From David Brooks' column in Friday's Times:

'Amos Tversky was born in Israel, to a mother who ignored him for long periods so she could serve the nation. He became a paratrooper in the war of 1956, and received one of the nation’s highest awards for bravery after he rescued a man who’d fainted on a torpedo just before it exploded.

Tversky was idiosyncratic. “Amos thought people paid an enormous price to avoid mild embarrassment, and he himself decided early on it was not worth it,” a friend told Lewis.'

(Read the article here.)

People pay an enormous price to avoid mild embarrassment. So why are people willing to pay this high price? I believe that the avoidance of mild embarrassment is worth such a high price. Except when it comes to literature, when you write about the high price people are paying to avoid embarrassment you should be willing to embarrass yourself.