Oh, the incessant need to be RIGHT!

“Everything you’re sure is right can be wrong in another place” ~ Barbara Kingsolver

General

The biggest and the most prevalent and damaging cultural theme is the need to be right.

It's something that we take for granted. It is so deeply embedded in our belief system and in our collective psyche that we don't even pause to consider it. And if we were to stop the swirling tornado of thoughts in the midst of a slanging match and searched where it all started, it would be the education system of the Industrial Revolution era that we are still following today that is responsible for this malaise.

A result of our Educational System

Our educational system is rooted in the construct of right and wrong.

We are rewarded for what are deemed to be right answers and the ensuing higher grades, it leads to getting admission in the 'right' colleges where again if we give the 'right' answers we get higher grades which propels the 'right' employers to seek us out and this cycle is supposed to lead to more successful lives. Being 'right' affirms and inflates our sense of self esteem.

As students we learn to avoid as best we can the solitude, shame and guilt of being wrong. Thus getting the right answer becomes the primary purpose of our education.

Working with the human mind, I find that this is, regrettably, inconsistent with actual learning. The same 'right' and 'wrong' is perpetuated by our caregivers - parents, grandparents and adults that we are in connect with - and they too create their own 'rights' and 'wrongs'. And this makes the world a dark binary black or white, right or wrong, good or bad and true and false rather than the multihued, extravagant environment that we should thrive in.

Can you imagine a learning environment that would result from a class that is rewarded for asking more creative questions?

If you think about it, the most intriguing questions are those that don't offer simple answers. Even more, they drive our thinking into greater complexity and curiosity.

This would be a most wonderful learning experience. No one would be cautious about 'getting it wrong'. And everyone would be invited to safely participate in a generative and shared inquiry. That would also be more participative and hone creativity of your child and enable him/her to find their strengths and therefore pursue what interests them.

This experience would look much different that the rote memorizing and spewing back of information - rooted in right or wrong answers. Raising your hand to gain the reward of getting the correct answer is utterly pointless it doesn't teach you anything, you already knew the answer.

It simply massages your self worth and the self worth of the Teacher who rewards one student by allowing him to answer and punishes one (based on a certain criteria in his head) by not allowing him first opportunity. This method, followed all over the world, in most schools, does not inspire a genuine learning experience.

Why Oh Why?

So why is it vital to be right?

Due to the binary belief system of right/wrong, good/bad, white/black, correct/incorrect we think that if we are not right, then we must be wrong, with the accompanying sense of humiliation and failure. But is this sacrosanct? Does it have to be this way all the time? Could we accept being incorrect without any loss or embarrassment?

In truth, issues of right or wrong don't actually impact one's sense of self esteem, self confidence or even self identity. What impacts the need be right stems from the cultural competition we are subject to - competition with siblings, with cousins and with others who are deemed to be 'ideal' candidates in the eyes of parents and people who we put in positions of authority to impress whom we in the competitive race. In the desire to get ahead, we continue running in that race we have been running since childhood and continue running long after the lights have been switched off and the referee has gone home.

The need to be right thus becomes a non negotiable core value. This highly pervasive fixation ruins our relationships, derails our openness to new experiences and erodes our natural instinct to learn.

It is, as if, in case we are not accepted as being right, the ceilings will fall on our heads and the floor will collapse. So accept that I am right, and till the time you do, I will keep on bashing you in the language you don't understand and pound you into submission. This is exactly what happens day in and day out every day on social media.

Television and Social Media

Television news channels stage the predictable impasse, particularly in the political arena, fervently pitching the argument around right and wrong. What is absurd is people watching night after night spokespersons on behalf of different political ideologies indulging in a mindless ping-pong match. No one walks away any more enlightened than the way they came in - the anchor, the participants or the audience. And to make these slanging matches even more emotionally captivating, linguistics plays a role. 

'The absolute truth', 'What we need to know', 'Breaking News', all are designed to draw more eyeballs. The same slanging matches carry on digitally through Facebook and Twitter everyday.

So the million dollar question that pokes its head repeatedly at us each day, almost all the time as you read posts online - It is worth raising your blood pressure trying to make someone understand something he doesn't want to understand? The only thing to gain is 'to be acknowledged as being right' - which 99.9% of the time won't happen. And when it doesn't, you lose your sanity, your stability, your state of well being, and a good night's sleep.

When asked this question of 'would people want to be right or happy', almost everyone says they would prefer happiness, however, the battle continues over right or wrong. If you pause and consider it, it's really insane isn't it? The very fact that we'd mindlessly choose to win an argument at the cost of our own mental peace points to something terribly amiss.

This inclination leads to the need to win an argument, which assures that no one is actively listening. If I need to be right, and we have differing points of view, that obviously makes you wrong.

This compulsion to be right side tracks our lives and impedes our learning and happiness.

Conclusion

The solution - disengage.

Think of yourself as a javelin thrower, being pulled into a steeplechase.

Does it make any sort of sense to take part once you know that the person in front of you is not interested in listening to your perspectives? Only when you get out of the right versus wrong race are you really on the path of contentment and satisfaction.

And, ah yes, that elusive bird called happiness!