I think “strategy” is better than “wisdom”. I think “wisdom” is associated with cached Truths and signals superiority. This is bad because this will make our audience too hostile. Strategy, on the other hand, is about process, about working towards a goal, and it’s already used in literature in the context of improving one’s decision making process.
You can get away with saying things like “I want to be strategic about life”, meaning that I want to make choices in such a way that I’m unlikely to regret them at a later stage. Or I can say “I want to become a more strategic thinker” and it’s immediately obvious that I care about reaching goals and that I’m not talking about strategy for the sake of strategy (I happen to care about strategy because of the virtue of curiosity, but this too is fine). The list goes on: “we need to reconsider our strategy for education”, “we’re not being strategic enough about health care—too many people die unnecessarily”. None of these statements put our audience on guard or make us look like unnatural weirdos. [1]
The most important thing is that “irrational” is perceived as an insult and way too close to the sexist emotional/hormonal used to dismiss women. Aside from the sexism saying “whatever, you’re just being irrational” is just as bad as saying “whatever, you’re just being hormonal”. It’s the worst possible thing to say, and when you have a habit of using the word “rational” a lot it’s way too easy to slip up.
[1] fun exercise—substitute “strategy” by “rationality” and see how much more Spock-like it all sounds.
I think “strategy” is better than “wisdom”. I think “wisdom” is associated with cached Truths and signals superiority. This is bad because this will make our audience too hostile. Strategy, on the other hand, is about process, about working towards a goal, and it’s already used in literature in the context of improving one’s decision making process.
You can get away with saying things like “I want to be strategic about life”, meaning that I want to make choices in such a way that I’m unlikely to regret them at a later stage. Or I can say “I want to become a more strategic thinker” and it’s immediately obvious that I care about reaching goals and that I’m not talking about strategy for the sake of strategy (I happen to care about strategy because of the virtue of curiosity, but this too is fine). The list goes on: “we need to reconsider our strategy for education”, “we’re not being strategic enough about health care—too many people die unnecessarily”. None of these statements put our audience on guard or make us look like unnatural weirdos. [1]
The most important thing is that “irrational” is perceived as an insult and way too close to the sexist emotional/hormonal used to dismiss women. Aside from the sexism saying “whatever, you’re just being irrational” is just as bad as saying “whatever, you’re just being hormonal”. It’s the worst possible thing to say, and when you have a habit of using the word “rational” a lot it’s way too easy to slip up.
[1] fun exercise—substitute “strategy” by “rationality” and see how much more Spock-like it all sounds.