The defensive tools of practical wisdom
A companion’s words of persuasion are effective.
—HOMER
In the last chapter, we saw Aristotle’s strangely sensible definition of virtue: a state of character, concerned with a choice, lying in a mean. Like virtue, practical wisdom also lies in the mean—or rather, the persuader’s apparent ability to find the sweet spot. While you want to know how virtuous he is, you also want to assess his ability to make a good choice, one that fits the occasion. We’re talking about Aristotle’s phronesis, or practical wisdom, here. It recognizes that the sweet spot changes according to the circumstances and the audience. If my mother were shopping for a house, the sweet spot would lie a couple of hundred thousand dollars beyond the price of a pool table. The principle gets more subtle when we talk about politics or business—or parenting, for that matter. Then you want to see all of a persuader’s phronesis kick in. Listen for two things.
First, you want to hear “That depends.” The practically wise person sizes up the problem before answering it. Your adviser should question you about the circumstances first. If she spouts a theory without having a clue about your problem, then don’t trust her judgment.
NEW PARENT: I’m reading conflicting advice about toilet training. What’s a good age to wean a child from diapers?
UNWISE ANSWER: I don’t believe in toilet training. Let the child determine when she’s ready.
EVEN LESS WISE ANSWER: No later than age two.
PRACTICALLY WISE ANSWER: That depends on the child. Does she show interest in toilet training? Are you willing to put in the effort? Are diapers giving you any problem?
Argument Tool
“THAT DEPENDS”: A trustworthy persuader matches her advice with the particular circumstances instead of applying a one-size-fits-all rule.
I don’t speak entirely rhetorically here. Dorothy Jr., being our first, fell victim to all sorts of child-rearing books. Thankfully, she has no memory of our well-meaning incompetence involving tiny plastic toilets and panicky bathroom visits. It was a total failure. Months later, she trained herself. Now that our kids are grown, new parents think that my wife and I must know something about children. And in fact we do—about our own children. But what worked for Dorothy Jr. often was a disaster for George. So whenever anyone asks me for generic advice, I reply, “Don’t listen to any advice.”
I make no exceptions, which, come to think of it, probably isn’t very practically wise of me. A far more sage person is my friend Dick. When my kids were little, Dick and his wife, Nancy, moved overseas. They were empty-nesters, having raised five great kids and seen them through college. Dorothy and I visited the couple on a vacation in Europe, and I remember sitting on their apartment balcony confiding to Dick my frightening cluelessness as a parent.
TRY THIS IF YOU’RE A PUNDIT
Research shows that experts on TV make lousy prognosticators; in fact, the more knowledgeable the person is, the worse the predictions. Rhetoric provides a reason: pundits tend to overapply their experience to specific situations. A solution that won’t get you on talk shows but will improve your score is to do what modelers do: describe the likely outcome as conditions change. Bad pundit: “China will be the most powerful nation by the end of the century.” Practically wise pundit: “If we keep borrowing money from the Chinese, their economic clout will balance our military strength. If we get the deficit under control, we’re likely to remain on top.”
ME: It seems that by the time I figure out how to deal with one kid, she grows out of it, and then whatever worked for her doesn’t work for her brother. Sometimes I wonder if I’m ready to be a parent.
DICK: I know what you mean. I’m still not ready to be a parent.
It was the wisest, most reassuring parenting help I ever got.
Phronesis divides the rules people from the improvisers and helps us understand politics today. Our country suffers from a lack of perspective toward rules and improvisation. It’s no accident that two swing voters on the Supreme Court, Stephen Breyer and the now retired Sandra Day O’Connor—a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican, respectively—were the only justices with legislative backgrounds. They were deliberative thinkers, and the ones with the most phronesis. Their written opinions used the future tense more than the others’, and they tended to focus on the “advantageous,” deliberation’s chief topic. Chief Justice John Roberts, who has a political background himself, occasionally shows a spark of phronesis, as when he chose to uphold Obamacare. His former allies on the right excoriated him for it, calling him a “politician.” They were exactly right, in the wrong way. Practical wisdom is the compelling trait of good politics.
Aren’t swing voters moderate by definition? Calling Breyer a “liberal” and O’Connor a “conservative” exaggerates my point about their practical wisdom.
When you think about it, choosing a Supreme Court justice or a president isn’t that different from choosing a spouse. Check out the candidates’ disinterest, virtue, and phronesis—their caring, cause, and craft—and you can make a reasonable prediction about how they will vote once they’re in office.
