Negative Space - The Value of Wrong

The most attractive thing I find in others (male or female) is a security of self, divorced from the need to be right.

We live in a society that places a high emphasis on being right, having the answers - this instills the confidence of others and puts the one wielding the right behavior and thinking in a place of authority and power.  No one wants to follow a sage who deals in maybes, much worse negativity.  Yet, learning best happens in an environment where there is plenty of space and praise for failure, for getting it wrong and understanding why it didn't work.  We live too much in a world that doesn't extol the value of being wrong, of learning from mistakes.  Much of this is because we are punishing apes, with a high sensitivity against doing things wrong.

When a person gets too attached (married) to their ideas, and self-identifies with them, they can become stuck by them, trapped in a bubble of sorts, where the bubble boundary represents the extent that they dare to question their own thinking.  As such, challenging the idea = challenging the person.  This makes it hard to have meaningful conversations, or to engage in critical thinking with other people without offense being found and anger taking over. It becomes a major blockage to either party discovering what is real or true and being open to facts they otherwise dismiss (yes, 'facts' are a tricky thing).

If you are my friend, even casual, please know that I sincerely care about you, even enough to point out when you may be wrong, even at the risk of you not liking me anymore.  I would hope you would feel free to do the same for me, as I also strive to be open to correction.  My life experiences have taught me to absolutely hate any form of deception (self, or externally practiced or imposed), and as such I seek the truth over comfort, both in my internal conversations and those with others.  This is my definition of integrity - seeking the truth over comfort. This approach can cause problems when I assume in my conversations that other people are like me (projection bias, theory of mind), and when I treat people how I would like to be treated.  It doesn't always make a person feel comforted or happy, but being bipolar I can tell you that happy is over-rated. I think I have benefited from this extreme ability to hold onto something terribly sad and discomforting. Almost always, the truth we need to hear and understand is uncomfortable, sometimes sad, and maybe extremely so in both respects. There is immense value in understanding the negative.

Many people think that being civil in conversation means always being nice and agreeable. I don't.  Although I enjoy the positives of pleasant and jovial interaction, I think the best way to be responsible in civic engagement is to point out thinking errors or ways people may be being deceived when these issues pop up in conversation.  Although I always strive to direct my conversation at the idea and not the individual, I realize that people often respond negatively to correction, criticism, or confrontation, and often respond badly by making all kind of arguments from fallacy and cognitive bias - ad hominem and straw man being two favorites.  Often the urge is to respond back in kind, mirroring their nasty ways.  Many times I've found myself fighting this impulse, swallowing it down, and really trying to consider what the other person is saying; counting ten, so to speak. This immediate response is hard wired into our brains, it's called fight or flight and triggered when the amygdala becomes excited and perceives threat or aggression.   It's a well tuned mechanism that people engage without even thinking.  This response shuts off the logic centers in the brain which are usually open to evaluate incoming information critically and rationally.  The "go with what you know" center takes over, so that while fighting or fleeing may be protective, nothing is gained (except personal safety), and nothing is learned (but better fighting/fleeing skills). This is the mechanism of bubble preservation.

The best way to escape your bubble (cognitive bias) is to honestly seek understanding in the things that you avoid, oppose, hate, find scary, confrontational, or uncomfortable.  The best way to be right is to painfully realize where you are, or may be wrong.  If you must always seek to be right and comfortable you will almost assuredly be stuck being wrong.

I write this in hope that people who may be getting undeservedly offended on FB or elsewhere may better understand why they are feeling so when a person is talking about an idea.  Why are they attaching so strongly to an idea.   Offense is usually a sign of insecurity in an idea.  Offense can be a protection mechanism that jumps in to save an insecure idea.  

I also write it to examine why I behave as I do.  I realize some fault in this behavior, in that correcting of countering people should be applied judiciously, or sometimes even withheld entirely.   Confronting people with facts rarely changes their minds, but instead only convinces them that you are wrong, and maybe a jerk for challenging their ideas.  By such, any contradiction or correction should be lathered with expressions of acceptance and approval.  Dissension is critical within a group to overcome many of the psychological mechanisms which ensure conformity, but to be effective, a dissenter must be seen as an in-group motivated reasoner.  They must want what I want, and share my goals, otherwise as an outsider, their dissension will be viewed as a trick, as a way to deceive me and mine, and ruin my chances at achieving the goal of the group.   Since correction is oft seen as mean, it takes a pretty close and loving relationship to endure much of it.

