4 – Love & Wisdom vs Postmodern Power: Wisdom Paradigm 2

Wisdom and Relationships
In our last blog, we talked about the basics of the Wisdom Paradigm. The better you understand the Wisdom Paradigm, the happier and more successful you’re going to be in life.

Let’s review some of the anchor points from our last session.

In the Wisdom Paradigm, culture and times may change, but human nature has remained the same throughout history.

Life is about pursuing Happiness—the fulfillment of our human nature. What brings us Happiness in life? The answer: Good relationships.

If our destination or purpose in life is Happiness, then we use our reason to figure out how to get there. Reason tells us that it’s a fact that practicing virtues like honesty, justice, courage and love, will make us good people ready for good relationships and Happiness.

This combination of purpose and reason—purpose tells us our destination, Happiness, and reason tells us how to get there—is the critical foundation for everything in the Wisdom Paradigm.

Finally, your life is your story of how you use your gifts and talents to pursue Happiness.

In this session, we’ll talk about more anchor points in the Wisdom Paradigm—especially relationships, truth and morality. Here’s a summary.

The Wisdom Paradigm teaches that all people are basically social beings. That’s why we find Happiness and fulfillment in relationships.

The purpose of every community—of every organized group of people—is to become good. Communities pursuing goodness help the people in the community become good. That puts everyone on the path for good relationships and Happiness.

We’re going to use the word “team” for all types of communities or groups of people ranging from families and neighborhood groups to businesses and political communities.

In the Wisdom Paradigm, the good of the individual and the good of the team are the same. We call this a covenant relationship. The more you put into the team, the better you get. The more the team invests in you, the better the team gets.

Covenant relationships are high-trust, high-stability and high-performance relationships.

In the Wisdom Paradigm, it’s a fact that practicing virtues like honesty, justice and love make us good people, ready for good relationships and Happiness. That means there is an objective morality with moral facts. Morality is not just a matter of personal opinion.

The Wisdom Paradigm also teaches that there is objective Truth. The pursuit and discovery of the Truth about life is a fundamental part of our pursuit of Happiness.

In the Wisdom Paradigm we don’t just pursue knowledge, we pursue wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge of the Truth combined with the character to live that Truth.

When you know and practice the Truth over and over in life, you develop wisdom. This process of developing wisdom is called formation.

What is the proper motivation in life? Not money or social status, but the pursuit of Happiness.

That means that we don’t measure success in life by our bank account or social media followers. Success in life is measured by the goodness, honor and Happiness we achieve through the good relationships we have.

Let’s dive in.
Humans are Social Beings
The Wisdom Paradigm teaches that human beings are fundamentally social beings.

Being human means relationship is a fundamental part of our human experience.

From the very beginning, we are born into a family relationship. Children who have good, healthy relationships with their parents have the best chance of turning out well in life.

Relationship is a critical part of our lives. Think about the importance of relationships in grammar school and high school.

We want to share our good times with friends. We need the support of friends when times are difficult.

Sharing experiences with friends is deeply fulfilling. Being bullied is devastating.

You become who you hang around.

Our deepest joys include friendship, marriage and family.