Sublime

In other words, there is a big difference between mental force and mental character. Mental character is akin to moral character. It is forged by experience and effort, carved into the hinterland of the mind.

OBJECTIVISM. This is what market researchers, pollsters, and social scientists do. They observe behavior, design surveys, and collect data on people. This is a great way to understand the trends among populations of people, but it’s a terrible way to see an individual person. If you adopt this detached, dispassionate, and objective stance, it’s har

“lingerable.”

A great way to mis-see people is to see only a piece of them.

In 1919, Lippmann wrote a despairing essay in the Atlantic Monthly titled “The Basic Problem of Democracy.” Democracy’s founding ideal—that of a well-informed citizenry capable of making reasoned judgments about national problems and plans—had come into being in a much simpler time, he argued, when most concerns were local and people had direct exp

“empathic accuracy”

ANDREW J. BACEVICH,