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A couple of weeks ago I was arguing with my girlfriend, I can’t even remember what about anymore. But what I do remember is that at some point she shouted at me, “You always think you’re right”.
This struck me as a really strange thing to point out.
I mean, has anybody ever argued a point and not thought they were right? Or at the very least, been committed to behaving as if they believed they were right? Did she, at that moment, not also believe she was right? Naturally, I didn’t say any of these things, because I value my health, but the point stands; we all think we’re right.
Sadly, the truth is we’re all wrong. Human beings thanks to our unconscious biases, limited perspectives and frankly quite feeble minds, are incapable of being right. We’re just varying degrees of wrong. None of us has spent enough time reading about an issue, none of us has experienced a situation from enough different perspectives, none of us is open-minded enough to have thought deeply enough about an issue to actually be right about it. That’s why borrowing the knowledge, experience and perspectives of other people through conversation is so valuable.
All of this is to explain why I so hate the phrase, nay, the mere concept of agreeing to disagree. Lately, especially during these times of polarised political debate and…
