Once upon a time there lived a pair of twins, a boy and a girl, whose parents decided to teach them survival skills. What they were told was, “It’s a jungle out there. You have to be ready for it. You need to be tough. You need to learn to defend yourselves — or your enemies will devour you.”

 

And so, the twins grew up learning to follow their parents’ often-repeated advice: “Trust no one; suspect everyone.” One consequence of this training was that the twins were always on the defensive. They tended to be argumentative with those who tried to befriend them. They became judgmental in the extreme, since neither of them could ever be sure that others were people of good will. And they tended to become xenophobic — highly suspicious of people who were not like them. Not surprisingly, they sa…