Wisdom And Knowledge [SFI-9]
Knowledge is knowing how to make a living, Wisdom is knowing how to live.
Like all aphorisms, this one suggests a truth but is not the whole truth. Wisdom, of course, is a kind of knowledge. The point is that one can learn how to make money, which is important so long as money is earned, not just accumulated in some way. But if one knows how to live, and what it means to live as an independent individualist, they can always find a way to be productive.
There is always a danger in such aphorisms as this one. There is another one many think is related to this it, “The best things in life are free, Money cannot buy happiness.”
Nothing Of Value In Life Is Free
The Autonomist’s Notebook says:
The worst things in life are free. Poverty, disease, and ignorance are the kind of things you get for nothing. Everything of value costs time, reason, and effort.
It is true, money cannot buy you happiness, but money represents the value of your productive effort and in any society where money is the medium of exchange, happiness without money is impossible. But it is not the money itself that is source of one’s happiness, nor what money can buy, but what money represents, because money is only a symbol or token for value. [See main article on Money.]
As a human being you must produce to live, and producing is the means to all honest wealth that represents the result of your productive efforts. For a human being, “living,” is, “producing.” Since it is also doing what is “right,” because it is doing what is required by your nature to live, it is happiness as well.
How To Be Happy
A human being fully engaged in his life’s profession by which he achieves all his chosen objectives in life, is a happy individual. What many individuals have trouble determining is what exactly they want to do with their lives, what they want to achieve.
Here are some things that may help anyone who is considering their own life goals:
Every individual is unique and has a different set of skills and abilities, strengths and weaknesses, as well as tastes from every other individual. Whatever you choose to do with your life must be based on the abilities and skills you actually have, as well as the strength and willingness to pursue and develop them; and your chosen objectives must be those you can pursue enthusiastically and truly enjoy achieving. However you choose to live your life, it must come entirely from within you, determined entirely by your nature and character as in individual, and of course what is physically and intellectually possible to you, being careful underestimate one’s abilities.
It is important to learn about yourself, what you are truly interested in and what you are capable of doing. Some misguided educators think no student should be “forced” to study what they do not like or have no interest in. Certainly no one should be “forced” to do anything, but I think everyone ought to study some things they do not think they like or are interested in for two very important reasons. The first is the fact that no matter what you do in life, there are always going to be some aspects of it that are not pleasant or easy and mastering something one is not particularly interested in will give them confidence they can do it. More importantly, there are many things in life that do not seem interesting, especially so long as we know little about them, but studying one or more things that are not obviously interesting will often reveal something to us we find extremely interesting once we know more about it.
Over time, we learn new things, develop new skills and discover new interest. It would be very unusual, though not unheard of, for an individual to not discover that they developed a genuine interest in pursuing something new, and perhaps, totally different from their original chosen profession or occupation. If a now direction in life is based entirely on one’s best objective reason, and not some feeling or impulse, such a change in direction is not an abandonment of one’s principles, but a change their own principles demands. Thought it seems like a change in direction, if one has delinquently pursued their original objective, the new direction has grown out of that and is merely and extension and expansion of one’s original intentions.
Be sure that which you seek is because you see the value of it to yourself. It must never be based on what you think others will admire or appreciate in you, but on what you can admire and appreciate in yourself as necessary to your own self-respect and self-esteem. The honest admiration and appreciation of others for your achievements is a good thing, but if your achievements are truly original or individualistic, such appreciation will be very rare.
No Natural Born Anything
The first is the mistaken view that what an individual ought to do with his life is determined by some set of inborn skills and abilities that make him particularly suited to a specific occupation or professional. This especially true in the fields of the arts, such a music and literature. “He’s a natural born pianist,” is the kind of expression of this idea. This of course would be very sad if a “natural born pianist,” were born before the invention of pianos, just to illustrate the absurdity of that kind of idea.
With regard to any kind of productive work, no one is a natural born anything. What would become of “natural born,” cart wrights or blacksmiths in this day and age?
The idea is not to discover what one is, “cut out for,” but to discover what one can do and learn for which there is a real opportunity in the world one actually lives in. That opportunity might be a profession or occupation that already exists, or one that an individual creates to produce a product or perform a service for which there is, or could be, a market.
Choosing One’s Goals, The First Step To Freedom
None of this matters if you are not free to do what you choose. The converse of this is also true: freedom does not matter if you do not have anything to do.
“Freedom Is Freedom To Work,” to produce, and to create, which is the freedom to live and enjoy one’s own life as one chooses. Discovering and choosing what one wishes to pursue in their life is the first step to achieving one’s freedom, because it defines what freedom for any individual must be.
The introductory paragraph of Practical Freedom says: “By, “practical freedom,” I mean identifying what it is you want to do and achieving the conditions in which you are free do it.”
Only after one has determined what they want to do, can they identify the conditions necessary for them to be free to pursue their goals. Only then can they take the steps to create those conditions, or find where those conditions already exist to be free to live and achieve their life’s purpose, meaning, and personal happiness.