Being right is not that important.

Or at least, that’s what I keep telling myself.

In order to discuss this subject, we’re going to have to make a distinction between two different sense of being right. In one sense, the term merely means that one has the right answer. That is to say, you are right about a subject if your ideas and knowledge about it accurately reflect reality.

It’s the other sense of the word, the one that means, in essence, “winning the argument” that gets us into trouble.

The problem stems from the fact that we human beings have a very strong instinct to merge our sense of reality with the commonly held one in our community. This way, what is know by one becomes known by all, and the tribe grows stronger.

That’s great when everyone is talking about their own separate experiences, but what happens when two people have mutually exclusive ideas about something?

Imagine our cavemen ancestors. Around the fire one night, Ock confidently states that the wildebeest will be returning to the upland meadows any day now and tomorrow, we should go there and set up our jumps.

But Teg says that the wildebeest will not be there for another moon, and it would be a waste of time and their precious stores of preserved meat to go there this early. They should stay here, and fish.

Clearly, an answer is needed. The tribe cannot do both. And a mistake in either direction could cost them dearly. Either Ock or Tek is right, and a mechanism is needed to resolve this dissonance.

Luckily, we have an instinct for that too, and that instinct is called argument.

Ock and Tek must argue and this argument must reach some sort of settled conclusion so the tribe knows what to do when the sun rises in the morning. They will argue with each other, but really, they will arguing their points for the benefit of the tribe. The tribe will ultimately decide who they believe.

Note that coming to the literally correct answer is not the highest priority. The highest priority is to resolve the conflict. The second highest is maintaining social order. Accuracy is, at best, a third.

And because we are human beings and thus very complicated creatures, lots of other instincts interfere with the process of getting the “right” answer. Social status is on the line when Ock and Teg argue. The winner will rise in status and the loser will fall. Thus, their verbal fight will be fought with great passion and ferocity. They are fighting for their social lives.

But both disputants enter the arena with social status as well. It might be that Ock is a respected leader and widely recognized as an excellent hunter and strong warrior, while Teg is thought of as weak and slow. The tribe will not only be more fearful of the wrath of Ock (who could cost THEM social status), but our instincts tell us to obey the socially dominant and to believe what they say, as it is more likely to be important to us within the human society.

In the case of Ock and Teg, something of vital importance is, indeed, on the line. But fast forward to modern life, and those same instincts get us into trouble, because the truth is that, in most cases, winning arguments does not matter.

Our instincts, both social and teleological, make it feel like winning arguments (being RIGHT) is terrible important, but for the most part, none of us are deciding the fate of our tribes, and winning an argument does not prove anything except that one person is better at arguing.

It might as well be trial by combat.

Now I will not say that nothing is on the line when we argue. There is that urge to merge pictures of reality to deal with. When someone says something with which we disagree, we become torn between the urge to merge and the urge to maintain our beliefs, and this causes a conflict within us. When we argue, it truly feels just as important as Ock and Teg, even when it isn’t, because our world view is clashing with another’s and one of them, so our instincts tell us, has to win.

So we square off against one another, in person or on the Internet or wherever, and fight battles over the most trivial of things, and act like our very lives are on the line.

But in truth, not even social status is truly on the line. If you have an audience, then the audience members who agree with each position will be rooting for their side, and there is virtually no chance that anyone’s mind will be changed in the slightest and social status will rise amongst the people who already agree with the winner, and fall with those who don’t.

Neither opponent will change the mind of the other either. That’s just not how it works. And there will be no clear victor either. Our instincts tell us that if we verbally dominate the other person, they will have to say uncle and admit we are right and they are wrong, and we will emerge the clear victor.

But that almost never happens. Nobody ever “has” to admit they lose, and why would they? To our instincts, you are never defeated unless you submit?

So that kind of arguing is more or less a sport, a game, and people would be better off simply saying “Why do I care if some random person is wrong about something?” and letting it slide.

Argument is still important in a broader social sense. Bad opinions are overcome by strong arguments from the people on the right side of history, and progress may well come from the millions of skirmishes of daily life.

But in your own life, you have to ask yourself : is it worth it to win an argument and lose a friend? Or someone else you love?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.