Wrong

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

I’m sure we all know people and perhaps have been guilty ourselves of understanding the error associated with our own perspectives at one time or another, yet venture in all kinds of directions except the exposure of the error itself. And to be perfectly honest, there have been times that I have submitted a position on something and someone responds with a retort that knocks it down completely, although I feel compelled to defend as opposed to accept the potential faults with every perspective even my own (heaven forbid).

You see this a lot here. People arguing over the most trivial things, yet a lot of the dialogue seems to be defending yourself from being wrong as opposed to exploring errors themselves.

Considering those moments in which we realize our position was mistaken, it is still a challenge to accept error when faced with it. What is it about being “wrong” that stabs us morally?

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This is a result of our ego and pride being deflated.

In general, I think humanity has a natural desire towards “right” (the root of “right” is probably “good”). Hence, Man, if it serves his best intrest in any given moment, will gravitate to “right” rather than “wrong”.

Of course, there are times when some people like to tend to gravitate towards the “wrong”. A fine exanple of this would be a teen smoking a cigarette just because it’s cool. Again, in this example, it’s all an issue of pride.

Now, for a religious perspective (this is the view I personally subscribe to):

Man, left to himself, is a natural hater of God, and everything that God directly represents. Man ALWAYS loves himself above all other things. Everything man does is in some way benefitting (or at least, he thinks it is benefitting) himself.

Just my humble opinions, anyways… :wink:

3

yes, pride and self confidence and self esteem and lack of self esteem and especially very borderline phases of lack of self esteem are very powerful incentives of our behaviour, (or destiny from other viewpoint).it’s paradoxical that that very same God that Man may hate endowed him with pride and self confidence. a double-edged weapon?

4

Great observation, Enigma.

This kind of situation is both beautiful and dreadful. It is beautiful because intelligence is aspirant for the human being. He wants to be “right,” correct, with possession of a/the truth. So the will behind his argument is clean and sincere. He only prefers the appearance of “looking intelligent,” to actually being intelligent because of costs, when he confronts another opinion, an argument, since he believes that from his position he should be showing truths to his opponent. He is already charged with this task before the argument begins, and with admitting secretely to himself that he might be wrong, he’s satisfied with only an appearance. But alas, only because he believes that truth is valuable and precious does he not wish to risk the appearance of being intelligent to an unpromised and uncertain chance of being wrong. This is a beautiful characteristic of the human being.

Ironically, the gesture is a compliment. For a man to insist, over and over again that he be right, even in the face of obvious evidence that he is wrong, only shows that he is capable of humiliation. He knows that we know that he is wrong. And with this, he whispers to us behind the argument: "I’m not sure if I’m right. But I must be assertive and confident at least. We know this, and are flattered, without ever mentioning a word about it. Its subliminal beauty.

The dreadful part is this. Part of this condition is the possibility of being wrong, while for there even to exist the importance of “truth” it should seem out of the question that there be the possibility for error. The endeavor begets itself. We hold it so entirely crucial that we find a truth while all the while there is no guarantee we do. Everyone knows this, we whisper it back and forth among one another. So it goes without saying that regardless of whether we are lying and right, or telling the truth and wrong, we are beautifully honest, we mean well, and we want to help.

So we become clowns in light of the absurd. That is what laughter is. Humiliation from a safe vantage point, two people equally capable of a same folly. The secret agreement between all people. It is the admittance of folly, not failure, because this is our secret to begin with. We might be wrong, but we cannot “fail” under such circumstances either, because the arguers only concern is being assertive and confident, not a guarantee of truth. When we lose the passion we commit the folly…remember the guy who insists over and over?:

If he were to suddenly concede defeat, he would be blamed for not being assertive and confident with his opinion.

This is the extreme, obviously, but it shows the grey area there. The “moral” motives behind the argument are valued for their sincerity, not for their accuracy. And at the same time, the relativity of “truths” keeps us from justifying a disrespect for our opponent: all we can notice is the intentions and the purpose…that’s what we judge…not the accuracy of his testament.

One of the hardest things for a person to do is admit that they at least believe that they are wrong, or that they could become wrong. (Being wrong “a while back” is okay to admit because this past is nullified anyway), and this is because our opponent respects us enough to feel humiliated before us. Remember, they promised us that they would give us at least one truth…or have nothing to say at all.

I would rather a man continue through and fall down after trying to balance on one foot while the other is in his mouth.

We all do this. But it is our secret.

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de’trop, great post! :smiley:

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Us trying to twist our way out of or around conflicts in our system of beliefs and behaviours, in psychology, is termed ‘cognitive dissonance’.
The explanation for it is that our psyche needs to maintain a consistency between its cognitions.
More positively, I think, it’s considered to be a natural reaction which is necessary for the psyche to become ‘open’ to new ideas.
Perhaps it’s impossible to encounter a conflicting view and not feel any discomfort. The best strategy is probably to wait a while until the effect of the brain chemicals has worn off a bit before responding to any conflicting views.

7

Very true. Good thoughts there. Ditto for Psquared. :wink:

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BMW-Guy,
You say, “I think humanity has a natural desire towards “right”” eh? Then how come you are not practising what you’re preaching? Just so you know people are understood more by their actions than their words!!!
I can understand your need for advertising your new forum but why does it have to follow you everywhere like a pet? Everytime it does that, it wastes about half a screen of webspace when this is really a philosophy forum to discuss things and not an advertising bulletin board for you my dear. How would you feel if someone did the same on your forum? Advertise your forum once somewhere and get done with it. Why don’t you respect everyone’s rights here?

9

You beat me to it.

Further, often we’ll get drawn into a cycle termed “escalatioon of commitment”, whereby our drive to eliminate cognitive dissonance will drive us to continue to throw more and more force behind something we support when it begins to appear that this support was ill founded.

This is actually an extremely dangerous phenomina, as it has resulted in everything from the dissulotion of long time friendships to the throwing of more troops into a losing war (and thus the needless loss of even more lives) like in Vietnam, just to “keep face” (I.E. prevent facing up to the fact that one has made a foolish decision, and the cognitive dissonance that would result).