Talk:Maria Calavera/@comment-28171999-20190709133949/@comment-35434444-20190710210255

@SomeoneYouUsedToKnow

That depends on what you think wisdom is. Wisdom is only important if you think there is such a thing as a correct course of action, which is impossible because you cannot know one option from another better option without arbitrating what better is. It is not possible to acheive the good because to improve one thing you must degrade another. Therefore wisdom as commonly conceived is a delusion that results in hypocrisy.

There are two kinds of knowledge. Explicit knowledge, such a facts and figures, and implicit knowledge. What you might call "muscle memory," only it applies to intellectual activites as well as physical. No explanation you can offer is good enough allow a person to learn how to ride a bicycle. You can help them avoid certain pitfalls and mistakes, but in the end they always have to learn how to control the bike themselves. The pointers are explicit knowledge, but the actual know-how is implicit.

To confuse the two kinds of knowledge is like confusing the word iron with the material iron. If you make a kettle of gong out of iron, you can make it ring by strikeing it. But "iron" is just a word. A reverbration in the vocal cords.

Wisdom is explict conventional knowledge. Like when you say you shouldn't run while holding a pair of scissors. Unwisdom is trusting the implicit knowledge of your nervous system, like when you attempt a word search and the answer pops into your head without the same amount of effort you expend in making all of the tiny and precise muscle contractions needed to open and close your hand. All without a thought.

The latter is an integral facet of all skills, but it's cultivation is neglected because it's very existence is counterintuitive by virtue of being the mecahnisim of creativity and intuition itself. You don't actually know how to speak English or turn on a computor or tie your shoelaces until you remember how to. But the knowledge is all implicit. Your brain doesn't explain to you how to tie your shoelaces and then you go do it. You just do it.

So when people found iron, they didn't find the concept of iron. They found the workable reality that could be shaped into tools. Iron as distinct fro everything else only exists in your mind.

The reason this is all relevant is that in a world without distinct things, there are no problems. Life isn't seperate from death. Good isn't to be sought and bad isn't to be avoided. Light isn't blinding and darkness does not conceal. There is no state of affairs to be worked towards because it is all right here and now.

The first generation of humans represents this paradisial animal-like state of unconsciousness. The deluge they suffered at the hands of the Dark Brother represents thier ascent into a conscious world of distinct and identifiable things as a result of Salem heightening thier self awareness.

The issue with self awareness is that while it allows you to dictate the course of events, it also shows you that in the end you won't be able to because you're goign to die. In seeing that you become afaird. And in seeing that you are afraid you become afriad of being afraid. Because you know that if you are afriad, it seriously hampers your prospects of survival. This morbid cycle of awareness-inducing anxiety and anxiety-inducing awarness loops round and around until the mind is completely tied up. Paralysed.

This means that the desire to succeed brings about a change in consciousness that trends towards failure. It's a recurrent block of the mind in all human endeavors.

Thus unwisdom -- the willingness to trust your own intuitive abilities and judgement without any conscious interference -- is the solution: to reap the benefits of conscious attention without losing sight of unconscious intuition.

Some of you will no doubt have further objections, but my underlying suggestion is that Maria is trying to teach Ruby what Salem needs to understand in order to break her own curse. I think the climax of RWBY will entail a symbolic return to the unconscious style of life without losing sight of conscious distinctions.