Prudence

Philosophy
 Aquinas' Virtues
✦ Prudence-defines good
✦ Justice-realization of reason in human affairs-effects
this good, since it belongs to justice to establish the
order of reason in all human affairs
✦ Temperance--removing the obstacles to the
establishment of justice in human affairs due to
pleasure
✦ Fortitude-removing the obstacles to the
establishment of justice in human affairs due to
sorrow
 SCAR
• Self-Reliance for balancing the risks arising from
dependence and independence

• Critical Awareness for balancing the risks arising

from homogeneity and heterogeneity

• Adaptability for balancing the risks arising from

continuity and discontinuity

• Resilience for balancing the risks arising from

unity and plurality
 Adaptability
• Adaptability closely related to Aquinas' virtue of
prudence
• Adaptability-->responsiveness, flexibility,
malleability, deformability, plasticity, and active
responsiveness.
• Adaptability is the ability to easily modify when
and where needed oneself, one's actions, and/or
one's circumstances in response to environmental
change so as to maintain one's course of action.
 Adaptability
• Active adaptability—to adjust the circumstances
to your actions
– Creates an adaptive posture, a repertoire of controlled
environments and adaptive actions
• Passive adaptability—to adjust one's actions to the
circumstances
– Creates an adaptive state, a repertoire of passive
powers that allow the organism to modify itself in
order to adapt to changing conditions
 Adaptability
• In a non-equilibrium world in which infinite
things in infinite ways occur and in which systems
are subject to critical states, crashes, and collapses
on various scales, only the adaptable will survive.
Dependence and Independence
Homogeneity and Heterogeneity
 Prudence and Adaptability
• Aquinas' discussion of the parts of prudence will
assist in identifying ways of becoming more
adaptive
 The Parts of Prudence
✦ The
Possession of Appropriate
Knowledge
❖ Knowledge itself
❖ Discovery of knowledge

❖ Use of Knowledge

✦ TheApplication of That Knowledge to

Action
 Prudence
✦ Two Types of Knowledge Are Needed
❖ Knowledge about Past
• History
❖ Knowledge about the Present

• Understanding
 Four Adaptive Strategies

• K-approach-->hierarchy, stable environment

allows extreme specialization
• r-approach-->patchy and unpredictable
environment fosters scramble competition
• M-approach-->lack of resources favors
mutualistic exchange of resources
• W-approach-->lack of any favorable conditions
favors withdrawal
Continuity vs. Discontinuity
 Historical Knowledge
• Strategies that are adaptive under conditions of
social stability are no longer adaptive under
conditions of social instability and collapse.
• Most education is training you for social
conditions that may not exist.
• You may need to shift to entrepreneurial or
mutualistic activities to survive.
• You may need to withdraw from all or part of the
social structure.
 Fall of Rome
Roman economy based on looting the surplus of
other societies
Culminated with Augustus' conquest of Egypt
The costs of complexity became greater than the
revenues generated to support it.
Consequences
No reserves for emergencies
Currency debasement with inflation
Raised taxes destroying middle class and farmers
Order breaks down
Increasingly larger, coercive, and omnipresent state
 Three Mile Island Accident
The accident began with mechanical failures.
Inadequate training and poor design from a hidden
indicator light led an operator to manually
override the automatic emergency cooling system
of the reactor because the operator mistakenly
believed that there was too much coolant water
present in the reactor.
Multiple failures in a complex system of tightly-
coupled units leads to cascading failures.
 Adaptive Methodologies
• Generalist--performs a broad and highly variable
range of tasks
• Polyspecialist--performs a limited number of
distinct alternative tasks
• Specialist-performs a narrow range of tasks
• Relying upon a special set of skills may be high
risky in unstable conditions.
• Develop a set of generalist skills.
• Combine them with polyspecialization.
 Understanding
• What phase of the social cycle is currently active?
• Confidence-->Alarm-->Panic-->Despair-->
Caution-->Boldness-->Confidence
• We are currently in the initial stages of the Panic
phase.
• Your need for adaptability will increase as our
society continues on the downward part of the
cycle.
 Understanding
• What degree of social cycle is active?
• The Four Fractures represent four scales upon
which a social cycle can be operative.
• The higher the degree of the social cycle that is
operative, the more adaptive you will have to
become.
• Given to the size of the previous confidence, the
odds are very high that a 200-year cycle is
peaking.
 More Parts of Prudence
Skills Needed for the Discovery of
Knowledge
Teachabilty
No one can experience everything they need to
experience all by themselves
Learn how to learn from the experience of others
Shrewdness
Learn to to teach yourself
Learn how to discover knowledge for oneself
 Prudence
✦ Use of Knowledge
❖ Reasoning

• Know the different ways of drawing

conclusions
• Be able to evaluate these reasonings
❖ Judgment

• Learn how to rightly apply abstract knowledge

to particular situations
• Find a mentor from whom you can learn
 More Parts of Prudence
✦ Knowledge can be applied to action with
respect to
❖ Ends

❖ Means

❖ Circumstances
 Prudence
✦ Foresight-seewhat the realization of
one's goals require
❖ The end is something distant to which that which
occurs in the present has to be directed.
❖ Develop due foresight of the future

❖ Model alternative futures and alternative ways for

achieving your goals.
❖ Have a Plan B, C, etc.

❖ Be creative in developing your plans

 Prudence
✦ Circumspection--compare the available
means with the circumstances
– Model alternative means for achieving
your goals
– Be creative in the identification and
use of means.
 Prudence
Caution--avoid obstacles arising from the
changeableness of the world
All choice have risks
Identify and manage these risks
Learn to cut your losses before they
overwhelm you.
Remember that the trend is your friend
until it ends.
 Prudence
✦ Frequent risks
❖ Avoid

❖ Mitigate with a Hedge

✦ Rare risks
❖ You may not able to take precautions against them
❖ However, by exercising prudence, you may be able to
prepare against all the surprises of chance, so as to
suffer less harm thereby.
 Vices Opposed to Prudence
• Defect in decision making-->hastiness
• Defect in applying the decision-->thoughtlessness
• Defect in following through on the decision --
>inconstancy
• Defect in executing the decision-->negligence and
improvidence
 Vices Opposed to Prudence
✦ Precipitation-due to a defect in the act of
counsel
❖ rashness-hastiness

❖ Occurswhen one is rushed into action by the

impulse of his will or of a passion
 Vices Opposed to Prudence
✦ Thoughtlessness--lack of right judgment
❖ Occurs when one fails to judge rightly through
lack of
❖ Caution

❖ Circumspection
 Vices Opposed to Prudence
✦ Inconstancy--failure of command
❖ Withdraws too easily from a definite good
purpose
❖ Forsakes the greater good

❖ Fails to follow through on his/her decisions

 Vices Opposed to Prudence
✦ Failures of action
❖ Negligence
❖ lack of due solicitude
❖ the omission of an act or circumstance

❖ lack of a prompt will

❖ Improvidence
❖ lacking foresight
❖ neglecting to provide for future needs

❖ through too much earnestness in endeavoring to obtain

wrong things