The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Disorder, Reorder

by Richard Rohr

Intellect The lens that we most associate with knowing is intellectual knowing. It’s the result of education, and formal education in particular. It has to do with science, reason, logic, and what we call intelligence. Today, it is also common to speak of left-brain knowledge: knowing facts, figures, and information. It’s a good way to know. We’re grateful for it. Most of us are trained to think that it is the only way of knowing or the superior way of knowing. Yet that isn’t necessarily true. Seeing intellectual intelligence as the best or only way of knowing is actually a great limitation. Daniel Goleman’s groundbreaking book, Emotional Intelligence,46 has demonstrated this in a rather convincing way. In fact, mere intellectual gray matter is often an actual liability in the “real world.”