Agnoscerrophobia
[Fear of Being Wrong; from the Latin, Agnoscere, meaning I acknowledge and Erro, meaning error or wrong. Suffix is from the Greek, meaning fear. There is probably a better word to define what may also be categorized as the stupidity of stubbornness, but until I find it, my made up word will have to suffice.]
As an observer of human behavior I watch the news, read newspapers, listen to the radio, note the interaction of friends and strangers and absorb stories from those around me. In as objective a manner as possible, I struggle to put all these myriad pieces into a meaningful and comprehensible jigsaw puzzle, readily admitting this is still a long way from my being a purely objective, pragmatic viewer, but it’s an attempt.
One trait I’ve noticed in many, if not most of us (with a few notable exceptions) is our resistance to not only admitting a mistake, but also our abject fear of that admission. It is as if by stating, “I am wrong” we become diminished. This characteristic appears to be most prevalent in the highly insecure members of society, those who beat their chests and radiate a pretense of strength.
When Socrates addressed the leaders of ancient Greece, he told them he knew nothing, basically inferring they knew even less than nothing because they believed they knew everything. For this he was then sentenced to his choice of either banishment or death. He chose death by hemlock. The wise men of Athens were so afraid of looking at their own errors of judgment, they ridded themselves of the person who held up the mirror instead of assessing their own behavior.
This scenario has been playing out over and over again throughout recorded history; heretics burned at the stake for decrying the dictates of illogical religious dogma; dissidents who stood up for rational understanding were “disappeared” into the bowels of Soviet or Peruvian prisons; hundreds were exorcised from the creative arts by paranoid Un-American Activities committee members who believed their own insanity; plus hundreds of thousands of other examples.
What is it about the vast majority of our species who finds the admission of error so horrifically frightening?
Perhaps this is just urban myth, but I have heard stories about Albert Einstein’s ostensibly enthusiastic desire to be proven wrong. “Please”, he is supposed to have begged, “show me where I’ve made a mistake.” Regardless of the accuracy of this particular quote, Einstein did have a true desire for knowledge that went beyond ego or insecurity. He longed for complete comprehension of a subject, so if he made a miscalculation, he wanted to know so he could move forward with greater understanding.
This should be the mantra of every politician, scientist, laborer, teacher, artist, accountant, lawyer, parent, and businessperson on the planet. Shouldn’t we all want to know what we’ve done wrong so we can improve and become better at whatever we do? By pretending our mistakes were made by someone else or by sticking our collective heads in the sand or even worse, by punishing the people who point out an error, are we not diminishing ourselves by an even greater degree than by admitting our faux pas?
Many of us, including myself, have this propensity to make an incorrect assumption and stay with it despite evidence to the contrary. This behavior may be based on ego, loss of power or a dread of perceived defeat. But regardless of the reasons for our debilitating and irrational fear of being wrong, if we were able to more readily admit our mistakes, we could alter destructive paths and avoid situations leading to disastrous outcomes. So many people are unwilling to admit the human role in climate change because the facts are, as former Vice President Al Gore pointed out, inconvenient and the acceptance of such obvious science is admitting to a decades’ old misconception.
I’ve read dozens of articles in The New Yorker or watched segments of 60 Minutes that discussed new and creative ways of teaching or of showing a method of running businesses in a more efficient manner. Most of the time these remarkably effective concepts are stymied by staunch opposition as the organizations noted in the presentation find reasons to stay with “tried and true” outdated formulas despite the proven successes of innovative ideas. If school boards embraced the best and most proficient methods of education, it would be tantamount to admitting prior erroneous behavior. Imagine efficiently run schools actually educating the children of our country in a manner that would build towards a better future.
Certainly there are exceptions to this behavioral pattern, but in most cases, they are based on minor admissions. For instance if we respond to a clue incorrectly while watching Jeopardy or get the time of an appointment wrong, we can fess-up to these kinds of mistakes with only a slight amount of embarrassment. It is the larger issues, when credibility is at stake, where many of us balk at waving a white flag.
The bravado of winning, of being right despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, runs through the veins of our species. Before we can stop the pandemic of self-destructive behavior, we must all first admit fallibility and unfortunately, I don’t see any light at the end of this tunnel, though I hope I’m wrong.
Tobin, you asked – “What is it about the vast majority of our species who finds the admission of error so horrifically frightening?”
Seems to me that our species is uniquely, remarkably unstable in the precise terms which you describe. We shoot ourselves in the foot as a consequence of how language effects our social dynamic.
No question that every mammal has a survival instinct. Life is precious. We homo sapiens though, have imaginations supercharged by language, the faculty of symbolic communication. The blessing and the curse of the matter amounts to tool making skill which exponentially becomes more effective to conceive and jointly fashion institutions, public works for removing waste and provision of clean water, make literacy widely available, and to establish basic guardrails of fairness for a given tribe. The Romans accomplished all of these feats.
On the other hand our imaginations are easily infected with fantasies of life-after-life, the binary opposites of heaven and hell. Several weeks ago while in France we toured and learned about a number of cathedrals regarded as testimony to the imagination of our medieval ancestors. Artifacts of history yes, important yes. But also troubling reminders of the superstition to which we humans remain the victims. A lie with talons hooked into insecurity, into the insistence upon eternal life, beats the truth hands down.
Being right is a life and death issue, when one goes “all in” to one’s core commitment anchoring who and what one has become. Occasionally the material fallout of doubling down upon nonsense becomes intolerable. An uprising occurs that seems, for a short while to give some relief. French revolutionaries rid themselves of the Bourbons, only ten years afterward, Napoleon I, and then his nephew Napoleon III arose as heads of state. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
So what is to be done? As you suggest: perhaps not much. Or as I am willing to believe: a great deal. it is never wrong to be kind, and sometimes kindness entails resolute “No” of resistance to racist and homophobic and inhumane policies.
The butterfly effect is real. We cannot know how important our actions will be for the future. No artists can know in his/her lifetime what will be a mature assessment of their work. Time, more time than a lifetime is necessary.
In short humans change slowly, the product of trial and error. Without a doubt democracy is more widely spread now than in past times, albeit the hoary default of autocracy has not disappeared. The future is open. Pandemics do run their course.