In another post, I distinguished feeling right from being right. The former is predominantly a feelings-state, supported by an array of cognitive biases. The latter is more objective, but not so much as it seems.

On the surface, we might describe being right as a logical assemblage of relevant facts. But facts and relevance are subject to interpretation and selection biases, and logic is only as truthful as its premises. Try watching back-to-back news shows on MSNBC and Fox News, and you’ll see the same facts given opposite meanings. Think of all the arguments you’ve had with loved ones when each person made different interpretations of the same facts and memories.

The Increasing Difficulty of Being Right

It was hard to be right in the information age just because there was so much information that had to be considered. It’s even harder to be right in the age of ever-expanding media, in which everyone has a voice, and many use it to drown out the voices of anyone who disagrees. The sad fact is, it’s darn hard to be right in our post-dialectic age.

Dialectic vs. Compromise

It’s often observed that politicians have lost the desire to compromise. That may be true of people in general. Every colleague I know of bemoans the increasing resistance of clients to compromise with family members, coworkers, and employers. But the more fundamental issue is the untimely demise of dialectics, which preceded the contemporary disdain for compromise.

Compromise is settling disputes by both sides making concessions.

In a time when everyone feels entitled to be validated and desires are interpreted as needs, compromise feels like abuse.

Dialectic is synthesizing opposing interpretations and explanations to obtain something closer to truth than either has achieved separately.

Hegel popularized the classic dialectic form in the 19th century: Thesis-antithesis-synthesis.

Reviving Dialectics on an Individual Level

Almost everything of importance is too complicated to yield explanations with intellectual certainty. The closest we can come to intellectual certainty is exploring alternative interpretations and explanations. We shouldn’t be afraid of being wrong. We should embrace the possibility, for it’s the only way we can know if we’re right. To paraphrase John Stuart Mill, those who know only their own perspective know little of that.

Although the media seems steadfastly opposed to dialectics, we can practice the epistemological skill individually. For example, a family dialectic is considering alternative interpretations and explanations to arrive at a truth both parties can embrace:

Thesis: My wife is yelling at me.

Antithesis: She thinks she’s trying to get me to listen.

Synthesis: It’s important to the health of relationships that partners feel heard.

Thesis: Our children need more discipline.

Antithesis: Our children need more nurturing.

Synthesis: We’ll administer discipline in nurturing ways that meet the physical and emotional needs of our children.

The Emotions of Being Right

Apart from pure mathematics, we cannot separate emotion from human knowing. Certainty is an emotional state, not an intellectual one. To feel certain, the brain must limit the amount of information it processes. The more information we overlook or dismiss via confirmation bias, the more certain we feel and the more likely we’re wrong.

It might be fruitful to abandon a sense of being right or wrong (or at least put it on the back burner) and instead consider the difference between empowering and disempowering emotions. Fear of being wrong masks a deeper dread of disempowering emotions.

Empowering vs. Disempowering Emotions

Disempowering emotions generate doubt and confusion. They deplete energy and diminish concentration, confidence, resolve, and morale. They degrade the ability to think straight and take remedial action. Shame, humiliation, guilt, sorrow, and anguish are the major disempowering emotions. They tell us that our current perceptions of ourselves and the world are producing failure or rejection.

Empowering emotions reinforce a sense of meaning and motivate decisive behavior. They increase energy and focus. They reduce doubt and strengthen resolve. They make us feel certain, though not necessarily right.

The major empowering emotions—interest, excitement, and anger—fortify meaning, justify behavior, and make us feel that we’re right. They also make it difficult to see other perspectives. Try asking an interested, excited, or angry person to describe your perspective.

But disempowering emotions are not punishments. They disorganize thinking and perceptions that are failing, not to harm but to allow a reorganization of thoughts and perceptions in ways more likely to produce success. When shame, humiliation, guilt, sorrow, or anguish allow us to change thinking and perceptions in ways that promote interest (especially in the well-being of loved ones), we not only feel better, we’re also closer to the truth.

However, the wildcard of empowering emotions is anger. When sensing the possibility of shame, humiliation, guilt, sorrow, or anguish, we’re more likely to reorganize thoughts and perceptions with anger, with an impulse to devalue or harm. We might compromise in anger, but we’re unlikely to modify our thoughts and perceptions in service of truth. Such compromise breeds resentment. While angry, it’s impossible to know whether we’re right or self-righteous.

There is a subset of empowering feelings that I think of as giving emotions. These are love, compassion, and appreciation. Try to remember feeling (or fearing that you would feel) shame, humiliation, guilt, sorrow, or anguish, and imagine yourself enacting compassionate, kind, appreciative, or loving behavior.

The point is, we can hardly prevent disempowering emotions, but we can choose to replace them with behavior that generates interest, love, compassion, or appreciation. Optimal choices overcome the fear of being wrong by synthesizing truth from all directions. Only then are we likely to be right.