La Rochefoucauld
Nobody complains about their judgement
The shape of the blind spot
Maxims, numbers 89, 31 and 149
One sentence draws the border of self-knowledge. This is why the first admission is easy and the second nearly impossible.
What actually happened?
La Rochefoucauld was a defeated nobleman of the Fronde who spent his later years turning what he had seen at court and in the field into a few hundred maxims. Number 89: everyone complains of his memory, no one complains of his judgment. Admitting a poor memory costs nothing, since it is a hardware fault. Admitting poor judgement concedes that the ground under every past decision was unsound, and nobody can carry that. Number 31 travels with it: if we had no faults, we would not enjoy noticing them in others.
People only admit faults that leave the base intact
Memory, stamina, a weak second language: these cost nothing to concede, because none of them disturbs the belief that you are a person who sees clearly. The real blind spots sit in the class nobody will own. A volunteered fault can usually be crossed off the list.
Asked for a weakness in an interview, the candidate who says they are too much of a perfectionist has told you nothing. Listen to how they explain their last failure.
Failures of judgement get rewritten by memory
After a bad call, memory quietly adds a layer of narrative: the information was thin, someone misled us, the luck was strange. A few rewrites later, no misjudgement has ever occurred. The only defence is writing the call and the reasons down at the time.
Before a major decision, write one page: what you expect to happen and why. Read it six months later. Most people are startled the first time.
Finding fault in others is a painkiller
Number 31 names the payoff in eager correction. Attention on somebody else's defects gives temporary relief from noticing your own. So the moment your urge to criticise runs hottest deserves suspicion: it tracks your position, not their error rate.
In the weeks your own project is stuck, every proposal that crosses your desk looks full of holes.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you are reviewing what happened, and the conclusion has landed on external factors again.
Ask first: in this account, what percentage is your own judgement? And in the one before it?
Where it goes wrong: letting self-suspicion paralyse every decision; or using the maxim only as an instrument for reading other people.
Lines to keep
The refusal of praise is only the wish to be praised twice.
Same situation, other people are asking
I've been saying it for years and nobody listens.All these years of not making it — did I write any of it down?I planted it years ago and nothing has come up.I've been at this for years and it has never worked.It still hasn't worked · all 19 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.