Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do Right Thing Summary

Practical Wisdom Summary: Introduction

Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing is written by Barry Schwartz & Kenneth Sharpe. The goal of the book is to make people aware of practical wisdom and imply individuals to use practical wisdom in their lives. According to the book, individuals are not carrying attention to other individuals in their jobs. This problem is causing bigger challenges in other individual's lives because they are not getting the proper services from institutions. These institutions are acting against practical wisdom. Furthermore, institutions are making decisions against practical wisdom. However, the value of practical wisdom can not be ignored. Practical wisdom is aiming to solve wrong decisions and turn them into the right decisions.

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Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing is written by Barry Schwartz & Kenneth Sharpe. The goal of the book is to make people aware of practical wisdom and imply individuals to use practical wisdom in their lives. According to the book, individuals are not carrying attention to other individuals in their jobs. This problem is causing bigger challenges in other individual's lives because they are not getting the proper services from institutions. These institutions are acting against practical wisdom. Furthermore, institutions are making decisions against practical wisdom. However, the value of practical wisdom can not be ignored. Practical wisdom is aiming to solve wrong decisions and turn them into the right decisions.

Most of the commentars quote sentences from the book. However, one of the commentars have stated as follows: "The book is a wonderfully written call to stop treating people like cogs. Practical wisdom: the right way to do the right thing is a call to stop measuring things just because we can and then leading our lives according to these measurements. It is an attempt to point out that there is more about being alive and working than just thinking about outcomes, money, and bottom line measurable results. It tries to challenge the assumption of "one right way" and "top-down" control that is like cancer in our societies. It is an attempt to point out to the obliquity of our business and work. It is a praise to human judgment and the ability to do good. It describes the world in which I want to live and the kind of work-life I want to lead. It is the book I wish I could have written. Read it."

The authors advocate that practical wisdom brings happiness, and this thesis based on resources. According to the authors, practical wisdom can be learned with experience. Also, their expertise on the topic is another source that provides trust between the reader and the writer.

The book is based on Aristotle’s Ethics and authors seem to care about Aristotle's ideas about practical wisdom. They are using Aristotle's word telos for describing the purpose and aim of practice. Also, the authors are using Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics to define moral rules and principles. They are detailing the practical wisdom elements such as skills, will, morality, and empathy. Also, they have detailed these elements one by one and giving convincing examples in narratives. Once you read the narratives in the book, it is hard not to change your behaviors. One of the narratives is so emotional that you can not ignore the importance of empathy.

Moreover, people are suffering from a lack of practical wisdom, and in the book, there are explicit directions that exist to change our behaviors. Still, authors mostly preferred to focus on why should we change our behaviors? We should be balanced in our behaviors. According to the book, we are not ought to use practical wisdom, and we should choose to use practical wisdom. However, there are problems with practical wisdom, such as institution rules and their approach to practical wisdom. Most of the institutions are not aiming to provide maximum service to individuals. The institutions are making decisions on their benefits, and as an example, the doctors are getting promoted when they do fewer tests.

In the book, there are different kinds of problems, but most of these problems originate from a lack of practical wisdom. Also, there are a lot of problems causing a lack of morality. However, another problem is that individuals get motive by money, and they start to care less about an individual's benefits. Most institutions are not supporting their employees to do opposite behaviors. In this sense, individuals are facing big problems such as wrong financial guidance and injustice.

Practical wisdom is based on an individual's experiences and their narrative. In the practical wisdom book, there are good examples and bad examples of those narratives. Good narratives are making people happy. However, bad narratives create bad outcomes, and they are making people's lives harder. Good narratives help us understand some of the key characteristics of practical wisdom.

To summarize, a wise person knows the proper aims of the activity he/she engaged in. One may do the right thing to achieve these aims and wants to meet the needs of the people that someone is serving. A wise person knows how to improvise, balancing conflicting aims, and interpreting rules, and principles in light of the particularities of each context. A wise person is perceptive, knows how to read a social context, and knows how to move beyond the black and white of rules and see the gray in a situation. A wise person knows how to take our perspective of another to see the situation as the other person does and thus to understand how the other person feels this perspective-taking is what enables a wise person to feel empathy for others and to make decisions that serve the client's needs. A wise person knows how to make emotion as an ally of reason, to rely on emotion to signal what a situation calls for and to inform judgment without distorting it. Someone can feel, intuit, or "just know" what the right thing to do is, enabling him/her to act quickly when timing matters, and emotions and institutions are well educated.

A wise person is an experienced person, and Practical wisdom is a craft, and craftsmen are trained by having the right experiences. People learn how to be brave by doing brave things. So, too, with honesty, justice, loyalty, caring, listening, and counseling. I read the book. I do not recommend the book because it focuses on the problems more than solutions. There are too many unnecessary pieces of information about job details. In this sense, the book has deviated from the topic. However, the narratives were interesting. Also, the book made me think about empathy. We should be doing more empathy with other people as a society. To improve the book, I would cut unnecessary pieces of information, and I would give more examples. Also, I would organize historical attachments.

Practical Wisdom Summary: Conclusion

To sum up, the Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing is giving good recommendations to fix our society with the change of our behaviors to ourselves and others. We were born to be wise. We should think about others. We should do the right thing for others. We should not be motivated by money. We should have morality and principles for doing the right thing under all kinds of circumstances and advise others to do the right thing. The book presents good insights about our society and our motives. Also, there are good people who are trying to do the right things. Therefore, for honoring those people, we should pay attention to Practical Wisdom: Right Way to Do the Right Thing.