On Received, Intellectual and Experiential Wisdom

Interwoven with an exploration of denial, ignorance and naïveté — a cross-examination of Buddhist teachings and psychodynamic theory

Opening Thoughts

I’ve been pondering a lot about the differences between denial, ignorance and naiveté, and how media popularization of the term “woke” in the last couple of years has, at least for me, undermined and downplayed my understanding and desire to understand some very complex, urgent and critical issues.

Looking back to just a few months ago, before I started the Integral Counseling Program at California Institute of Integral Studies, it’s hard to distinguish whether my lack of awareness in issues surrounding social justice, inequality, oppression, and the general “impact of the concept of culture on the concept of man [1],” was a result of denial, ignorance or naïveté. It is most certainly, partially, a result of privilege.

Ignorance and naïveté — are somewhat easy to resolve. They imply a lack of knowledge, information or experience, whereas denial is an active refusal to acknowledge some truth or emotion, a powerful defense mechanism that’s much harder to break down and break through.

As in most things, my lack of “woke-ness” was most probably a combination of all three — denial, ignorance and naiveté, each perpetuating the other in an endless cycle of not having to acknowledge my own privilege, feel into my own experiences of and participation in injustice, and recognize how my own feigned neutrality and passivity are not benign as I had thought. Ignorance and naiveté can be overcome with education, but no amount of education can raze the battle-hardened walls of denial; for that requires experience buttressed by knowledge, in addition to a deep-rooted desire for transformation and truth.

These first few months of learning have opened my eyes, expanded my mind, moved my heart and stirred my spirit in ways only traveling to a foreign country in the past had. Many times over, the structurally, beautiful glass house I encased myself in as a protective fort from which to view the world has been shattered and reconstructed only to be shattered again. It’s hard to fathom this is only the beginning of my education — how I’ve only taken one bite of the appetizer in a plentiful and palatable multi-course meal.