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September 04, 2007

The Danger of Needing to be Right

Talk amongst yourselves...

“There is no more destructive force in human affairs—not greed, not hatred—than the desire to have been right. Non-attachment to possessions is trivial when compared with non-attachment to opinions.” -- Mark Kleiman

I'm not sure who Mark Kleiman is (although I'm guessing he's this man), but I like this quotation. I ran across it in this post from the blog 37days, which starts out sounding exactly like a lot of "I've just had an INSIGHT!" blog posts, but which ended up making me think.

(Of course, this doesn't mean that I am not COMPLETELY RIGHT about overwritten literature and certain Anne Sexton metaphors.)

Posted by holly at September 4, 2007 10:24 AM

Comments

Well, you can't be penalized for having been right in the first place! I think his point is that you shouldn't become so attached to an opinion that you can't hear other ones. If you solemnly consider other positions, but still come back to yours - well, you were just lucky enough to start out with the best one.

Or: if someone has posted your opinion on Wikipedia. You're automatically correct forever.

Tell Kleiman hey for us if you see him on campus. That is, if you can catch him in a moment he's not stoned out of his gourd.

(Semi-related post from Ken Jennings about needing to be right all the time. A more nerdy and less Buddhist interpretation, but then most of us know more nerds than Buddhists anyway.)

Posted by: Jameson [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 5, 2007 09:35 AM

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