Wisdom: via personal experience/mistakes vs. imparted experience/mistakes
 

abaya and I have been talking about some very interesting human conditions below is the crosstalk from a different thread.
which is better: wisdom via experience/mistakes, or via someone else imparting their experience/mistakes to you, and you being smart enough to listen to them?

Did you have a mentor, person you looked up to, older sibling? Did you listen to their advices or just discount them as them not hearing you since you're "young"? Are you an only child?

I did not have any mentors growing up. I blazed my own trail at a young age, owning a business at 14 and moving out at 17. My father burdened me with a few governing values that weighed on my shoulders.

First, be a good brother and give your sister as much guidance as possible.

Second, before you act, ask yourself, do you want your sister doing this same thing?

abaya, yes, I think it made my sister softer and less resilient in many ways. When she got married, I said to her that I had nothing to offer in ways of guidance for being married and that the roles will be reversed in the future for some things. Before I got married I asked her for guidance and wisdom.

I don't think one way is any better than others - both have their ups and downs. It also matters what kind of experience it is (whether it's worth experiencing even with knowledge of the way it will/might turn out) and what works for you. I don't think it's a choice, either. I'm a learn-by-experience kind of person. It doesn't matter that 5 older siblings told me this and that about school and that it's okay to not finish on time because none of them finished college on time (some not at all). I don't think I really understood what they were trying to tell me all those years until I found myself in a similar situation... and I'm learning every day what it means to be "okay" and not finish school in 4 years AND not know exactly what I want to do yet.

Experience always tops knowledge, IMHO.

No matter how many times I tell people, "Don't do that. I did that and it was a bad mistake. Please do it this way." People still do it the way they see fit.

Only on safety issues do the roles reverse:

'If you do it this way, you will rip your fucking arm off... Look at this picture of the person who did it this way.'

You will get a pretty strong response if you impart knowledge in a way that the people can "experience" it safely.

Am I making any sense at all??

Conversations with my parents always had them saying. "We'll tell you something til we are blue in the face, and you are going to do exactly what you want to do..."

While i have an opinion and offfer advice on practically any subject,my opinion is based on my lifetime of experience, and it's just that - an opinion. I rarely expect anyone to take my advice, I would rather see people find their own way and do what feels right for them. I can only offer ideas of what I would do if I were them, and if nothing else, gives them another way to look at something.

I'm a very good listener, and I also hear very well, but I will rarely ask for guidance on something, because I would muchrather figure it out for myself, if the advice is offered , unsolicited, I'll "take it under advisement" usually consider the source, and then after weighing my options (Spontaneous I am not) will do what I want to do.

In later years, I've come across many "control freak" types, who actually get miffed if the advice that hey offered wasn't followed to the letter. Umm, you made a suggestion, I chose to not take it, thanks for playing our game.

I've never had a mentor, I think I'd drive one crazy. I've done some mentoring in the past... and the people I mentored seemed a little too needy and not as strong as they should be, that they weren't relying on themself and their judgement to do something. Part of mentoring them was getting them to trust their judgement and rely on themselves, right or wrong, they had to live with their decisions because it was ultimately thier life and their choice.

Wisdom is to balance the two and use them both, but each to their appropriate situations.

Isn't there a saying that goes something like this:

A smart man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others.

Personally, I pretty much had to learn everything about life my own way. Other people can only teach you so much. You have to walk the road of life yourself eventually.

I tend to try to forge my own path, and just use "mistakes" to my advantage. I was a baker as a kid - perhaps I took from that the ability to manipulate screw-ups into useable, and sometimes better looking, product.

One of my favorite quotes from the late Mitch Hedberg: "I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later"

I myself tend to learn from both. Somethings I've watch people do and could only think "Well, THAT was a bad idea", and some things I thought were a good idea at the time and found out (most often after a butt ton of pain) that they were not, in fact, a good idea. Everyone has their own speed though. Some people live life, some people watch it. Either is fine. That being said, I will offer one piece of advice to all of you. Never cook bacon naked.