Persuasion Alert
Am I showing good phronesis here, or do you see a disconnect in my analogy? How much is a presidency like a marriage, really? The analogy may hold up better for the Supreme Court, where justices spend many decades in close quarters with one another.
Phronesis means more than good judgment; it also means having experience with the problem. So, the second thing you want to hear after “That depends” is a tale of a comparable experience. Suppose my mother began to think a shirt wasn’t such a good idea but that the pool table was too expensive.
MOM: What about that bocce set over there?
PRACTICALLY WISE SALESMAN: That depends on your lawn. I’ve played with that same set, and the balls go all over the place if you have any stones or rough spots.
The practically wise salesman should also figure out whom the gift is really for. Father’s Day may just be an excuse for my mother to buy a toy for herself. In which case the sale gets a whole lot easier.
Argument Tool
COMPARABLE EXPERIENCE: The practically wise persuader shows examples from his own life.
Phronesis makes an especially good persuasion detector when you don’t know where the sweet spot is—when you know too little about an issue, or have no idea what you want to spend. To determine whether you can trust the speaker’s judgment, ask: has the guy figured out your needs—your real needs, that is? One of the most important traits of practical wisdom is “sussing” ability—the knack of determining what the issue is really about. Ideally, you want a pathologist like Greg House, the doctor on TV with the worst bedside manner in history. House homes in on the patient’s real problem, and he does it with an infallible accuracy that can come only from scriptwriters. In one episode, a patient with bright orange skin comes in complaining of back spasms.
Argument Tool
SUSSING OUT THE REAL ISSUE: A trustworthy persuader sees your actual needs even if you haven’t mentioned them.
HOUSE: Unfortunately, you have a deeper problem. Your wife is having an affair.
ORANGE GUY: What?
HOUSE: You’re orange, you moron! It’s one thing for you not to notice, but if your wife hasn’t picked up on the fact that her husband has changed color, she’s just not paying attention. By the way, do you consume just a ridiculous amount of carrots and megadose vitamins?
[Guy nods.]
HOUSE: The carrots turn you yellow, the niacin turns you red. Get some finger paints and do the math. And get a good lawyer.
TRY THIS IN SIZING UP A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
If the candidate touts experience that’s less than germane, and makes it analogous to the presidency, vote for someone else. Abraham Lincoln often spoke of rural life, but he didn’t describe the White House as a log cabin. Nor did he see the president as a corporate lawyer. His experience contributed to his practical wisdom; it didn’t dictate his decisions.
The patient defines the issue as back spasms from a golf injury. House produces a bigger issue: any wife who doesn’t notice her husband turn into a carrot must be cheating on him. While the American Medical Association might not appreciate his Sherlockian deduction, House shows the greatest phronesis abilities a persuader can have: to figure out what the audience really needs, and what the issue really is.
Even if you’re not buying anything, and you’re not in an argument, ethos principles can come in handy to size up a stranger. Suppose you evaluate an applicant for a management job. Use what you learned in the last chapter and this one; if her disinterest, virtue, and street smarts seem intact, chances are you found the right person.
Disinterest (caring). She should talk about what she can do for your company, not what your company can do for her.
Virtue (cause). She should hit the sweet spot for the job: aggressive but not too, sufficiently independent but able to take orders. And her choices should lie within the mean, as Aristotle would say. In other words, her personality should embody the company’s; that’s the cause part. How does she describe the company’s future? Does her strategy lie within the corporate sweet spot—risk-taking but not too? Creative but practical?
Practical wisdom (craft). Any candidate should have the right experience; you don’t need rhetoric to tell you that. But how do you think she will use that experience? Is she stuck in the rut of her own background? Suppose she’s a top saleswoman being considered for a vice presidency; the aggressive, elbows-out style that got her where she is may hurt her in management, where she has to get cooperation and teamwork out of her people.
College admissions officers might use the same criteria to evaluate young candidates. Think how caring, cause, and craft might work to produce the ideal liberal arts student. Does he reflect the institution’s values—or is he too zealous about them? What kind of education will fulfill his potential and make himself useful?
Now let’s talk relationships. You know those cheesy magazine quizzes where you measure your compatibility with your lover? Ethos can do that much better.
