Sublime

I was struck by how the deprivations that people experience can lead to eccentric kinds of compensation—like the hoarding syndrome of some of the poor.

were known as “straw buyers”—might not exist, or might be victims of identity theft. Or they might be Sonny Kim’s partners in mortgage fraud. So might the brokers, appraisers, notaries, title agents, and ultimately the bankers who were in on the deals, some of them showing up again and again. Everyone was making money on Sonny Kim’s business, and t

Cruelty, she says, is often way out of proportion to the behavior that prompted it.

Literature, she argued, “is built on tenderness toward any being other than ourselves.”

how important it is to honor another person’s ability to make choices.

asymmetric paternalism.

to learn about other people’s needs and desires,

The more we try to learn and understand the lives being led by other people—the more we search for a golden mean of empathy—the less we will find it permissible to treat them with cruelty.