THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING WRONG OCCASIONALLY

[AUTHOR's NOTE: This is a repost of an article from January of 2006. The Author has been busy lately and has not had the time to prepare new material. That will change, however.}

The Author is sometimes wrong. No really, seriously, he is. About both big things and little things. Most everyone is wrong now and then. Some more wrong than right, some more right than wrong.

But the Author has never known anyone who has never been wrong. Even President Bush, who claims he has never made a mistake as president, has sometimes been wrong. Being wrong gives humans an opportunity, although not an opportunity we would seek out. An opportunity to learn from the mistake and do the right thing next time.

Being wrong sometimes allows us to correct a wrong action. Sometimes not. But being wrong gives us the chance to figure out why we were wrong, usually in the light of subsequently discovered facts, and the opportunity to avoid similar mistakes in the future. Mistakes are ways of adversely selecting against future failure.

CAN WHEN YOU ARE WRONG BE AS IMPORTANT AS HOW MUCH YOU ARE WRONG?

People make mistakes in their lives. Young people with less experience in the world and less mature decision-making mechanisms in their adolescent brains, make lots of mistakes. Most recover from early, big mistakes. But some don’t.

And big mistakes early in adulthood may also hobble a person through their life as mistakes may close off avenues to better jobs or better social environments.

But later life mistakes can be equally devastating. A bad business or financial decision can mean bankruptcy. A brush with the law at 40 finds the courts less forgiving than when an immature kid makes the same transgression. But it would appear that the more years of the experience one has, the better their decision- making skills will be.

IF YOU CAN AFFORD YOUR MISTAKES, CAN YOU EVER BE WRONG?

But there are some in this world that continually make mistakes with few if any consequences. Paris Hilton comes promptly to mind[i]. Two such people in one of the cannon of American literature also come to mind. Tom and Daisy Buchanan of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby” are the prototypical scions of the idle rich. Remember what Nick Carraway said near the end of the book and the 1974 movie of the same title of Tom and Daisy?

“Careless people [Tom and Daisy]… they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together…”

But in the end, it was their money that gave them retreat. It paid for their vast carelessness. It was the Faustian bargain they struck. The money was the unspoken “whatever” that kept them together.

This is a rhetorical question, to be sure. Someone usually pays when a mistake is made. Nearly always the one in error and usually a bystander, or two, or two hundred. Or two hundred thousand. But when someone can retreat into their money, their family connections, their networks of sycophants and cronies, can such a person ever make a mistake? Will that lesson never taught produce a pupil never schooled? Probably so.

“ANYONE ELSE, I’D SAY THIS WOULD BE A LESSON”

In the classic film “Citizen Kane”, political boss Jim Gettys threatens to expose Kane’s tryst with his lover unless Kane drops out of the race for New York Governor. Kane refuses and Gettys goes public with the story of Kane’s extramarital affair. Gettys tells Kane “Anyone else, I’d say this would be a lesson”.

Kane goes on to loose the election, divorce his wife and marry his lover. But Charles Foster Kane is not just “anyone else”. Kane kept his vast wealth and control over a financial empire built in the Gilded Age and large enough to ride out the impending Great Depression.

IS THERE EVER A LESSON IF THERE CAN NEVER BE A “MISTAKE”?
MUSINGS AND THOUGHTS UNGUIDED FROM THE DESERT OF THE REAL!

[i] But in her media choreographed life, are they really “mistakes”?