Monday, February 16, 2009
Practical Wisdom
About this talk
"Barry Schwartz makes a passionate call for “practical wisdom” as an antidote to a society gone mad with bureaucracy. He argues powerfully that rules often fail us, incentives often backfire, and practical, everyday wisdom will help rebuild our world."
I would suggest that the multitude of bureaucratic obstacles that interfere in progress in policing have something to do with the lack of what is called "practical wisdom" in this talk.
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I would suggest that the multitude of bureaucratic obstacles that interfere in progress in policing have something to do with the lack of what is called "practical wisdom" in this talk.
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree. There is a constant erosion of the checks on our legal system, the recent weakening of the exclusionary rule and the strengthening of absolute prosecutorial immunity to name two. It takes very little moral courage to decry stupid rules and inflexible bureaucracy, but there are two sides to almost every rule.
I perceive the moral courage as the courage to actually care about real people in ever-changing circumstances. This blog, for example, is governed by no rules except Google rules and the desire I have to share information to help real people in the real world. It is my belief that crime and intelligence analysis has not progressed quickly because we have lost sight of the fact that the role of public safety is safety, not crime, not terrorism... it is about keeping me, you, and our friends and families safe. Smarter use of police resources, of information, and of our creative brains would make a difference.
ReplyDeleteDeb,
ReplyDeleteOnce you start talking about "public safety", we get into the area of social harm. I agree with the need for policing to address broader issues of social harm, but I'm not sure the decision-making environment we work with (i.e. senior police officials) are ready for that leap just yet. Would love to be contradicted...
Jerry - How did I get into the area of social harm by my post? I am not thinking about traditional public safety - I am thinking about the idea of safety itself, and how we live in such a fear-ridden time that we cannot even imagine the possibility of creating safety without creating a bad side effect, or worse. No shades of 1984 - I don't think government is the solution. In a sense, there is no such thing as government - it is just the collection of individuals working in it who, for the most part, did not create it. We need a functioning government process for social order, but we also need some faith that things can improve, which cannot be instituted by rules such as "have hope." Hope is not a law. (Yet.)
ReplyDeleteWell I confess I read into your comment "we have lost sight of the fact that the role of public safety is safety, not crime, not terrorism". If we look at community safety beyond crime, then some sociologists would describe that as 'social harm', and I actually agree with that view completely. I think we need to expand our concept of safety to be beyond just crime or terrorism. I was actually agreeing with you...
ReplyDeleteWhat a relief! :-)
ReplyDeleteMy reference to moral courage was not intended as any sort of slight, but to point out that (in the video at least) the gentleman was saying nothing that you can't hear around the water cooler any day of the week. It doesn't exactly lend itself to strong rebuttal ("No, stupid rules are great!") The hard part is identifying an agreed definition of "obstacle" and then presenting a systemic fix for those obstacles. After all, you might be a libertarian and think rule "A" is an obstacle, and I'm a liberal and think rule "A" is a great law or at least a necessary evil. My "practical wisdom" will not match up with your practical wisdom in that case. Now multiply that by the hundreds of thousands of rules and laws that govern our society.
ReplyDeleteSo while we can all agree with the premise, the devil is in the details, and I think the gentleman gave the details short shrift. Presumably he goes into greater detail in his writings, and it was just a short speech, but still.