To realize the difference between prudence and prejudice.

I have stated in other places, and will mention here, that any one of these seven points may be a "beginning" depending upon who you are. If you began conscious life already understanding any of the above three distinctions, this one will probably be self-evident. But for many, this is the beginning point, and its realization will have been after much pain and processing.

Our son Curt, as he grew in our home, loved everyone and his love was always returned. When he began kindergarten, he quickly learned there are some who do not love him. He came home sobbing one day; not because he had been beat up by a group who he thought were friends, but because his world view had been shattered. Now, at 23, his universe consists again of love, but he has learned to be prudent.

One of the most common of all serious human transgressions is our apparent need to judge others. This is probably an outgrowth of our very real and necessary need to be prudent, but prudence practiced judgmentally is prejudice.

PRUDENCE, as mentioned at the close of the previous chapter, is our ability to make intelligent guesses regarding the safety of certain situations in the world around us, based upon our own experiences. Safety is the basic reason we need to be prudent, but it can also be seen as usefulness, desirability, or simple relevance.

PREJUDICE is what happens when we make such decisions about people or situations, based on other people's personal experience rather than our own.

The above definitions point to one element as the vital difference between prudence and prejudice - personal experience. Perhaps this seems a bit too simple for you. Simple, perhaps, but profound. In the next chapter we'll think about "simple" as contrasted with "simplistic." Here I want to address what may be some of your objections to my definitions of prudence and prejudice.

Consider a person, who under the guise of being prudent, will not rent to a black family, because a previous black family didn't pay their rent. Taking the facts of this situation as given (that the reason was because the other black family didn't pay), this is not a case of prejudice, but of faulty logic. Specifically, it is a "hasty generalization," concluding too soon that all black families will not pay.

IF that landlord had rented to 20 black families in a row, and all 20 didn't pay, and he concluded that no black family would pay, it would still be a hasty generalization. It is too soon to conclude that the determining factor in non-payment was because of race; in fact, most would begin looking at the rental, the attitude of the landlord, or any number of other factors to see why people don't pay.

But, as long as the generalization is based on one's personal experience, we are not dealing with prejudice. True, prejudice and bad logic look very much the same from the outside. That's why judging others is pretty risky business.

We are responsible for the motivations of only one person in this life: our own. It's a good thing, too, because as the above example points out, it is impossible to know the motivations of another. It's tough enough to get to the seat of our own.

Let's say the owner in question heard from his parent all his life that black people never paid their rent. If that is the reason he doesn't rent to them, that is prejudice, even if the parent was speaking from his own experience. If I base my judgements upon my dad's experience rather than my own, I act, at least in some measure, from prejudice. But nobody but I will know that for certain.

If prudence and prejudice are so similar in appearance, shouldn't people of conscience forego either? Is prudence so important anyway? Is it, perhaps, even wrong?

Right or wrong, I am convinced that it is impossible to not practice prudence at some level, conscious or unconscious. Self preservation is too deeply ingrained in us. And if we will perform actions unconsciously which will meet our inborn need to be prudent in a potentially hostile world, we are almost bound, as people of conscience, to be purposely and responsibly prudent.

A few years ago I was at a denominational meeting at which one of the delegates, a State Supreme Court justice, proposed to the body that we pass a resolution urging Christians, as a matter of witness and discipline, to not lock their doors. The proposal lost - overwhelmingly.

Later, I had occasion to meet this person for dinner, and upon returning to his car, I noticed that before he could get into it, he had to unlock the door. Our mind may tell us one thing about how we should operate, but our being will quite often betray the mind.

But I think that for most, the serious question will not be "Should I be prudent?" Most of us assume that need, and in our quest to be people of conscience will spend much time searching our own motivations to pare away the unconscious prejudices we are harboring. This is where insisting upon the primacy of our own experience rather than some other expert observation, or pontifical pronouncement, will serve us the best.

The decisions we make in the name of prudence will never be unflawed. The need for prudence itself is the admission that we live in a less than perfect place. And the personal experience upon which we base our decisions is always incomplete. The need will always be present for us to constantly review and revise the "rules of thumb" under which we operate in the world.

And if we come, at last, to understand that constant need; to understand that the best we can come up with at any given time will soon be superseded by our own better understanding; we will then, finally, approach what it means to be fully human in the universe.

The next three discernments are ones which are substantially different from the four we have considered so far. The difference will emerge as we go. We move on now to consider the subjects of simplicity, creativity, and silence.

Introduction, Ch. 1. What is Reality?, Ch. 2. Knowledge and belief., Ch. 3. What is being open- minded?, Ch. 4. Prudence and prejudice., Ch. 5. Simple and simplistic., Ch. 6. Creative and coercive., Ch. 7. Silence and absence

RETURN TO THE WISDOM MAIN PAGE         RETURN TO REVELATION GEEK PAGE