{"id":9194,"date":"2025-02-21T23:14:45","date_gmt":"2025-02-22T03:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=9194"},"modified":"2025-02-21T23:14:45","modified_gmt":"2025-02-22T03:14:45","slug":"learning-from-mistakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=9194","title":{"rendered":"Learning from Mistakes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Ruttenberg12.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Ruttenberg12.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9437\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Ruttenberg12.jpg 800w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Ruttenberg12-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Ruttenberg12-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Ruttenberg12-640x480.jpg 640w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Ruttenberg12-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Many times, when people are told that they have caused harm, a defensive, self-protective impulse kicks in.  We often deny either our actions or their impact, particularly if we have caused great harm &#8212; or if we believe that <em>doing a harmful thing<\/em> is the same thing as <em>being a bad person.<\/em>  If someone interprets the statement &#8220;You said something racist&#8221; to mean &#8220;You are an irredeemably racist person,&#8221; they might well resist the critique, seeing it as a condemnation of their whole self.  But walking the path of antiracism is riddled with mistakes and new learning; acknowledging the mistake of saying something racist does not mean we are irrevocably racist, doomed to this fate.  It&#8217;s rather the opposite, no?  Doubling down and getting defensive makes it much more likely that you&#8217;ll just keep doing the thing.  If you can&#8217;t face and work to repair your mistakes, you certainly won&#8217;t learn from them.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Danya Ruttenberg, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sonderbooks.com\/Nonfiction\/on_repentance_and_repair.html\">On Repentance and Repair<\/a><\/em>, p. 51-2<\/p>\n<p>Photo: Bare branches and sunrise, South Riding, Virginia, February 18, 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many times, when people are told that they have caused harm, a defensive, self-protective impulse kicks in. We often deny either our actions or their impact, particularly if we have caused great harm &#8212; or if we believe that doing a harmful thing is the same thing as being a bad person. If someone interprets [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-redemption"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9194","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=9194"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9438,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9194\/revisions\/9438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}