The man who wrote the following words was either wise or wacko. There’s no middle ground. You must make your choice. Without leaving your home, you can know the whole world. Without looking through the window, you can see the ways of heaven. The further you go, the less you know. Thus, the wise man knows without travelling, sees without looking, works without doing.
Modern culture is primarily interested in producing men who are technically adept. In ancient Taoist practice, young men underwent extremely rigorous spiritual training. This included spending up to two months in pure darkness.
The core virtue is humility. If I know myself, I am humble. If I don’t, I am ignorant; I will hold false ideas about myself. At the extremes, I will either be under-inflated and suicidal or over-inflated and megalomaniacal. Humility, self-knowing, is wisdom. Wisdom is our depth dimension. If I do not know myself, I am disabled. I cannot love. If I know the world without knowing myself, I am a technician. Life, then, is a calculation. This is where we are today. Our knowledge of the world has vastly outstripped our knowledge of ourselves. No man who knows himself could ever build a bomb. Or pretend to lead a country.
Teaching our kids about the world is one thing. Teaching our kids about themselves is a whole other enterprise.
Thanks to technology the limits of our ignorance have been vastly extended.
Men's Work 