Word: wisdoms
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...venture, not just with its diplomats but with its troops, into a region that has been plagued for centuries by factionalism and hatred. The carnage in Lebanon was virtually certain to produce a political storm as members of Congress and ordinary Americans questioned the wisdom of a policy they do not always understand. For the fractious little country at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, whose government the American peace keepers were trying to uphold, the event marked another terrible setback on the seemingly endless path away from anarchy and chaos...
Certainty's embarrassing kin guides Thomas past accepted wisdom to good sense and imaginative speculation. He studies quantum mechanics and realizes that it holds no mystic truths or fetching metaphors for him because he does not know the mathematics. Elsewhere, he bucks psychiatric doctrine and formulates a hands-off policy toward the unconscious: "It cannot be a bad thing to own one, but I would no more think of meddling with it than trying to exorcise my liver, an equally mysterious apparatus. Until we know a lot more, it would be wise, as we have learned from other fields...
...both the Carter and Reagan Administrations found it so difficult to listen to the voices of the past, to reach out for guidance to men and women experienced in the ways of this city, remains a mystery. There is much accumulated wisdom in these streets, and when properly refined and weighed, it can benefit any President...
Bower: My differences with Bob have to do with the ability or wisdom of trying to get a coherent intervention. Let's take the G.M.-Toyota example. Presumably, how you handle G.M. Toyota is going to have something to do with the trade position of the United States and effect on negotiations. Should the U.S. negotiator talk to the person who might block the deal for anti-trust reasons? And vice versa. There's an intimate relationship between one policy and the other, and I think that raises the question: should we have a coherent policy...
There is a wisdom beyond sentimentality in the authentic apology. It has a purpose. Disraeli once said, "Apologies only account for that which they do not alter." That still accounts for much, and the accounting is indispensable. Perhaps not within a nation, where the law presumably does the accounting among individuals: the law pronounces judgment to mark an end to the cycle of vengeance that would otherwise follow a crime. But between nations there is no comparable agency to prevent historical wounds from festering endlessly. Nothing, except the apology. In an almost miraculous way, it seems capable of binding...