Caring. Do you share the same needs, and interpret them the same way? Good. But does your beloved consider your happiness second to his or her own? Then you have a serious disinterest problem. Mates can be disinterested only if they’re willing to sacrifice their own needs to that of the relationship—in other words, if the relationship’s stability is of greater value than their individual needs. You often hear about newlyweds’ territorial problems. That’s just another way of saying their caring is out of whack.
Cause. Do you share the same values? Think about which ones will crop up in most of your arguments. And what do you and your lover consider “moderate” behavior? In every aspect of your relationship, what seems extreme? In Annie Hall, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton go to separate analysts and talk about their marriage. Each analyst asks how often they have sex.
HE: Hardly ever. About three times a week.
SHE: All the time. About three times a week.
Persuasion Alert
So how do you know you can trust me, the author? What if I just spun all these principles in a way that makes me look trustworthy? Boy, are you a tough customer. There’s a reading list in the back.
This is no mere communication problem, it’s a rhetorical one—a matter of virtue. Their sweet spots lie too far apart. Aristotle’s definition of virtue, “a matter of choice, lying in a mean,” really makes sense here. The mean is your sweet spot on every issue.
Craft. Aristotle said that phronesis is the skill of dealing with probability—what is likely to happen, and what’s the best decision under the circumstances. This combines two skills: the ability to predict, based on the evidence, and that of making decisions that produce the greatest probability of happiness. A partner should neither make things up as he goes nor be a rigid rule follower. Watch how your significant other responds to a problem you both face. Does your lover apply rules to everything? Does he or she think every choice constitutes a values question? If your lover asks what Jesus would do with whose turn it is to cook, you may have problems. (As far as we know, Jesus didn’t leave any recipes.)
Persuasion Alert
Aren’t the ethos traits just supposed to make you look trustworthy? Rhetorically, yes. But we’re on the defensive right now, and our job is to measure the gap between your lover’s rhetorical ability and how much you can actually trust the person.
I can offer a personal example. When my wife and I decided to have children, we faced that classic choice of professional couples: which, if either of us, would stay home? I had this fantasy of playing the househusband, caring for the theoretical children and writing while they took their long, simultaneous naps. My wife was better organized, had superior social skills, and earned a higher salary as a fund-raiser; I figured she would make most of the money. The problem was that Dorothy also had more domestic ability than I did. My idea of cooking was to throw raw hamburger into a pot of canned soup and call it stew. The other problem was that my wife hated her job.
All that was decided one morning in a startling way, at least for me, when Dorothy came into the kitchen.
DOROTHY SR.: I hate asking people for money.
ME: Boy, are you in the wrong profession.
I hadn’t had my coffee, or I would have shut up right there. Instead, I asked what I thought was a rhetorical question.
ME: Why don’t you quit?
She threw her arms around me, gave notice that very day, and two weeks later, our household income dropped by more than half. Dorothy had not seen my question as rhetorical. She didn’t get a job, and I didn’t write full-time, for the next twenty years.
Now, you could interpret my response to her complaint as both a success and a failure of practical wisdom. On the positive side, I had applied a value we shared in common—that people who hated their jobs shouldn’t work in them if they could help it—to the particular situation. On the flip side, neither one of us actually deliberated over the decision, and one sign of phronesis is the ability to deliberate—to consider both sides of a question.
It could be that Dorothy didn’t have much faith in my own craft, though she denies it. Maybe she knew that we both would be happier if I worked full-time and she reared the kids. She was right, of course. Plus she not only got what she wanted, she gave me the satisfaction of having proposed it in the first place. If she did that on purpose, it was with a time-honored technique: making me believe that her choice was really mine.
Virtue (cause) and disinterest (caring) are only two legs of the ethos stool. A candidate may be the most pious, goodhearted, selfless woman who ever ran for mayor in your town, but she’ll make a lousy mayor if she can’t fix the potholes. Here’s how to assess a person’s practical wisdom (craft):
• The “that depends” filter. Does the persuader want to know the exact nature of your problem? Or is she spouting a one-size-fits-all choice?
• Comparable experience. This may seem painfully obvious, but it seems to escape voters regularly. How many times have we chosen the rich guy over the guy who’s actually been in politics? Comparable experience is less obvious when someone tries to sell you something. Then the question is, where did they get their information? From using the product themselves, or from company training?
• “Sussing” ability. Can the persuader cut to the chase of an issue?