You Will Always Be Wrong
Seriously, think about it,
You will always be wrong.
Not just sometimes, not just most of the time, every single time. Every. Single. Time. No exceptions. (Kinda makes you questions everything you do doesn’t it?)
I’m not particularly affected about my being wrong to myself (hell, I revel in it), but when you realize that thousands of people listen to and heed your words, and combine this with always being wrong, you definitely question whether you’re doing more harm than good. (The rule of thumb is that you’re most likely contributing to the death of the known world than not, good job you.)
If you can’t speak the truth and nothing but the truth, why speak at all right?
This is one of the reasons I stopped writing here a while back. But I came back. Why?
Because I realized that, despite always being wrong, we all have a reason to keep doing this fantastically horrible thing we call art/work/stuff.
Why To Keep Going Anyways
Don’t keep going and move forward in your work as a means of proving yourself more right than the world. Don’t move forward with the intention of showing people just how wrong they are, and how your answers are so much, much, much, (did I say much) better than theirs. Move forward with the intention of putting forth your ideas and thoughts into the collective mix, called ‘society’, for feedback. Move forward with the intention of telling a story (people listen to stories). Move forward with the intention of conveying your emotions (no matter how many times people tell you that it’s ‘gay’ to do anything ‘with feeling’). Move forward with the intention of touching someone’s heart and mind long enough to make a connection, and maybe a goshdarn difference.
Work and move forward knowing you’ll be wrong, but choose the path you deem the least wrong while doing so. And move forward with the intent to show others what that path looks likes (and let them judge for themselves whether it’s as good as you yourself think it is). Maybe the path you chose is wrong, maybe it’s not (remember, we talked about this, it is), but someone will definitely improve upon it both ways, and that’s the only reason you need. But people can’t improve on your work and ideas unless you create and put them out there.
Take Henry Ford for example. He was right, but mostly wrong. But in pursuing the path that he deemed most right Henry Ford lead way for others to better upon his answer to the question on everyone’s mind (the question being, “How does one get from point A to point B better.”). The market easily showed us, with cold-hard cocaine traced cash, that Ford’s Model T was the best answer they had at the time. And thus came the large array of successor cars we have today. [Yes, I know, Ford didn’t invent the car (Karl Benz did), but he invented the process that got the solution of “how to get from point A to point B better” into everyone’s hands better.]
For example’s sake, let’s talk about electric cars. Electric cars are more right than the Model T cars of the old. And electric cars aren’t in themselves entirely right (this is why you don’t see them scattered around everywhere, they have cons that most people deem greater than their pros). Electric cars are just a more right answer to the same question (that hopefully leads to an even more right answer down the road). (This of course takes into account that there’ll still be roads in the future, and not some apocalyptic post-nuclear world war wasteland sort of world. Which is a horrible possibility, and just what we deserve.) But do you think we’d have this wonderful car that mocks the Model T, if at first the Model T was not there to be mocked? If at first the Model T was not there to be improved upon? If at first the Model T was not built for fear of being wrong sometime in the future? No. That future’s here, the Model T is wrong now, yes, but only because it set the path for it’s own mockery.
But, if this isn’t enough to convince you, here’s another plus of realizing you’ll always be wrong – you stop forcing your ideas upon people, and thus people like you more.
No one likes a forcer. Remember – no means no. Don’t rape minds – enter them slowly, with permission, and maybe a condom.
I don’t know about you but I’ve never been one to listen to the person who speaks with a belief that they are 100% undoubtedly right. I lean more towards the type that tells me, “I’ve researched this, I’ve looked at the positives and the negatives to the best of my abilities, and this is what I think the right answer is (and pretty please, don’t kill me if I’m wrong please).” The former has an air of being closed off and unchanging, conveys the notion that they’re not open to new ideas, and I don’t know about you but I have a really hard time calling someone who’s not open to new ideas a thinker. The latter though is a completely different breed of human-meat. They seems more.. human, more real. The latter grabs my interest because they’re admitting that what they give me (information, products, illegal drugs) is not the best muthafucking perfect 100% uncontested answer to my question and problem, but that it’s the best one they’ve found so far. They admit that they as humans are not without imperfection, and so too will their answers not be.
I know they’ll be imperfections, there always are. But the person who says that truthfully straight to my face deserves a lot less all-consuming eye-bulging hatred than the man who shouts to the rooftops about how perfect, and wonderful, and simply magical, his solutions are. As long as they tried their best to clean it up (to get rid of as many wrongs from their solution as possible), I can’t be mad at them. (The paradox of all this being that in admitting that they’ll always be wrong, they’re actually the most right people in the room.)
Myself, I aim to be this type of person. A person who admits that he has flaws, and that most likely down the line he’ll be catastrophically wrong, yet still persists towards the ultimate ‘right’, knowing that it’s unattainable.
And so I write this, not to deem myself right in who’s better as a person, but to convey to you that I deem the sincere person who admits they’re wrong more right, and dare I say more important, that the preacher who shouts of their “righteousness”. And I write in general in order to let you see my thoughts, and maybe, just maybe, something I write will be give someone just the right shove to go out and improve upon an idea of mine.
In fact, that’s what I hope for. That you go out there and prove me indisputably wrong, in the best way possible.
We will always be wrong in the end because the world is finding a more right answer every day (this is a good thing, it means the world is improving), but the speed at which the world changes and becomes more right is up to us. I write now and not later so that not only can someone prove me wrong while laughing uncontrollably and mockingly pointing at my dejected face, but so that someone proves me wrong while laughing uncontrollably and mockingly pointing at my dejected face soon. (The sooner, the better, the faster we can move on to even more right answers.)
Seriously, I won’t be mad at them for proving me wrong, quiet the opposite, I’ll give them the best embrace I can possibly give (while trying to hold the broken pieces of me intact of course). For in proving me wrong, and giving the world a more right answer, they’re contributing to the betterment of this tiny thing we live on called Earth. And I couldn’t ask for more.
Anyways…
Here’s to the pursuit of the right path. And here’s to our footsteps, for though erroneously they do so, they walk that path.
photo credit: Johnny Jet