Hypersensitivity

The question often comes up in my thoughts: What makes a philosophical mind what it is? Or put another way: What creates wisdom? The debate of nurture-or-nature can only lead to an admission that both participate in the creation of a human being to some varying unspecific degree. Genetics certainly determine the potentials of every being but the environment decides where on the scales of potential a human being weighs in. I may have the potential to become 7 feet tall but an environment with poor nourishment or a childhood accident or illness may force me to only become 6 feet tall. The more interesting question is: What characteristics combine to lead to a greater degree of awareness? As I’ve written in another essay [‘Human Judgement’], wisdom is the combination of intelligence [analytical ability], knowledge [second hand experience], personal experiences [first hand experience] and, most importantly of all, courage [intellectual integrity]. But these characteristics are not enough, by themselves, to create wisdom. An environment full of challenges and diversity, to ensure the emergence of cognitive fortitude, is essential as well. A mind existing in relative safety and contentment inevitably becomes pampered and gullible, as we all know in our western culture, for intelligence and its product wisdom, is a result of need more than anything else. Yet ironically, leisure is also essential in focusing the mind on subjects other than personal survival and the demands of the physical world. So, I suspect that a perfect balance between a demanding life and one containing some leisure is necessary to shape a flexible mind but not even this is enough to explain why wisdom is found in one person and not in another given a similarity in genetic and environmental conditions. An added factor to be considered is the hypersensitivity or hyperawareness of particular individuals to a greater degree of sensual input. This idea that perception of detail leads to a deeper understanding of ones surroundings is burdened with the ‘chicken or egg’ dilemma: Is sensual hypersensitivity [awareness of details] the cause of intelligence, given the increase of information needing processing or is intelligence the cause of hypersensitivity, given that a higher intelligence is not content with superficial interpretations and facades but searches for information that will go beneath surfaces to the core of the perception? [Here we can find the roots of scepticism due to the inability of a mind to tie up all the loos ends a hypersensitive perception is asked to consider forcing it to doubt its own perceptions.]