Sometimes it's good to listen to the experience of others - it can save you pain. But it can also keep you in a safe and dull existence. Their circumstance may not have been exactly like yours, and who knows what wisdom you're going to get from the experience you have, good or bad? I think the key to wisdom is knowing when to take good advice and when to ignore it. Sometimes you have to touch the stove yourself to learn that it's hot.

My former boss was a good mentor. She taught me a lot, and I learned a lot more by watching her. But as time went on I realized that I didn't really want to be like her. She's very accomplished and makes a lot of difference in her job, but she's far too career-driven, she's generally miserable, and she's always stressed. When I stopped listening to her advice and started following my own path, she was understandably disappointed and we had some difficult conversations. She was giving very good advice...for someone who wanted a life just like hers. And I don't.

Thanks Cyn for starting this thread. Good to hear people's opinions...

I very actively sought out mentors throughout high school and college... I mean, I worshiped the ground that my teachers, coach, and professors walked on. They had lives that I wanted.Part of this was because my own parents were such horrible examples of a lot of things, and they were the last people I wanted to look up to. So I gravitated to people whom I saw as being wise and experienced (they were, almost all of them), and learned as much as I could.

Then I went to Iceland, and grad school, and tried things out, made a few mistakes (all while single, which I think is a different situation than when in a committed relationship). There was one huge mistake (which was preceded by several smaller mistakes, but that's the nature of these things--I didn't see it coming), but otherwise I feel like I learned what I needed to learn from my mentors, rebelled a bit, and came back to understanding where their wisdom came from.

So I learn from my own experience when necessary, but I still listen to others' experiences and respect it if their argument is sincere and well-founded. Unless my gut feeling tells me that these people are trying to sell me something, or that they are just plain naive, I try to respect them and see if what they say will work for me. Sometimes it doesn't work, so I take my own route. I don't think it means I'm "boring," but jesus, I'm not going to willingly bring pain on myself if it can be avoided.

As my parents have grown up a bit themselves, I'm learning to listen to their reflections too, since now they see how stupid they were in the past and they are quite willing to talk about what NOT to do. It's helped me respect them more over the years, and I think they respect me more for taking my own way. Everyone's different, I guess.

Pain is a powerful teacher, and I seem to recall the times I have dealt with this, and the conclusions I carried away with the experience much more clearly and fully than the times where I made decisions based on other's experiences. Because of this, I generally prefer to experience things for myself, as I feel able to take more away living my life.

Took the words right out of my mouth. As a wise woman once said, "Pain is the great teacher of mankind; beneath its breath, souls develop." Most lessons I've learned really well involved some kind of pain or discomfort. And when I didn't personally experience the pain, I learned the lesson from watching _someone else_ experience the pain directly, and identifying with them.

I remember when I was about 11, my mother told me to be careful of a specific knife in the kitchen.. although I understood it would 'cut' me and it would 'bleed' and it would 'hurt'.. I felt really compelled to cut myself because I wanted to understand these things. What would the metal feel like, inside my skin? Then came the clean up...

Later, when I was around 16 or so, my parents said often, word for word, the same thing that maleficient's parents said. It was not because I was rebelling.. it was because I could not believe that every situation would be the same. What happened to them may not be the same thing that will happen to me. There was room for something different.

I have no problem taking advice or other peoples experiences into account when I make decisions.. sometimes advice or the experience of another will change my perspective or attitude.. other times it wont. It depends on how valid it is in regard to my situation.

When I came home (to my parents) with my daughter.. I was quick to tell them, "Hey, listen.. I'm going to do this differently than how you both did it with me.. because, well, hey.. we can all see that perhaps it didn't quite work...". They amazed me at how readily they watched, learned and adapted to the method I used with my daughter. They have told me since, in their eyes.. I have done a 'great job'. The main difference - not preaching or controlling, giving room for my daughter to experience some things and using guidance to learn other things. I always looked for how she felt about my interjecting, if I wanted to show her how to do something. I can't say that I experienced the terrible two's.. we had a pretty good time through her toddler years and still do to this day. I was extremely pig-headed when I was young. :) I also feel my daughter has a good grasp on 'critical thinking'.