This correction with kindness and in confidence is a hard line to find and I often miss the mark.  It's almost impossible to correct someone in public.  Maybe with time I will just learn to "shut it" and smile, and only answer when my advice is sincerely sought with an open mind in a safe space.  As a painfully shy kid, fully aware of my weaknesses and inadequacies, I have much experience being quiet, maybe I should resort to that at times.

Due to my experiences and personality, I have a pretty healthy appreciation for negative space.  I see the value and the gift of being wrong, of looking for and closely examining what is wrong. Wrong has far more corrective value in our lives than right.  I had to realize what was wrong with my brain and my thinking and try to understand it and correct it. 
As such, I realize that a person's relationship with wrong is a personal journey, one best undertaken of their own choosing.  Part of my journey of realizing that I was wrong came about through a manic breakdown involving god and my religion that felt so right.  I was diagnosed Bipolar I.

So the thinking I needed to acquire to overcome a lot of my mental errors involves having a deep understanding of cognition, which involves flawed heuristics and biases.  This is the 1st tenet of my ideology, that I strive to live against via better understanding of the human propensity for poor thinking:

Cognitive Biases
Confirmation Bias
Motivated Reasoning
Bias Blind Spot
Better that Average Bias
Halo Bias
Self Serving Bias
Introspection Illusion
Illusory Correlation
Illusion of Asymmetric Insight
Projection Bias
Framing
Anchoring
Backfire Effect (Belief Perseverance)
Hindsight Bias
Belief Bias
Distinction Bias
Fundamental Attribution Error
Neglect of Probability
In-group bias
Out-group Homogeneity Bias
Attentional Bias
.
.
.
The list is huge - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

The 2nd tenet is understanding and living against Logical Fallacies, which are closely linked to the 1st, and possibly an outcropping.

Logical Fallacies:
Special Pleading, ad hoc reasoning
Straw Man
Ad Hominem
Ad Ignorantiam
Argument from Authority
Moving the Goalpost
Slippery Slope
Tu Qouque
Band Wagon
Excluded Middle
.
.
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies#Formal_fallacies

This ideology might be seen as a 'belief' or practices that places too much emphasis on the recognition of the negative, but when we avoid looking at anything which is not flattering, positive, or happy about ourselves or our world we engage in the worst kind of deception - that of self.  It's easy to behave the other way, and to gain friends and make people happy with agreement and thumbs up.  This makes them want to continue an interchange that makes them feel good by only experiencing positive, complimentary, and non-confrontational interactions.  We are socially wired to agree and get along with the group.  The positives in this respect really need no further introduction.  We're very good at it socially and religiously - rewards and positive motivations. Mansion in heaven anyone?  

Come on over to the dark side - it really illuminates the light and makes it richer.  By dark side I do not mean evil, sin and debauchery.  I mean critical thinking and skepticism.  I mean considering what is wrong or in error, or even suspect about your behaviors and ideas.  There is power in the negative to define and shape the positive.  This is captured in the Japanese concept of negative space.  The trick is not to be consumed by either side, and to find balance in the middle way.  I only promote the negative because I think most people are very averse to considering it, and very prone to only accepting the positives.

That said, it may help you to know that the 3rd tenet is to seek understanding via love and respect, and to avoid fear, hate, and intolerance in all that I think and do.  'Fight or Flight' is a form of intolerance and based on hate and fear. If we truly love our fellow humans we will seek association with them regardless of whether or not they agree with us.  I find some of my richest experiences have been by association with people who are different than me in some way, and whom I have maybe misjudged via the cursory evaluation that limited time and shallow experiences usually allow.  I am genuinely interested in interesting people, and I think everyone has hidden gems, hence interesting.  Some of my greatest mistakes have been in underestimating a person based on appearances or snap judgments.  I like to imagine in my interactions with people that with regularity I have stood by someone of greatness, talent, or high achievement and just didn't know it.

Lastly, I also realize that the way I communicate often sounds bombastic or heavy handed. <- Exhibit A.   But this is truly who I am, sorry if you find it annoying. (If you do maybe that's indication of something to be learned?)  I am striving to be genuine and to be painfully aware of my flaws, especially the inner wiring that causes me to misjudge or be biased about myself or others.  I hope to be loving and kind while still striving to be honest and maintain personal integrity, facing the negatives as much as I enjoy the positives.  I think this is as much as we can ask and expect of anyone.