According to Tolstoy, the worst criminals don’t appraise themselves as all that bad. They come to believe either that 1) they didn’t commit their crimes or 2) considering the pressures and disadvantages of their lives, it is understandable and forgivable that they behaved as they did and became what they became. The second half of the Tolstoy effect, wherein the man makes excuses for his fixable poor performance instead of providing the fix, is enormously important. Because a majority of mankind will try to get along by making way too many unreasonable excuses for fixable poor performance, it
...more
