Moral certainty is the enemy of both empathy and effectiveness. It causes you to be righteously judgmental of others while simultaneously limiting your own options.
There is something despicable and damaging about self righteous superiority. When people treat right and wrong like a fact instead of their opinion and act like everyone else should care what that opinion is and follow it. Expecting the rest of the world to adhere to your values and beliefs is a good way to be very disappointed, and it's typically extremists and fanatics that believe their version of "right" is the only acceptable one. But the truth is, just because something is important to you doesn't mean that anyone else has to care. Why should they? After all, they're just as selfish as you are about their own priorities and they have things that are very important to them which might completely conflict with what you believe is "truly right and just". This is why it pays to be morally flexible.
Always remember, the more rigid you are, the more things there are that can break you. It's the most flexible and adaptable people, the people with the least rules, that are usually the happiest.
