AESOP SAID THAT WE’RE BORN with two sacks hanging around our necks: one large sack, right under our noses, containing everyone else’s flaws; and a small one, hidden behind our back, which contains our own flaws.4 Self-knowledge, in other words, is difficult. Our worst character defects, or biases, are visible to others, but we have a blind spot for them ourselves. As the New Testament put it: you can see the tiny fleck of wood in someone else’s eye but not the great beam of wood in your own.5 Without a mirror for our soul, we’re often simply oblivious to ourselves. Blindness to our own errors
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