Deliberation

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Wisdom explores, discerns, weighs, creates and envisions; it avoids jumping to conclusions and getting trapped by assumptions. Anything which helps us raise and care-fully consider a healthy range of factors, perspectives and options before and as we act qualifies as deliberation. So utilize and institutionalize diverse forms of such potent consideration.

Related: 22 Enough Time, 23 Expertise on Tap (not on top), 27 Full Spectrum Information, 36 Microcosms, 37 Multi-Modal Intelligence, 40 Nature First, 64 Using Diversity and Disturbance Creatively

Going deeper …

This is an edited version of the video on this page.

If we are going to be wise we need to deepen into issues, we need to look underneath and beyond the obvious and into the non-obvious. The definition of deliberation I am using here is any process through which people are thinking carefully. They’re not being sloppy about their assumptions and perspectives. They are being mindful and heartful in the sense of bringing in their full awareness and caring impulses. They care about what happens. Such consideration is not taken lightly and done sloppily. There is a kind of intellectual and cognitive and heart based craftsmanship going on here. It’s like somebody who is a great artist or craftsman at something. They care about what is going to happen, and they put the attention, resources and time into it required to come up with really good results. So wisdom is about doing that with life’s issues and with how we deal with life’s issues.

Here are mhy thoughts about some of the words I use in the short description of this pattern: “Explored” in the pattern heart communicates an open-ended quality. We are exploring we are not going to stop short. We are going to adventure in this and that and the other, and see what in fact is going on here.

“Discerning” implies looking clearly, not having sloppy perception, noting what’s important – and noting what is irrelevant that is being pushed into the issue and any manipulation taking place.

“Weighing” involves exploring how this idea or option is better or worse than that other one… how this approach makes more or less sense than that other one. Some people don’t like the term, since it has a weightiness, a heaviness to it. Now, I don’t think that deliberation necessarily requires heaviness, but it does require a lot of different comparing kinds of energy in your mind and heart. But it can also be creative:  Although we can have have deliberation that chooses between two or three options, we can also have deliberation that creates abundant options in search of what would be really good. I think the wisest forms of deliberation involve engagement with many options and creating new options. One process is “choice-creation” – creating options beyond those given to us.

And “visions” connotes a larger sense of where we want to go. What is the role of this thing that we are trying to deal with in the longer term context of benefit and challenges? If we are looking long-term it is important that we don’t jump to conclusions. Some people may identify where’s the end of the road and want to get there quickly, so they are going to jump over all those other factors in an effort to get to the end rapidly.  That’s all fine and good but it is no way to achieve wisdom. Wisdom is going to go along the path carefullyand see what’s needed. Sometimes the jumping happens in one’s intuition, but if you’re deliberating together, your intuition is being checked by other people’s intuition. So the jumping is much more difficult to do together as a group. At least it is more difficult to the extent you haven’t done the work.  If you have done the deliberative work, then you often reach the point where, as indigenous people say, “We talk until there is nothing left but the obvious truth.” Suddenly the obvious truth shows up and you go, “We’ve arrived! We didn’t jump to the conclusion. We walked all the way, and we turned the corner and there it was. We may not have seen it earlier but we know that this is where we were going all along, this is where the conversation was meant to result in.”

And then there’s “not getting trapped by assumptions.” There are particular methods to help us surface our assumptions and look at them. If we are working together and we have disagreements and concerns about what we are saying to each other and we delve into what’s underneath all that, that can help us not be trapped by our own and each other’s assumptions.

Inviting diverse people to be included in the conversation – especially people who are very different from those who happens to be here now – can also help us not get trapped by our own assumptions. Our assumptions can blind us. Because they are assumptions – because we assume them – we look right through them: they’re transparent to us. Individuals have assumptions. Groups can have assumptions. Real wisdom requires recognizing that we have internal lenses that are causing us to see things in particular ways and miss other things. Since we want wisdom, we want to not miss anything that’s important if we can help it. So any work we can do to get beyond our fixed assumptions can be very productive.