Wanting to be right

So before I start on today's blogpost, I just want to talk about my previous one slightly. It's that after discussion with my friends, I've come to the conclusion that my perfect humanity is impossible simply because of the fact that we are human. It is human to seek dominion over others viewed to be lesser. It's probably because of the desire to pass on our genes. We believe our genes are the best and hence will seek to make sure that people with "lesser" genes are less able to do so, as do lions and chimpanzees and a whole host of other lifeforms that have a social structure, even without, as can be seen in polar bears. While a hierarchy of power will always exist as it is inevitable, humans with the most power will often seek to dominate less powerful individuals. And I say a hierarchy of power is inevitable because it's the wisest to let people who are most capable to lead do so but it invariably gives them power as well, creating an imbalance in power and hence a hierarchy. So unless humanity is able to erase this will to dominate from themselves, thereby becoming inhumane, my perfect humanity scenario cannot exist and because they are no longer human, they aren't the perfect humanity but the perfect inhumanity. Therefore a perfect humanity is impossible.

Enough with all that humanity nonsense and back to today's topic which is this desire to be correct. Now there's nothing really wrong with wanting to be correct, in fact I think it's a fantastic thing to want to be correct. It can drive this passion of knowledge, to be as correct as one can possibly be. The issue lies in defiance in the face of overwhelming evidence. To help illustrate, imagine person A saying 2+2=5. Person B proves to person A that 2+2=4.  Now there's 4 possible endings, of which I think I could have experienced. 1, person A admits his mistake and accepts the new information. 2, person A denies this evidence and refuses to listen, cue annoying "lahlahlahlahlah" noises. 3, person A rejects this information simply because person A wants to win, person B is someone close to person A and person A feels person B should let person A win. 4, person A tells person B he's wrong in unrelated topic or person A did unrelated topic correctly.

Now I'm not judging you, I don't know your life story. You may or may not have done scenario 2-4. I probably am guilty of 2 and 4 at one point or another in my life. Here's my opinion though, if you've been proven wrong, just admit it and save yourself a graceful defeat that still reserves you some measure of dignity. Sure person B may gloat over it and what not but know at least that you've gracefully accepted your shortcomings. I've personally experienced 3 and 4 and I've got to say that 3 is nasty to deal with and 4 really made me want to shoot myself in the head. I personally can't bring myself to accept what people tell me without going to the primary source or have it be backed by evidence that proves the hypothesis true. Which was why I found 3 to be hard to deal with as I couldn't allow the other person to "win" even though she was wrong while she felt that I had to give way.

So it seems I've run out of things to say and our time together is at an end. As I've said, next time you're wrong, perhaps it should be wiser to just accept your mistakes and let yourself have a dignified retreat than a defiant fight that would ultimately prove to be in vain.