What is wisdom?

Great answer Bill and Russell, but still I 'FEEL' there is some thing missing call it intuition, does that word have any ground in philosophy? Any way to the topic:

A simple question for me to ask, what is wisdom? And; "mans wisdom" is wisdom to have inner wisdom ie He finds answers to his own life thereby giving him inner peace contentment joy and happiness he has found inner equilibrium that keeps him free from all those negativities of mind, and he has also found the answer to the external influences that may of had control over his own mind, and by finding the ingredients to having "OWN" inner peace, (Equilibrium) he therefore has the ingredients for other people also to have their inner peace. Therefore he can advise for the so called unwise who have not got those ingredients of wisdom.

And for those people who are wise, where would we say they had been given this wisdom from? Can we say from genetics, environment or from a bit of both? Or is there some way they "Process" their own minds so that they can see things more clearly ie a mind discipline that the unwise do not have.

For instance can you focus your attention on one issue sufficiently to come to a wise answer if your mind has many many other thoughts running through it to much data or over flow of thought, possibly creating the unwise.

And if a man has the ability to stem all thoughts except the issue itself will that ability to focus mean he will come up with better answers, that is he comes up with the wisest answers ?

A metaphor could fit this bill: If we fill a barrel with water and the barrel has many leaks in it none of the leaks have any force, yet if we can block the leaks and only keep one leak open then this has all the energy or all the focus and a better answer is given.

In this analogy we could say wisdom is about the ability to have self mental discipline and total focus, which can be trained, therefore that would not make it totally genetic though genetics and environment cannot be ruled out.


Does any body agree with this analogy of Wisdom?

If not can you point out where you think this analogy fails specifically?