Always being right is wrong
IN MY line of work, I’m frequently met with resistance and defensiveness. Why is this? Simply because, as a journalist, I ask uncomfortable questions.
Over the years, I’ve interviewed corporate chiefs, politicians, global religious leaders, film stars and convicted criminals. In between, I’ve also talked to grieving parents, victims of crime, suburban housewives and hardworking teachers.
Of the hundreds of people appearing in my stories, I’ve generally found that people without rampant ambition, something doubtful to hide, a point to prove or a rigid set of beliefs, cultural or otherwise, are the easiest to interview.
Others, though – and I’ve met many – will hide their motives behind a rambling, unceasing desire to be right, at all costs. Which is why they really don’t like uncomfortable questions, and will either hang up the phone, or engage in loquacious e-mail exchanges, in which they aggressively defend their position (and blame the journalist, of course).
Psychotherapist Mel Schwartz says one of the most prevalent, and damaging, themes in our culture is the need to be right.
“It is so deeply embedded in our belief system and in our collective psyche that we never even pause to consider it. It’s curious, he says, how mightily our thoughts and beliefs “defend” their territory. This desire to emerge on top, to win the war of words (or the war, if you’re a despot), to come up trumps during a negotiation, is rooted in the idea that “if you’re not right, then you are indeed wrong, with all the accompanying sense of humiliation and failure”. Schwartz believes that this fixation is “more likely wed to highly-competitive cultures than traditionally-oriented cooperative societies”, because in the latter, being right or wrong doesn’t shape one’s identity; the ego may actually be shaped by other influences, such as being honoured, respected or altruistic.
“In first world cultures, the drive to be right advances one in the competitive race. In the desire to get ahead, this is utilised as a core value. (This) is a highly pervasive fixation attachment that ruins our relationships, derails our mindfulness and erodes our natural instinct to learn.”
Working on a complex feature story recently, I came across exactly this type of mentality. The interviewee was highly intelligent, energetically ambitious and very clear about her position on contentious issues. Of course, since the issues were contentious, they were open for debate – but she was having none of it.
Her fixated attachment to be right, Schwartz explains, was rooted in a modern culture which, despite our philanthropic whistles, bells and facades, puts the “me” in “first”.
That interview didn’t go very well and I binned the story – what was the point of only telling one side of it?
What it did do, though, was remind me how rotten the drive to be right really is.
As Schwartz points out, from the more personal and mundane battles over “who said what” in arguments, or during negotiations, to the larger issues of politics, religion, gun control and climate change, the drive to be right “quickens our pulse, causes us to shout and can sever relationships”. It is, he concludes, the raison d’etre for most acts of hatred, violence and warfare.