Blind Spot - Chapter 1

pg 27
It is very hard for most of us to admit that our judgment of others as idiots is as much a comment on our own blind spots as it is on the flaws we detect in other people. Those flaws may be devastatingly real, but if we truly cannot understand why or how others think or act in the way they do, then we, too, must have a blind spot: something is preventing us, at least at the moment, from grasping the perspective that differs from our own.


pg32
In order to change, in order to become better people, children need a loved person who, instead of making impossible demands for perfection, "holds the child in her imperfection, telling her that the world contains possibilities of forgiveness and mercy, and that she is loved as a person of interest and worth in her own right."

As adults, adults who have blind spots, who make mistakes, who harm others, who fail to think - we, too, need persons who can accept us with all our imperfections and still assure us of the possibility of forgiveness, even as they point out the moral demands that our actions impose on us. We will be more likely to correct our moral compasses if we are both challenged and supported.