It’s the second kind of story that routinely gets us into trouble. For example, we move to silence or violence, and then we come up with a perfectly plausible reason for why it’s okay. “Of course I yelled at him. Did you see what he did? He deserved it.” “Hey, don’t be giving me the evil eye. I had no other choice.” We call these imaginative and self-serving concoctions “clever stories.” They’re clever because they allow us to feel good about behaving badly.