Another theory I have, is when we try to teach others by our experiences, it sort of makes the recipient reliant on having someone to turn to, it is easier for them to want advice and comfort, and they can become sort of lazy, unwilling or unable to develop critical thinking for themselves. Worst case scenario.. when or if anything goes wrong, you have someone else to blame. Responsibility for ones actions becomes a real fuzzy area here...

What I'm saying is, I think we need to both learn or experience on our own 'and' learn through the experiences of others. I do not think one is better than the other.

Yep, I think this is key... both the direct and indirect learning from experience. Why bring pain on yourself if you've just watched someone fuck things up for themselves? Usually I only do this when I'm feeling a bit arrogant, that *I* might be better than this other person, and that this *won't ever* happen to me... and then, just to spite me, it almost always does happen. :rolleyes:

Granted, as Seeker said, sometimes you ARE better (like her raising her own daughter)... but I think that ability to recognize good examples from bad ones is another part of maturity/discernment, and knowing what hurt you w/the bad example. I know my mom made some serious mistakes with me, since they caused me pain... so I hope I learned enough about them to avoid most of them. :|

Ahh...what a great thread - discussion like this is why I enjoy the TFP so much :)
 

There's some experiences in which are so unique [because, in some way or another, everyone has a different perspective on life, because they lived life in a diff. way, time, location, etc....] that only the person who experienced it can reap the lesson from it nor can they pass that lesson on to anyone else. Also, because some people haven't directly experienced something or seen other imparted experiences, they cannot reap the lesson.
I remember, as an adolescent, being told that "you'll understand/see why eventually one day." Granted, some of those remarks might have been just copouts, but some wisdom cannot be learned by imparted experience, or at least cannot be learned because they [the receiver] don't have enough personal experience of their own [using similar experiences that the receiver had] [or the inate reason/wisdom that grows over time] to understand the other person's mistake/experience. Whew.

quote by abaya
I feel this way with my dad, a recovering alcoholic. He often feels the need to preach to me about the dangers of alcohol, although I can directly see that the effects of it upon him are all what I need to prevent myself from going down the same path.

My teachers from high school were pretty big influences on me, since I was awed by them, for a city boy whose classmates mainly went to the public high school, getting into a pretty nice private school.
As I reflect upon Cynthetiq's a bit more, I realize that my physchologist was my mentor. My dad, most of his wisdom was encouragement to become heavily involved in religion [I'm still religious though, not nearly as much as my dad, but more than my 3 sisters] and also seemed at the time to be idealogical and I was [and maybe still am a bit] unable to connect it in a secular society. However, beginning in the 8th grade and throughout my high school year, though less frequent in my junior and senior year, I visited my physchologist, and really helped me with wisdom, self-confidence, understanding, and becoming a better person.

I like your thinking. I have an aversion to dull. I, and most of my generation, have always refered to the listen versus experience thing as the "School of Hard Knocks". I have been going to this school for some time now and, yes, it hurts or costs money every now and again but for that I experience life for my self. I agree about the "Key to Wisdom", but every now and again I have to touch the stove to validate what I'm being told is true.

I've tried to pass on some of my experience to my three daughters, but like their old man, they have alread enrolled in the "school". I do get the occasional "well, I guess you were right" call. It hurts me sometimes to know that they may have suffered needlessly but they chose their own life just as you and I do.

I have faithfully attended the "school" for almost 52 years and I still don't want to quit. I listen about the really dangerous stuff, wear a seat belt and all that, but as long as I'm kicking I'll probably keep touching the stove now and again. It's one way I know I'm still alive and enjoying life.