on top of our allotted time on Earth – even years – might remain a distant pipedream. We certainly cannot create an extra hour in the day. But a more intense life, that’s in our power to reach. Longevity seekers look for more clock-time, often at great personal cost in terms of discipline and pleasure sacrificed. Meanwhile, the number of instants available for us to experience borders on unlimited. To the extent that we’re willing and able to seize them.
One important challenge however is living with greater definition. On my first week exploring Wisdom, back in 2017, I noticed how much of my time is spent vaguely. In 2025 Week 2, I decided to take a moment of closure after each activity through the day – a short mental pause every time I shift focus. Often, I caught myself in the trance, drifting off without closing.
Wednesday was a focus day, with a long list of tasks on my ASANA board. To test how much I should expect to get done, I assessed how long each task would take and wrote it down. Except, an urgent grant application crept up, then a call to discuss it, plus I didn’t factor in the burden of context-switching, and I was tired by mid-afternoon I saw myself falling to the lure of the trance: low energy, more to do than I will to achieve, and a light sadness as I consider my objectives unmet. I tried a robust approach: either tick small things off the list, or firmly shift them to the next week. This was wisdom as self-love: don’t put my future self either at the top of an unrealistic expectation cliff, or in the swamps of low-grade burn out.
Relaxing is my learning edge. The Tarot told me to be more playful in a reading for the New Moon in Aquarius. There is wisdom to working on what’s hard for you, which I embraced. I wake up tired and a little unwell on Friday. My body tells me to pause. I write the morning off and settle in bed for a movie. Nothing appeals. As I finally press start on a French drama, I sense that it’s not what I want. I head out for a morning of gentle reflection, and read about rhizomes at a favourite café before an 11:30 am call. The day before, I paused for a mid-afternoon drink before an evening webinar. Instead of clocking time at the Commons, I read Snow Crashat a Smith Street bar. On Tuesday, I stopped at 3pm. That was a scheduled early stop to mark the end of January, and offset a six day workweek. At the sauna, I sat by the pool, muscles loosened by the heat. With no glasses on, the world is pure colours and ripples, shapeless and ripe with potential. Infinity beckons.
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In a passage of Snow Crash, one of the characters distinguishes between the wisdom of old men and wisdom as magic – acquired mastery over the material world. That distinction lingered with me through the week. My default is to think of wisdom as caution: vulnerability revealed by experience warning us off excessive risk. Yet I can easily feel the power that lies in wisdom. Combine a sharp focus with deep knowledge of hidden structures, and you’ve got a very mighty blade. From that angle, in fact, wisdom has its hybris. Enter the long caravan of strategic advisors and other high-fee consultants.
The work of wisdom – setting the right goals, selecting the right success measures, and adapting our actions to the world – is core to getting anything done. All major human achievements, whether it’s better breeds of apple, better tools, or better habits and protocols, all result from power exerted wisely. What you choose to do matters to what gets done. There’s a reason the question dominates our conversations. No wonder I spend so much time agonizing to describe my atypical professional life!
Thursday 6pm, I’m on a zoom webinar, discussing a book I co-wrote last year. Beyond Butterflies takes a biomimicry lens on innovation, with particular attention to the concept of ecotones: the spaces in-between where ecosystems overlap, and unexpected new things can happen. We look to foxes and ravens as opportunistic feeders, lichens as pioneer species, and gels as extensions of membranes. The people on the call share a sense of acting as ‘connectors’, and that being a challenge. Gels have no structure of their own, gravity threatens their integrity. Another idea seeps through: that the things in-between tend to inspire disgust. Gooey things do that, as well as rotting bodies, and witches’ brews. Reflecting on our lives across cultures and languages, we notice a shared experience. The first moment we tried strange food, whether vegemite, escargots, breakfast eggs, or fermented whale meat. Cross-cultural wisdom demands the sacrifice of purity. Something will get inside of you that inspires disgust in the members of your tribe. Too much of it, and you may turn to goo – high on the limitless possibilities of what has no shape of its own. This is where wisdom needs balancing from other virtues – dry moderation, crisp justice, firm courage. So that, when infinity beckons, we can wave, but from a distance, anchored in a specific form of being.