Okay, that will go on my list as well. I am very much enjoying Talent is Overrated ( about 1/3 through - took a side trip to read Outliers which I got for Xmas but forgot about - have since ordered Blink and The Tipping Point.) Thanks for the recommendations !
>Here is not only a really interesting book but, I believe, a really important one as well:
>
>Mistakes Were Made (but not by me); Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts - Carol Travis and Elliot Aronson.
>
>
http://tinyurl.com/csn3o8>
>The book covers the problem of cognitive dissonance (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance) and how we internally resolve it with (lots of) self-justification. Why do we make mistakes but then try to deny any wrong-doing or even defend them, sometimes even repeating them again and again? Why do good people (that would include us :) sometimes do bad or stupid things but pretend they are aren’t? This book provides some interesting and often too-close-to-the-bone answers.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
