"This is crucial. This is what mammals are about. They are concerned with patterns of relationship, with where they stand in love, hate, respect, dependency, trust, and similar abstractions vis-a-vis somebody else. This is where it hurts us to be put in the wrong. If we trust and find that that which we trusted was untrustworthy; or if we distrust and find that what we distrusted was in fact trustworthy, we feel bad. The pain that human beings and all other mammals can suffer from this type of error is extreme. If, therefore, we really want to know what are the significant points in history, we have to ask which are the moments in history when attitudes were changed. These are the moments when people are hurt because of their former “values."
Gregory Bateson, “From Versailles to Cybernetics,” in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, p. 478