No one likes to be caught out being wrong. I say caught out because when you are wrong and don't know it you think you are right, which is perfectly fine. In fact, if someone points out that you are wrong that uncomfortable feeling of Cognitive Dissonance (Leon Festinger) kicks in and you will do everything you can to justify your position as a correct one. We do it all the time; a scientist appears on the news to tell us that they have discovered that alcohol is bad for you and we explain to anyone that will listen how a glass of wine an evening makes us relax, which is a benefit that far outweighs any risk of mutating cells.
This fear of being wrong is exacerbated by education. The old joke that, "my teacher must really love me because she keeps putting little kisses all over my work," doesn't really wash.
Everyone knows that the children who get work back that looks like this are stupid, lazy, feckless and probably smelly. No one wants to be that child. The Government have made it even more clear from this year as without levels below average eleven year olds will be told they are failures after their SATs tests.
Making a Murderer demonstrates a brilliant example of Groupthink, a psychological phenomenon written about by Irving Janis in 1972. He observed that groups can make bad decisions because people strive for consensus within a group. They will blindly follow a charismatic leader and ignore evidence that doesn't fit the group's philosophy. This documentary follows the trial of a man, convicted of murder. The problem with this conviction comes because he had just been released from prison after serving 18 years for a rape that he didn't commit. The documentary implies that he was framed for this first crime by his cousin because she didn't like him. I think they just thought they had the right man and couldn't (as a group) entertain the idea of being wrong. Many of them still can't. Unusually, the victim of the rape, who picked him out of the lineup has accepted her error but refused to participate in the documentary because she has become wary of being certain about anything; he could be innocent or guilty.
But being wrong can be brilliant. We need it for creativity and innovative thought. Without someone admitting to being wrong we would still think the earth was flat, you could tell someone's personality by feeling the bumps on their head, illness could be cured by leeching out most of a patient's blood, and Pluto would still be the ninth planet in our solar system. (I will continue to believe the Pluto thing, though, as it fits my planet song).
As an artist my mum used to talk about 'happy accidents', which was probably just to stop us screwing up paper and throwing it all over the living room in frustration when, no matter how hard we tried, our cat picture stubbornly stayed canine in appearance but if artists always had to be strictly accurate then Van Gough would have never been able to look at the sky and think it looked like this.
When I start composition work with children I always tell them, "You can't be wrong," we listen to other people's compositions and I ask them how it makes them feel. I might tell them that the composer intended them to feel a specific way but point out that they don't enjoy the music any less because they feel differently.
At the end of this weekend the Long Suffering Husband said, "It's brilliant isn't it? They seem so happy and we thought it wouldn't last once they'd finished college."
I was shocked as the LSH is never wrong.
"Do you mean you were wrong?"
"We were wrong."
"Yes, of course, we were wrong. "
"Actually, I don't think I ever said it. It was you all the time. I just went along with it."
"Obviously," I reassured him, "Well, I'm very happy I was wrong."
I'm always happy to be wrong. Be bold, be strong, be wrong: a motto I'm happy to live my life by.
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