The criminality of being right.

An accusation I have often had levied at myself is "you always have to be right haven't you?"; and it has always struck me as odd. I often wonder if they have a point, am I just too pig ignorant to ever possibly admit that I am wrong? But then I think about the occasions when this is said and it usually comes at the end of a heated debate, one in which I have stood my ground firmly and have not been proven to be wrong; I have not nessasarily proven myself to be correct but the ad hominem attack always occurs when the 'opposition' has no further logical debate to bring to the table.

Now contrary to popular belief I can admit when I am wrong and, when I am convinced by the other viewpoint, I often revel in it. No one person can hold all of the answers and quite frankly, even if I did, I wouldn't want that responsibility. But the fact remains that seldom does someone ever break my viewpoint, mostly because the standard of debate these days is relatively shallow and self absorbed. The occasions, most recently, when I have been forced to concede defeat have almost all occurred on TPU (mostly before its move to the "official" Anti-Flag forums but while it was an unofficial one which probably had more people on it who weren't A-F fans than were) and I positively relish it. The debate is exhilarating, well thought out and logical; I find myself no longer being forced to play devil's advocate just to spark something and I feel challenged by it. I love it. I have questioned my own thought processes and ideas and it makes me happy to do so. If anything I have been driven even more toward the left than ever before; I now consider calling me a Liberal almost as insulting as calling me a Conservative.

However even when the standard of debate is good there are two key reasons why I don't often admit defeat:

First of all I do not like confrontation. I often find it unnecessary and superficial. Confrontation tends to only highlight our differences as people and very little progress ever comes from it. As a result of this I will often not engage in a debate unless I am already confident of my position and feel that it needs to be said. I will only debate when it is something worthwhile.

Secondly, and most importantly, I am extremely well read. Please forgive my arrogance on this but reading is something that I relish, and the vast majority of my reading is political texts. I don't just read texts from a leftist standpoint either, I quite happily read conservative texts even if I do sometimes feel IQ points dropping and my brain melting as I do so (much the same affect as the Daily Mail has on me really). The simple fact is I read. I read books (my favourite), websites, newspapers, magazines, anything really and I like to keep myself informed. Science, politics, religion, anything and everything. I realised quite recently that, aside from play texts, I had read no fiction since coming to university (hence my recent re-obsession with Harry Potter, something simple to ease myself back into it).

But it is in this second point which is most vibrant for me. We seem to be developing a severe anti-intellectual movement in this country which I think we have inherited from our American neighbours over the pond. Now I'm not saying I am particularly intellectual. I like to think I'm smart, well read, and thoughtful though whether or not I am an 'intellectual' I'm not sure. But the anti-intellectual thing is odd. With the exception of trains you don't really see people reading much these days, everyone is always too busy rushing about urgently flitting from shop to shop for the latest commodity with which to bedeck their already bursting homes full of stuff they don't need.

I think Bill Hicks put it best



Carlin says something good about "stuff" as well