The etymology of wisdom indicates that to be wise is to follow a way of life where we can see where we are going, knowing though self-awareness what causes us to behave as we do.
As few yet have the necessary self-understanding in the third tier of the spectrum of consciousness, it is not surprising that Eckhart Tolle said in A New Earth that we are a species that has lost its way.
Yet, all is not lost. The greatest clarity arises when we are Panosophers, for this word indirectly derives from Greek pansophos ‘very wise’, from pās ‘all, whole, entire’ and sophiā ‘wisdom, knowledge’.
So, if we could be free of the delusions of our cultural conditioning, encapsulated in the seven pillars of unwisdom, it is theoretically possible for the Information and Knowledge Society to evolve into the Wisdom Society in the eschatological Age of Light.
Old English wīsdōm ‘knowledge, learning, experience’, about 725, from wīs ‘learned, sagacious, cunning; sane; prudent, discreet; experienced; having the power of discerning and judging rightly’, from Proto-Germanic *wissaz, from past-participle adjective *wittos of PIE base *weid- ‘to see, know’, related to the source of Old English witan ‘to know, wit’ and (ge)wit ‘the mind as the seat of consciousness’.
Wise, as an archaic noun ‘way of proceeding, manner’, from Old English wīse ‘way, fashion, custom, habit, manner; condition, state, circumstance’, from Proto-Germanic *wīson ‘appearance, form, manner’, root of Swedish vis ‘way, manner’, from PIE base *weid- ‘to see, know’. Today, mostly used as an adverbial suffix ‑wise, as in clockwise, lengthwise, likewise, and otherwise.
The sense development from ‘to see’ to ‘way of proceeding’ is like that of cognates Greek eidos ‘act of seeing; appearance, form, shape, kind’ to ‘course of action’ and idea ‘appearance, form; idea, notion’ to ‘way, manner’.