Among all the principles, Prudence comes at the top. Not that it is more important than other principles, in that sense, all principles are equal, however, prudence comes at the top, because it gives other principles their meaning.

Driving recklessly is not courage. Jumping from a two-storey building is not courage. Shouting on your superiors, or seniors and disrespecting them, is not courage.

If you are blabbering out the intimate parts of your life to every person you meet, that is not sincerity.

Donating all you have to others and then living as a beggar on the street is not humanity.

Being a slave to your parents, your boss and your spouse by following their every wish, whims, demands & expectations is not duty.

Eating just enough to barely survive when in fact you are wealthy enough to afford nutritious meal, is not modesty. Speaking of yourself as the worst person on the planet, so that the person listening to you never trusts you for an important job is not humility.

Never using the internet in order to exercise your will-power is not self-regulation.

Do you see the pattern here?

There are certain actions, that appear like following the principle, but in truth, are far from it.

Can you guess the reason?

Because all these actions are not Prudent.

Following the principles, first and foremost, requires prudence. So unless something is prudent, it cannot be truly good, no matter what it may appear as.

Being courageous is meaningless, unless being courageous is prudent too. Same goes with every other principle.

But being just, you may retort, is good in itself, even if it may not be prudent to be so.

And I will give you example where what may appear as being just, is not actually so. Is slapping back a person who has slapped you, truly just? Is stealing from a person who stole from you, really just? Is murdering a murderer, just? Is raping a rapist, just?

Without prudence, it is impossible to determine what is truly just.

Prudence gives the depth and scope to every other principle. This means a principle is valid only to the extent prudence has determined its limits to be. Beyond that, it ceases to be a principle.

Driving fast, may actually be called courage in certain rare situations, like when potentially someone’s life could be saved if we hurry and that is only because it has been determined as a prudent thing to do.

What does this mean?

It means, following principles, and by extension, living a principled life, is simply not possible without Prudence.

This brings us to our central question, what is Prudence?

The short answer is, anything that is useful & effective, is prudent.

Usefulness deal with the ends (What to do). Effectiveness deal with the means (How to do).

In other words, prudence is application of effective means for worthy ends.

Usefulness : Ends Worth Pursuing

Something is useful if it can be used to achieve a purpose. Anything without a purpose is useless.

Usefulness of an endeavor requires having an end in mind.

This begs the question, what kind of ends are really worth pursuing?

Let’s try to arrive at a heuristic which can be used in setting our goals (or ends).

First of all, as you would hopefully agree our ultimate desired end is to live a good life.

However I would argue :

A life that violates principles, ceases to be a good life.

When you violate a principle, you are going against your true nature. And a soul that isn’t aligned to its true nature simply cannot be at peace.

Think of any behavior you consider praiseworthy and good, and you will be able to find a principle underlying that behavior. The reason we don’t admire lottery winners but do admire self-made millionaires, is because inherently, we admire the fortitude, prudence and growth(potential realization) in our prospect.

Just like following principles wins our admiration and praise, violation of them invites our despise and contempt.

Where it gets interesting is, as much as it applies to others, it is even more true for ourselves. Violation of principle ultimately leads to a disturbed soul causing self-loathing and there cannot be a good life, no matter how successful, where there is self-loathing.

Furthermore, no matter how much we may try, our well-being is not guaranteed. We are susceptible to all kinds of mishaps and misfortunes like disease, disability, injustice, war, accident, break-up, most of which happen without our permissions. Principles give us tools and ability to best deal with any situation, and if we diligently follow them, there is one thing that is guaranteed, regardless of what happens to us : Peace and tranquility of mind.

In other words, if peace is an important constituent of good life, it is only possible, if we follow principles.

Therefore, there cannot be a good life which is, before anything else, not a principled life.

Having made the case for why principles must come first, let’s move on.

In every single situation, there are multiple available choices/alternatives.

And they can broadly be categorized into choices that are consistent with principles and choices which are not.

Choices consistent with principles are all those choices that don’t violate a principle. And there are two classes of such choices :

Principle Imperatives Optional Choices

Principle imperatives are must-dos. These are the things, which if we don’t do, we will surely violate a principle.

Consequently, in any given situation, principle imperatives take precedence and must be acted upon.

Example of principle imperatives include : keeping our promise, doing our job diligently and with discipline, trying to save someone who met an accident in front of your eyes.

Principle imperatives are different from optional choices that don’t violate a principle, whether we do them or not. For example, going for a walk. It is good to go for a walk daily, however, if you don’t, it doesn’t mean you have violated a principle. It is optional.

The question then arises, how should we choose among the optional choices.

In other words, when principle imperatives are absent, what is the worthy thing to do?

Once again, since our goal is to have a good life, we shall examine another constituent of the same : Happiness.

Happiness is subjective, and everyone defines happiness a little bit differently. And to be very honest, I am not going to attempt to define what happiness is.

What I am going to do however, is talk about what happiness is not.

It is definitely not anxiety, sorrow, grief, fear, pain, suffering, agitation, distress, guilt, self-loathing. And while people may disagree on what happiness is, they would certainly agree that these negative emotions are absent when they are happy.

In other words, we may not agree on what happiness is, but we surely realize where its perimeters are.

Beyond the perimeters lie all these negative feelings/experiences.

