People consider the harms they inflict to be justified and forgettable, and the harms they suffer to be unprovoked and grievous.
Interpretation
People often rationalize their own harmful actions while perceiving the harm done to them as unjustified.
This quote by Steven Pinker suggests that individuals have a tendency to justify the negative actions they take against others while viewing the negative actions taken against them as entirely unjust and severe. This duality in perspective highlights a common cognitive bias, where one's own shortcomings are minimized while the grievances faced are amplified, potentially leading to a skewed understanding of morality and fairness in human interactions.
In practice
During a discussion about ethics in a philosophy class.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.
You say that you are just a body, but inside of you is something greater than the Universe.
When you have worn out your shoes, the strength of the show fiber has passed into your body.
Whenever we moderns pause for a moment, and enter the silence, and listen very carefully, the glimmer of our deepest nature begins to shine forth, and we are introduced to the mysteries of the deep, the call of the within, the infinite radiance of a splendor that time and space forgot
The press doesn't stop publishing, by the way, in a fascist escalation; it simply watches what it says. That too can be an incremental process, and the pace at which the free press polices itself depends on how journalists are targeted.
I am a child of God. I always carry that with me.
The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.
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