"Self-interest makes some people blind, and others sharp-sighted"
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Self-interest is the great optical illusion: it can fog the lens or grind it into a razor. La Rochefoucauld’s line works because it refuses the comforting idea that selfishness is merely a moral failure. He treats it as a cognitive technology, one that can either disable perception or intensify it, depending on what the person needs to see.
The intent is surgical, almost diagnostic. In the salons and courtly ecosystems of 17th-century France, reputation was currency and survival depended on reading people quickly. Self-interest didn’t just motivate behavior; it structured attention. Some people go blind because desire becomes a story they can’t stop narrating: they edit out inconvenient facts, excuse obvious betrayals, mistake flattery for truth. Their ego builds a protective mythology, and the world obliges by punishing them for it.
Others become sharp-sighted for the same reason. When the stakes are status, money, or power, self-interest can heighten pattern recognition: detecting shifts in allegiance, sensing weakness, anticipating the next move. The cynicism is deliberate. La Rochefoucauld isn’t praising insight as virtue; he’s implying that “clarity” often arrives not from wisdom but from appetite. You see better when you have something to gain and worse when seeing would cost you.
Subtext: moral language is a mask people wear over incentives. If you want to understand a person, follow what benefits them, and you’ll learn whether their self-interest is anesthetic or stimulant.
The intent is surgical, almost diagnostic. In the salons and courtly ecosystems of 17th-century France, reputation was currency and survival depended on reading people quickly. Self-interest didn’t just motivate behavior; it structured attention. Some people go blind because desire becomes a story they can’t stop narrating: they edit out inconvenient facts, excuse obvious betrayals, mistake flattery for truth. Their ego builds a protective mythology, and the world obliges by punishing them for it.
Others become sharp-sighted for the same reason. When the stakes are status, money, or power, self-interest can heighten pattern recognition: detecting shifts in allegiance, sensing weakness, anticipating the next move. The cynicism is deliberate. La Rochefoucauld isn’t praising insight as virtue; he’s implying that “clarity” often arrives not from wisdom but from appetite. You see better when you have something to gain and worse when seeing would cost you.
Subtext: moral language is a mask people wear over incentives. If you want to understand a person, follow what benefits them, and you’ll learn whether their self-interest is anesthetic or stimulant.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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