Wisdom is a Do-It-Yourself Project" is an armchair study in philosophy and psychology. It offers new insights to happiness, problem solving, decision making, mental maturity, and mental health. It separates emotion, rationalization, vanity, and impulse from deliberation, and mental maturity and offers reinforcement to new ideas of intelligence and cognition. It proposes new insights to "over achievement," "underachievement," crime prevention, bullyism, youth indiscretions, educating; overcoming the young-people-at-risk subculture, bigotry, and suggests a formula for world peace.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One

Humanity’s Tethers

Discussion [Similar to the elephant which does not realize that it can break its tether, humanity acts as though it is not aware that it can break intellectual tethers. We use "tether" in the sense that Abraham Maslow used "choking-off forces."]

This book will:

o Define humanity's status, discuss how far below potential we are as individuals and as a global society, and how inadequately prepared society is to meet the challenges of its overpopulated twenty-first century.

o Demonstrate how each of us can bring ourselves to a level of happiness and productivity beyond our expectations, and how humanity will thus benefit and change to produce a prosperous society at peace with itself.

o Show how ineffective personal and corporate decision-making develops and we will show deliverance from such decisions.

o Set the stage for solutions to personal and global problems by showing how to upgrade the thought processes which formulate them--to cure the disease. As with tools, each one helps make a better tool, each generation can improve the next.

o Introduce criteria to aid in knowing how to recognize a best decision.

o Describe what mentally mature means and show how young people can bypass inappropriate parenting to become prudent, happy adults.

o Build on the self-evident truths that mentally mature adults make better decisions than do children--of any age, that upgrading mental maturity upgrades wisdom, and that upgrading wisdom upgrades mental maturity.

o Show how to maintain inherited potentials.

o Show that mental maturity results in happy people with high self-esteem, and that happy people make better and more wholesome decisions than those who are cynical or in despair.

o Indicate many pitfalls in decision-making and offer suggestions on how to dodge and overcome them. Knowledge of decision-making pitfalls helps people to avoid them.

o Show that humanity's best decisions cannot be made by experts or by consensus unless the systems and conditions for making decisions change. We will show how to change the systems.

o Show that the attributes of people who are successful at wholesome living are discoverable and can be adopted by anyone and taught to anyone. We describe thirteen of those attributes.

Closing Chapter One

Chapter Two

Many Demons-Many Tethers

Discussion [Humanity’s intellectual tethers are numerous and subtle. Humans are as much genetically programmed for folly as for wisdom.]

Gullibility and Stupidity

Whose Demons Should We Heed?

Bringing Stability Out of Intellectual Chaos

Intelligence, Cognition, Knowledge, Wisdom, and Mental Maturity

Closing Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Personal Tethers

Discussion [Personal tethers are learned! Sadly, the tethers for decision-making are biased toward believing we are right, when in fact, we often are not. This book introduces SIEZUR as an acronym to summarize many ways we err in judgment.]

Emotion, Reason, Logic, Wisdom, Problem-Solving and Decision-Making

Considerations on Problem-Solving

Conditions Which Promote Success in Decision-Making

SIEZUR: How To be Convinced Without Being Right

Closing Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Breaking Personal Tethers is A Do-It-Yourself Project

Discussion [Everyone can self-elevate to mental maturity and wisdom when they want to do so. This book introduces: a) autothenics (self-sculpting) as an active alternative to being passive to heredity (eugenics) and environment (euthenics); b) Thirteen Attributes of Mental Maturity as tools for individual diagnosis, personal growth and counseling; c) and a psychology of wanting--intrinsic motivation. We also show how to sculpt impulses to fashion a wholesome demeanor/persona.]

• Maturation Through Autothenics
• Psychology of Wanting
• Learning To Modify Personas
• Modifying DeliberationModifying Emotion
• Modifying Impulses and Habits
• Modifying Ideation
• Modifying Happiness
• Modifying Self-Esteem and Ego-Strength
• Modifying Demeanor
• Attainable Goals: Mental Maturity

Mental Maturity Quotient (MMQ)

Some Cultural Foibles Attributed To Measured IQ and The Bell Curve Which Will Change With Adoption Of "Mature Attributes" (MMQ)

Problems With Concepts of Overachiement and Underachievement

Personal Management

Closing Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Corporate Tethers

Discussion [As individuals become part of corporate bodies, their individual persona changes and each member affects the total persona of the corporate body. While the outcomes of corporate decision-making have more "clout" than individual decision-making, they are fallible.]

• Our Fallible Tradition
• Our Fallible Marriage and Family
• The Fallible Committee
• Our Fallible Experts
• Our Fallible Tradition
• Our Fallible Government
• Our Fallible Media
• Our Fallible Religions
• Our Fallible Jurisprudence
• Our Fallible Manufacturing
• Our Fallible Bureaucracy
• Our Fallible Social Agencies
• Our Fallible Schools

Chapter Six

Discussion [The bell curve is a pillar of social research. Because it has been misused, multitudes of people have been misdiagnosed, mistaught, and intellectually disenfranchised.]

The Tether of Probability When Applied to Intelligence

Research--Achievement and Aptitude Tests Do Not Measure Potential

Modifying Research By Philosophy

A Philosophical Consideration of Why Some People Overachieve

Closing Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Discussion [Much of the cause of the at-risk subculture of people can be traced to inappropriate training. Much of the cause is an outgrowth of inappropriate bell-curve mind-sets.]

As a Working Hypotheses About Risk, We Can Assume That all people are at some degree of Risk

The Onset of Risk

Early Recognition of At-Risk Youngsters

Closing Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Discussion [Managing corporate decision-making tethers requires personal management, and following consensus-produced procedural recipes (algorithms). We introduce the logic of accommodation to "accommodate" for the non-absolute entities of social research which are not adequately "accommodated" by bell-curve mind sets. We devise an algorithm for making and evaluating social (non-empirical) problems.. Then we use the formula to "solve" three social problems: a prosperous world future, insuring that all children WANT to become educated, and bigotry.]

Factors Which Promote Similar Thought Processes in Great

• Numbers of People.
• Cultural Research
• A Basis for Cultural Research For Individuals
• The Logic of Accommodation
• To Overcome Weaknesses in Corporate Decision-Making
• An Algorithm For Solving Cultural Problems
• Applying the Algorithm To Global Problems
• Perfect World
• Subordinate Problem One: Breaking Educational Tethers
• Subordinate Problem Two: Breaking Bigotry Tethers

Closing Chapter Eight

Appendix A.

[Appendix A introduces a partial list of self-evident statements which are true enough to use for cleaning our intellectual attics of misconceptions and as bases for new philosophies and research.]

Appendix B2

[Appendix B offers a skeletal structure of Success Oriented Schools--where each child is meticulously and appropriately taught and enjoys the process enough to want more. The process does not increase costs.]

Appendix C

Tethers of Education--Tailoring

[Appendix C outlines how to tailor school to young people and young people to school and life.]

Appendix D

Eight Reasons to Reconsider Curve Marking

[Appendix D discusses the stand that much of our youth problem is a product of on-the-curve-thinking by educators and offers a healthy alternative.]

Appendix E2

Some Counseling Tethers

[Appendix E recommends that counselors: a) avoid providing rationalizations for failure by using "victim" platitudes, b) promote, through autothenics, learning how to fill learning voids, and c) utilize preemptive therapy. Preemptive therapy is based on the assumption that when minds are made-up regarding life’s perils before life’s challenges, young people are most likely to make mentally mature decisions.]