Sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can kill you.

Being hurt personally triggered a curiosity about how such beliefs are formed.

We want to believe in the essential, unchanging goodness of people, in their power to resist external pressures, in their rational appraisal and then rejection of situational temptations. We invest human nature with God-like qualities, with moral and rational faculties that make us both just and wise. We simplify the complexity of human experience by erecting a seemingly impermeable boundary between Good and Evil.

I’ve always been curious about the psychology of the person behind the mask...