Wise when wisdom profits not'.

 

Intelligent understanding with contextual relevance. 

 

There are, if we over simplify two ways of it:-

 

One that emanates from natural intelligence which can grasp the pulse of an event, situation , say like presence of mind, street smartness and so on that enable one to automatically or spontaneous resort to intelligent understanding and easy adaptation to many situations; 

 

The other one is through well informed, educated, knowledge based logical decision making involving using appropriate domain specific contextually relevant frames of reference. 

 

For the latter to work one needs a very high amount of accumulated knowledge, memory, and well trained thought processes to choose the correct option. 

 

Both these paths can get to work their way when a hitherto unknown crisis grips everyone, it unnerves and exposes the limitations of both types of understanding more so, the second one.

 

This syndrome is known as 'the curse of Tiresias who says to Oedipus, "to be wise when wisdom profits not'. 

 

So, many may resort to accept or follow what is being told to them because they submit to the view " when one has no power to change the outcome", of what use ​is ​either knowledge or the processes of any intelligent understanding.