When do you ‘do’? When do you ‘know’ enough?
Knowledge or Action?
The Awareness-Intent-Creativeness triple spiral is the central framework of The Atlas of Worldly Wisdom (TAWW). It is an attempt to simplify our understanding of work and our aspiration for creativeness.
To Know or To Do… That is the (real) Question!
The below are reflections on Knowledge vs Action, inspired by discussions in The Atlas of Worldly Wisdom.
Many people spend too much time gathering information before taking action. They waste time and opportunities. On the other hand, many (most?) people act foolishly before understanding why and what. They waste effort and energy. Some do neither.
Balancing knowledge and action is the skill at the heart of worldly wisdom.
Intro: Awareness Intent Creativeness (AIC) in TAWW
All (most) our actions fit into one of the three flows in the Awareness-Intent-Creativeness (AIC) triple helix.
We are either (1) gaining knowledge about the world, or we are (2) acting to shape the world and our lives, or we are (3) planning our next moves.
Worldly Wisdom passes through an understanding of these three flows, and how awareness, creativeness, and intent emerge from knowledge, actions, and plans respectively.
Worldly Wisdom lies in perfecting & timing the flows of life.
Awareness: The Problem of Fruitless Knowledge
When can knowledge be fruitless?
We tend to grow as we learn, but aspirational knowledge isn’t just acquired because the process is pleasurable. It is part of a conscious effort to grow.
Knowledge that doesn’t become actions, even if valuable in some contexts, counts little towards practical wisdom. In this sense knowledge has to be both actionable and memorable.
Incomplete knowledge and the illusion of knowledge are quite dangerous… more dangerous than an aware lack of knowledge in fact. This is why they can be used as a starting point.
Acquiring knowledge becomes – in the worldly wisdom realm – an endeavor to draw the boundaries of current knowledge.
We must learn, but we must learn about the boundaries of our knowledge and about the structure of our knowledge. How much about the world and ourselves do we know? How much does it cost to learn more?
This is the first question.
Creativeness: The Problem of Aimless Action
Acting without seeing the bigger picture can be demoralizing. It can be a huge waste of effort.
Imagine yourself being a great navigator, but using a wrong map. A great fighter, in the wrong sport.
Action is about precision, so it has to be short-term and focused. This is why it needs to be a coupled with a longer-term and more flexible awareness of the environment.
Courage in the wrong place is foolishness, and power applied in the wrong context just breaks things.
A laser beam can burn things or mend eyes… It is all about applying understanding to modulate power, intensity, and direction.
This is where the central spiral (Intent) fits.
Intent: The Problem of ‘Bad Strategy’
Intent includes a number of things, and these are discussed at length in The Atlas (TAWW), but here the main focus is about overseeing and arranging knowledge and action (awareness and creativeness), employing them as part of the continuous effort to grow (../succeed/cross/..).
PARCS (Present-Actions-Resources-Controls-Success) is a framework for simplifying strategy and the ‘crossing’ implied in it. An understanding of the situation and self (in the present and future), along with possible resources that can fit into the plan, and how, are the most important ingredients of this ‘core of strategy’.
But deciding is a mix of intuition and math… art and science.. This is because incompleteness is persistent, and the world is too complex (See: Fuzzy on the Dark Side).
How does intent solve the timing problem?
It might suggest that the right moment to act is the boundary moment. The moment when acquiring more knowledge becomes too costly, and risk is understood.
You need enough knowledge to act… just enough, in a way that doesn’t prevent action or waste the window of opportunity. Typically this amount is till you’ve seen (roughly) the scope of your ignorance, and the risk that you’re incurring by a particular line of action.
You need to know how much you don’t know now, and how much risk is included in your work. (risk is the likelihood of you not getting what you want).
Courage – by the way – is accepting the risk at a certain point and going on with your work.
So, the solution is:
Have the courage to take *some* risk, once you know *enough*
, where:
- *some* = an acceptably accurate estimate
- *enough* = the point at which acquiring more knowledge becomes too costly
This is also where subjectivity comes into the picture. You decide the risk and costs based on your own objectives and self-knowledge.
What are Awareness, Intent, Creativeness?
In ‘The Atlas of Worldly Wisdom’:
Awareness: is the state of being cognizant and perceptive, and the ability to make knowledge (of the self and the world) available for action and growth. Awareness is the integration of knowledge.
Intent: is the ability to evolve (move up the spirals) after visualizing and accepting the needed change process and its risks. Intent is the integration of planning.
Creativeness: is the ability (state is a better word) to bring something (beautiful, truthful, valuable) into existence. Creativeness is the integration of actions.
- What if knowledge could become something more present (mentally) and light and actionable?
- What if plans were adaptable, highly synergistic, and focused?
- What if actions produced more valuable outcomes than you can even imagine?
The AIC Triple Helix
Keep in mind, however, that these are simplifications. The three spirals are not really distinct… They are coiled, and each contains all three.
The boundaries aren’t that clear. We are always moving between the different states, absorbing knowledge and creating it, creating work and understanding it, while visualizing the future.
Knowledge implies reflection and work and participation (action), and action implies always learning from your interactions (knowledge)… Intent is ever-present too. This is why each of the spirals is itself an image of the bigger spiral on a smaller scale.
Like the world, our adventures are fractals.
AIC in The Atlas of Worldly Wisdom
The Atlas of Worldly Wisdom (TAWW) tries to dig deeper into each of these spirals, and to build an understanding of how knowledge can become practical awareness, how plans can become fluid intent, and how actions can become courageous creativeness.
It is not just about selecting the mode (this is the function of fluid ‘Intent’), but also about optimizing our efforts within each.
To do this it integrates different frameworks and models from different authors, researchers, philosophers, and psychologists.
More / Links
The Atlas of Worldly Wisdom : Online Course Page
“Fuzzy on the Dark Side” is a book explores approximate thinking and its reasons. It is an exercise in ‘Awareness’ of the complex world and the poorly defined self that tries to connect different themes within social organization, work, culture, psychology, and economics..
“The 10 Labors of Worldly Wisdom” is a playful application of TAWW, with a brief description of the central framework, and an invitation to impersonate 10 different characters reflecting the values and recommendations based on the Awareness – Intent – Creativeness (AIC) framework.