A Much Needed ‘Humble’ Mindset

I don’t agree with a lot that Jonathan Rauch believes. With that said, there’s something truly wise in the following excerpt from The Radical Incrementalist—an interview he gave to Nick Gillespie for Reason Magazine.

Everybody makes [mistakes]; it’s par for the course. What I have learned is not to be too sure I’m right. The world is much more surprising than we give it credit for. That’s part of my political philosophy, my philosophy of life. That’s really fundamental to it: Trial and error is really the only thing in life that works ultimately over the long term. Journalism is like that, too, so we need to be honest about our mistakes. We often aren’t enough. Everybody makes mistakes. And we need to be a little bit cautious about making predictions.

Did you catch it? “…not to be too sure I’m right”? This is a concept that I’ve been discussing with friends and family for a couple of years now. I think we can all agree that no one is 100% correct in all of their belief systems, right? So then it becomes a matter of degrees.

If God sent you an email that said you were right 81.43% of the things you hold to be true, most likely you’d be pretty proud of yourself. Therein lies the problem. Most of us behave like we’re always right.

Instead, we should approach each topic with humility and the mindset that says, “I believe A to be correct, but of course, I could be wrong.”

In a culture that applauds everything but humility—pride, boldness and flamboyance—I believe we’re heading down the wrong road.

Swallowing my own medicine I sputter, “But, of course, I could be wrong.” [via kottke]