When all these negative emotions are absent, the least that we experience is a sense of well-being. That is the baseline– the ground zero of happiness.

Certainly there is no unit to measure happiness and probably there will never be.

The best we can do, therefore, is to measure the amount of time we spend at or above the baseline level (not experiencing any negative emotions) and the amount of time, we are below it (experiencing one or more negative emotion) and then subtract the former from the latter to get our net happiness.

Consequently if happiness is an important constituent of good life, if there are no principle imperatives in place, the goal should be to maximize our own net happiness over our lifetime.

Net happiness is a great intellectual concept and can be best understood through following example :

If you were to eat junk food everyday, you might suppose it brings you happiness, and therefore you would be tempted to think it is a worthy endeavor.

Unless you consider the following :

Eating junk food daily weakens your immune system, makes you vulnerable to various lifestyle diseases and the resulting weight gain makes you susceptible to low self-esteem issues. The few minutes of happiness or pleasure you derive from eating junk food are soon eclipsed by sorrow, pain and suffering that bad health and low self-esteem brings. To make the matter worse, bad health might make you lose focus on the things that actually matter, like your job, your relationships, your dreams, all of which have tremendous impact on your happiness.

In fact whatever pleasure you gain by eating is almost immediately nullified by the guilt that follows.

If you subtract all the happiness you (potentially) lose from the happiness you gain by eating junk food, it doesn’t take a genius to understand that net amount of happiness gained in your life by eating junk food is markedly negative.

But, you might retort, that everything is a matter of probability. The fact that eating junk food will result in ill health, is not certain. All it will do is increase the probability that I get sick. But I might never get sick. How to account for chance, you say.

In order to account for chance, there is yet another intellectual tool called downside protection.

Account for the worst that could happen, and then assume it were to surely happen.

Can you live with it?

If the worst is something you would not prefer to have in your life, reconsider the choice.

In other words, anything that may permanently or chronically take away your well-being isn’t worth doing/pursuing.

Of course, it is easier said than done, but thinking from that perspective alone, will help you avoid a lot of bad decisions in life.

It should be noted however, that even if you try your best to remain above the baseline level, bad things will still happen. You will experience negative emotions. There are things outside of your control that might bring turmoil or destroy your well being. And of course, you can do nothing about them.

However, your goal should be that the things that destroy your well-being, at the very least, don’t come from your own doings or choices.

There is just one exception to the above rule :

If there is a principle imperative present, and your well-being is threatened in following that imperative, you must still do it.

Principles above everything.

Driving fast to save someone’s life may threaten your well-being, but it is a principle imperative and therefore, you must drive as fast as you can. A soldier in fulfilling his duty may have to give his life, but he must do so gladly when required.

In conclusion, here is the heuristic to follow to decide the worth/usefulness of a choice or goal.

Moving on.

Effectiveness : Means To An End

Unless, the means that we employ to achieve the ends are effective, they can’t be called prudent.

Effectiveness in an endeavor requires us to understand nature of things, and to use our reason, creativity and imagination. It also calls for understanding what we can control and what we don’t, and requires us to focus our effort in the things that we can control.

It is important to note that even the means we employ must not violate any principle.

Not every means is equally effective. Therefore we must judge the degree of effectiveness of our means and employ the best available alternative.

For example, if we want to be healthy, there are various exercise programs we can employ to achieve the goal. Yoga, walking, swimming, weight training are all means to achieve this goal.

Which one will be most effective in our case requires us to understand the nature of our goal (Do we want to be just fit or also look fit? Do we want to learn a skill or find a hobby? ), our own nature (How old am I? Do I have a precondition that renders me unfit for a particular activity? What do I enjoy? What kind of genetic dispositions I have?) and nature of the fitness program (What does it entail?)

When we are thoroughly clear of the nature of the things, the next step is to employ reason, imagination and creativity to choose the best among the given alternatives. This basically means doing cost-benefit analysis, pro-cons analysis. We may also be creative and employ part of yoga and part of weight training in our program.

What we end up doing is irrelevant, what is important is that we employ only those means which we have judged to be the most effective among a given set of alternative.

In order to be effective, and by extension, prudent, it is important that we never cease to learn. Love of learning is an essential side-effect of our desire to be effective and prudent.

Means as an End, End as a Means

Let’s say your goal is to earn an extra $10,000 this year.

Is that an end or a means?

A lot of people might say that is an end. But what if I tell you that you want to earn $10,000 this year so that you can finally have the long awaited vacation on a beautiful beach. Isn’t then your goal of earning $10,000 actually a means to achieve another end : A vacation at your favorite beach?

Every end is actually a means to achieve another end.

Now answer another question.

You work 2 hours extra every day 5 days a week to earn that $10,000.

Is working an extra two hours a means or an end?

The right answer is, its both. You may have to ask for permission from your boss to work extra hours, and negotiate a good pay if you do so. Furthermore, you have to let go of other appointments and empty your schedule for those two hours, so you can work. Then you have to motivate yourself to work, and finally actually sit and work. You would do all these things because the end in your mind is to work an extra 2 hours.

Therefore, end and means is a relative term. An endeavor could be both an end and a means relative to different things.

Being prudent therefore requires an endeavor to be both effective as a means, useful as an end at the same time.