Sometimes not being right is some sort of cold comfort

Today is quite warm. This unremarkable observation about the weather betrays my complex system of beliefs, behaviours, attributions and explanations that have changed over time. I probably would not have said the same thing 27 years ago when I first set foot on these shores. More likely it would have been some variant on the English tabloid newspaper headline “Corr, what a scorcher”. Clearly, I have adapted.

Adaptation always comes at some cost. In my case, like most mainland Australians, it is a tendency to think it is cold when the temperature falls into single figures. This from the boy whose glass of water would freeze overnight in his unheated draughty childhood home. I gave a talk in Ottawa in this week, some years ago. It was minus 32C. Canadians understand cold.

It is the same process at work with being right and being wrong. If we spend the vast majority of our lives being right, then we are ill prepared for being wrong. We reach for extra layers of protective clothing when we feel the cold to return us to the status quo of warmth. It is the same with being wrong. The most common first reaction is to shield ourselves from the possibility to maintain our position in the right world.

We are acculturated at an early age that being right is so much better than being wrong. This distinction gets ramped up when we are first dragged by the ear into formal schooling, or these days I suppose dragged by the RATTY nostrils. While error-making students today are less likely to learn how to duck flying chalk, board rubbers, belts, backs of hands, canes or be confronted by a bleeding sea of red ink, they nonetheless get the message that being right is the way to go.

Because being wrong feels so unpleasant, we develop a series of strategies to rescue ourselves should we suspect we are, or worse, be exposed as being wrong. Welcome to world of explanations and justifications. We learn to have justifications for our actions on speed dial. The more frequently we engage in egregious behaviour, the more fluently the justifications and evasions trip from our forked tongues.

The motivation to evade responsibility for our actions is very strong. We don’t want to change our behaviours or beliefs because that takes effort and can be seen as a challenge to our identity. We don’t like to think we were wrong. Lying becomes, for some (all?) almost irresistible. For the well practiced, it is second-nature. Do it too much and we can be lost in our own labyrinth of deceit.

If we can’t lie our way out of it to others or to ourselves, we try to blame others. This is so inviting because there are an almost infinite number of variations. I am a victim of circumstances, my hands were tied, mistakes were made, I should never have trusted or delegated, or it is not my job or responsibility.

Delegating blame then allows us to make superficial non-apology apologies. “I am sorry if you feel…” , “I am sorry that on my watch, my colleagues did or did not…” , “I am sorry I appointed / ever met ” etc.

Finally, if lying and delegation are not working, we can try the old distraction trick. “Look over there at”, or “lets talk about your failings” in the hope we can do a runner from the cold world of wrong back to the sun-kissed warmth of right.