The way our motives and filters influence how we learn means any knowledge we gain is limited and often skewed towards our preferences. Of course, this would not matter if we were always right about everything, but reality says otherwise. How often have we been guilty of misjudging others or circumstances because we did not know all the facts? Probably more times than any of us would care to admit.
It does not matter how much we think we know about any topic; we can never know everything. As I said earlier, there will always be some segment or level of information we are incapable of processing (or simply choose not to). The facts we take such pride in knowing do not always tell the whole truth because we are seldom committed to knowing the full story. We learn just enough to improve our circumstances, reconfirm what we already believe, or satisfy our curiosities. Maybe you have heard the old adage “there are two sides to every story: my side and your side.” The late movie producer Robert Evans elaborated by saying, “There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each differently.”[1] Evans hit on a sobering point: we all have biases in our stories that keep the whole truth from being known.
Believing we are right is not the same thing as being right. Our correctness can be described as beauty in the eye of the beholder – it is valued because it means something to us. Those who have different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences from our own will have a just as powerful commitment to their correctness as we do. Failure to recognize this means we set ourselves up for perpetual conflicts in our conversations and relationships with others. When we classify all our ideas, beliefs, and positions as being right, we turn them into moral issues, and anything opposing them must be wrong. This mindset eliminates any possibility for discussion, debate, or compromise. Our conversations become a series of fights of right against wrong or good versus evil. When this happens, people can no longer have a difference of opinion. They are labeled as enemies of truth and justice, or worse, as threatening to destroy our communities or our country.
The irony here is that those on the other side feel the same way about us; we become the enemies of their correctness. This has led to a tragic breakdown of public discourse and is the real threat to the social fabric of our communities. This is the danger of being right.
END OF PART THREE.
[1] Robert Evans, The Kid Stays in the Picture (Documentary) Highway Films. 2002.
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