Wings for Wisdom

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." (H.G. Wells)

"What a great treasure can be hidden in a small, selected library! A company of the wisest and the most deserving people from all the civilized countries of the world, for thousands of years, can make the results of their studies and their wisdom available to us." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"Read the best books first, otherwise you'll find you do not have time." (Henry David Thoreau)

The goal of this group's activity is to put wings in the wisdom synthesized from our tumultuous history by the noblest human beings so they are free to enlighten all of humanity in the hope of winning the race between education and catastrophe.

The so called "wisdom" is creative works that could vastly improve our understanding of ourselves and our world and guide our thinking and action in making our lives and our world better. They can be books, movies, songs, photographs or other forms of creative and enlightened endeavour.

"Setting free" means making the content of those works available in digital form over the internet so that everyone can download and read for free. At a later phase, it means finding a distribution method that allows anyone from any country to get those files for free or at an insignificant amount of cash (e.g. in the form of CDs or DVDs).

Our first project is to pinpoint and set free 10 of the most important books which could become a powerful catalyst in transforming people's mindsets into ones that help create a just and sustainable world. The longer term goal is to set free 1000 important books on the range of issues in this cause.

Please go to the wikipage "Wings for Wisdom, the Idea." to read the full description of this group, and convey your thoughts, criticisms, etc. on the "Brainstormings #1 : What do you think of Wings for Wisdom?" forum.

What WiserEarth folks say about Wings for Wisdom:

"I think this is a great idea" (Angela Sevin)

"I think this is interesting . . . I applaud your efforts." (Curt Beckmann)

"This is a practical idea with low cost and tremendous benefit." (Roger Eaton)

" This is an excellent idea, for several reasons . . . Just knowing what others in the field regard as valuable is very useful . . . Opening up and freeing up the power of words in a time of crisis, to help speed solutions and avoid some of the almost otherwise inevitable consequences, is a real urgent reason . . . Wisdom, as light, is in short supply in many areas, the lights are out everywhere you look, and there are some essentially black holes where no wisdom survives at all, so anything we can do to reverse the trend has real value." (David W. Potter)

"I like what you have to say in your Wings for Wisdom group about copyrights, as I think our planet can progress to a different kind of "ownership" over intellectual works. Most of the world's greatest thoughts and books are limited in its reach due to the price thats on it, and as you say, our planet may not have enough time to wait. If only we saw our current or most common kind of copyright as a model that can be improved, rather than as perfect." (Michael Kwan)

Here's a quotation from David C. Korten which nail the whole idea of Wings for Wisdom in a sentence:

"Accelerate social innovation, adaptation, and learning by nurturing cultural diversity and removing intellectual property rights impediments to the free and open flow of beneficial knowledge." (from a YES! magazine article on corporation)

Here's a quotation from Ervin Laszlo which indirectly describe the relevance of Wings for Wisdom in our bifurcating world:

"Education, traditionally, is the handing down of knowledge from one generation to another. When there is rapid change in our knowledge systems and they come to be applied, then the traditional educational process becomes very problematic. Not that the past isn't extremely relevant, but it has to be put into the context of the future. Here is where selective forgetting comes in.

We have to be able to incorporate our knowledge of where we are in the framework of the process which has periodic bifurcations. These are qualitative changes so you don't apply the knowledge that you use in the pre-shift area during the shift and after the shift because it would not be functional.

It is very difficult because in a normal educational system your textbooks have been written by people who have spent some time getting experience and then write a textbook. The book takes some years to write and takes another few years to be recognized and get adopted. In Astrophysics and some areas that move very rapidly this process is shorter but in the humanities in general it is slower. So the leading edge is very seldom reflected in textbooks and the mainstream education. So the new technologies of the internet through the web and the media are needed to bring the leading edge into the classroom. It can be done."

(from an interview by Barbara Vogl on Ervin Laszlo book: Macroshift - Navigating the Transformation to a Sustainable World)