It's Friday! Time for a diversion.....
This week I received an email from a colleague who had obviously pressed "send to all" and fired it off without thinking....and probably just as quickly regretted it. As I read it, and listened to others discussing how foolish it was, I remembered Aristotle's virtue of prudence . Prudence- it sounds such an old-fashioned word, difficult to define in the abstract, but yet we recognise straight away when an action lacks prudence. A little prudence before hitting "send" would have saved a lot of trouble for my colleague. Prudence in this instance means taking time over a decision, thinking through the consequences of your actions, considering what the effect is likely to be, asking yourself if this is what you really mean to do. Our culture, especially when we look at how we communicate with each other, seems to be in danger of forgetting prudence and elevating immediacy to the position of a virtue instead. Messages arrive instantly, can be read instantly a...