p.2 Practical wisdom is a way of understanding that produces a better way of acting and a way of acting
that stimulates deeper understanding.
p.3 As Theodore Roszak succinctly states, "Ecology is the study of connectedness."
p.4 The practice of right awareness is said to produce wisdom. For my purposes, it designates an attentiveness
to relationships that fosters prudent interactions.
p.6 Indeed, resilience is precisely the capacity of a system to adapt to a world in flux without
falling apart... At the same time, it must maintain its core relationships and values, lest it cease to be identifiable
as that particular social or cultural system.
p.68-69 Absent practical know-how and correct desire established through habit, Aristotle insisted,
theoretical knowledge proves rather powerless. It will not automatically lead to virtue, because one may know one
thing but desire and do something else.
p.69 Phronesis is not simply knowledge; it is the capacity and disposition to put knowledge into
practice.
p.69 The practically wise person acts flexibly, continuously adapting his behavior to the situation
at hand. He does not simply apply a principle or rule to determine what is right or virtuous.
p.73 The community of life, however, is dynamic and evolving. It cannot be sustained by instituting a rigid,
rule-based plan. Sustaining it demands practical wisdom and adaptive practices... Actions are ethically right, Leopold states,
when they preserve the integrity and stability of the community; they are wrong otherwise.
p.90 To be practically wise is to know that you can never do merely one thing... On the web of life, every
act has effects and side effects
p.90-91 Practical wisdom prompts us to address the question, "And then what?" before taking action...
Every action... enters a web of relationships. Its effects ripple out in every direction... our... endeavours... may resound
indefinitely.
p.160 Nature does not make permanent solutions. It simply evolves organisms and ecosystems that work well
in particular contexts... To be sustainable, an economy must be resilient, and to be resilient, it must be adaptive.
p.184 the essence of action is not the attaining of fixed goals... [Hannah] Arendt insists
that action truly occurs only when the instrumental pursuit of identifiable ends ceases. That is a puzzling statement.
p.187 In acting we are inviting others to respond. How they will respond, and how we will in turn
respond to their responses, remains indeterminate.
p.187 The meaning of an action is not to be found in individual intentions or aspirations. Rather, the
meaning of action is found in the responses it provokes. It is a product of what action does in the world.
p.188 In the end, the meaning of an action is less determined by its author's
intentions than by the host of responses it stimulates. When acting in the political realm, we are initiating
that which cannot be predetermined. We are partaking in what natural scientists call emergent behavior
p.189 To enter a narrative is to know relationships. Narratives display the relationships of parts to other
parts and the relationships of parts to the whole.
p.191 The meaning of an action... congeals only through a retrospective narrative.
p.196 Action cannot find its justification or redemption in a final achievement because no one really knows
when its work is done. An action enters the political world as a solicitation. The responses it provokes, and the
actions these responses in turn stimulate, may continue to ripple across the web of a political community indefinitely.
p.220 The fuller and deeper one's imaginative inhabiting of diverse narratives, the more reasonable one's
decision making... reasonableness is the capacity and disposition to entertain various passions and desires imaginatively...
in scenarios where proposed actions have various effects and side effects.
p.222 Action is made meaningful by placing it within a narrative that gives it a context and purpose.
p.228 Virtues... are habitual behaviors we come to adopt for various reasons, only one of which is the conscious,
well-thought-out, articulate response that we give when asked to explain our actions... you are what you do.
p.281 Experimentation may seem incongruent with sustainability. But in a world whose only certainty
is change, adapting - at the proper scale and speed - is the only means to sustain what we value.
