He had a saying that "he may never be right but he was never wrong" when he talked to his daughters.
"Although you may find this hard to believe, I am wrong from time to time. Don’t be alarmed. It was a shock to me too when I first realized that I was indeed fallible.
Of course, this just puts puts me in the same category as you, and everyone else you or I know. We’re all wrong from time to time.
Thankfully, my personal superpower is this: I know I’m occasionally wrong and so I remain on guard for that possibility. That simple act of consideration makes all the difference.
This realization is somewhat comical in that it affects all of us. There really isn’t a reason to point out that I’m wrong now and then, or that you’re wrong now and then, except that much of the world’s population conducts itself as they couldn’t possibly be wrong. Maybe not ever. But certainly not about the particular point at hand, whatever that may be, whether the individuals involved have any real understanding of the issue or not.
When we stumble into the delusion that what we believe to be true is actually true, and that we know it is true because we fervently believe it be true…well, I think you can see where this is going. Nowhere.
If your primary reference is your own vision, you’re going to be a victim of hubris far more often than you wish might be possible.
History gives us a multitude of examples of this human tendency to insist on our rightness, no matter how evident our wrongness. Christopher Columbus comes to mind. He believed he’d found India, when he had in fact found the Bahamas. A careful review of the situation verifies that Nassau and Mumbai are in fact, 8,784 miles apart.
In the late 19th Century the brass at Western Union looked into their crystal ball and made the unfortunate decision not to invest in Alexander Graham Bell’s somewhat odd invention on the grounds that the telephone had too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. Oops."
The biggest misconception of all
"Although you may find this hard to believe, I am wrong from time to time. Don’t be alarmed. It was a shock to me too when I first realized that I was indeed fallible.
Of course, this just puts puts me in the same category as you, and everyone else you or I know. We’re all wrong from time to time.
Thankfully, my personal superpower is this: I know I’m occasionally wrong and so I remain on guard for that possibility. That simple act of consideration makes all the difference.
This realization is somewhat comical in that it affects all of us. There really isn’t a reason to point out that I’m wrong now and then, or that you’re wrong now and then, except that much of the world’s population conducts itself as they couldn’t possibly be wrong. Maybe not ever. But certainly not about the particular point at hand, whatever that may be, whether the individuals involved have any real understanding of the issue or not.
When we stumble into the delusion that what we believe to be true is actually true, and that we know it is true because we fervently believe it be true…well, I think you can see where this is going. Nowhere.
If your primary reference is your own vision, you’re going to be a victim of hubris far more often than you wish might be possible.
History gives us a multitude of examples of this human tendency to insist on our rightness, no matter how evident our wrongness. Christopher Columbus comes to mind. He believed he’d found India, when he had in fact found the Bahamas. A careful review of the situation verifies that Nassau and Mumbai are in fact, 8,784 miles apart.
In the late 19th Century the brass at Western Union looked into their crystal ball and made the unfortunate decision not to invest in Alexander Graham Bell’s somewhat odd invention on the grounds that the telephone had too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. Oops."
The biggest misconception of all
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), but it made me wary of trusting other’s facts, and making assumptions I couldn’t back-up. I’m still sometimes wrong, it makes me try harder not to be!
