{"id":784,"date":"2009-05-18T22:07:52","date_gmt":"2009-05-19T02:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/2009\/05\/18\/an-explanation\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T23:09:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T03:09:26","slug":"an-explanation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=784","title":{"rendered":"An Explanation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The general rule to remember is that when we&#8217;re scared, we&#8217;re scary, and when we&#8217;re scary, we&#8217;re usually scared.  If someone seems strangely opposed to your actions, even though you&#8217;re motivated purely by good intentions and are doing nothing that could possibly injure him, rest assured that person is afraid.  This does not excuse violent or malicious behavior; it just explains it.  A common psychological error you&#8217;ll find in movies and television is that the evil people on the screen are often depicted as knowing they&#8217;re evil and feeling powerful in their destructiveness.  In real life, people who perpetrate evil virtually always see themselves as victims, forced by circumstances to &#8220;defend themselves&#8221; by attacking others.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Martha Beck, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sonderbooks.com\/Nonfiction\/steering_by_starlight.html\">Steering by Starlight<\/a>, <\/em>p. 193<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The general rule to remember is that when we&#8217;re scared, we&#8217;re scary, and when we&#8217;re scary, we&#8217;re usually scared. If someone seems strangely opposed to your actions, even though you&#8217;re motivated purely by good intentions and are doing nothing that could possibly injure him, rest assured that person is afraid. This does not excuse violent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-relationships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10664,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784\/revisions\/10664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}