Zahwil Dossa's Reviews > The Theory of Moral Sentiments

a difficult book to read, but I was inspired by a series of podcasts that Russell Roberts and Dan Klein (George Mason U) did in the summer of 2009. An idea in the book that I liked is that, counterintuivity, an "impartial spectator" is better company when you're downtrodden than a friend or relative. What you need is not necessarily sympathy but the ability to look at your situation as an impartial spectator would. In the company of strangers, our natural tendency is to bring our emotions down to the level at which others can tolerate. People are inherently selfish (as Smith says, the foreknowledge of losing a single finger is more disruptive to our peace of mind than a horrible calamity in a far-away place), and it is other people and their unwillingness to indulge our self-love that gives us our moral characters. I see this with my 2 year old son, who is relatively even temperered, and self-controlled when interacting with his peers and teachers in pre-school, and impatient, wild, and tantrum-prone when with me and my wife.