Do you want to be right or happy ?

Sitting around with a group of people discussing the challenges of communication in relationships when one person offered an insight that I really liked:

"You can be right or you can be happy."

Can't you be both? 

One person suggested: "If I'm right, then I am happy."

"Ah, but if you think you are right, reason surely tells you that you may be mistaken. Right ? So your happiness is not assured."

Turns out that Voltaire has wrestled with this question in a thought-story which is produced in its entirety below.

Outrage ain't right

 “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions”
  – David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Book 3, Part 3, Section 3)

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Enough of the outrage!

I hear your passion, your judgment, your indignation, your disgust. All because I'm unwilling to agree with you.

Outrage is easy to hear because it is pure passion speaking out. Loudly. 

In defence of uncertainty: Against the wrong of righteousness

Weather to carry an umbrella ?!

In polite conversation, topics like sex, politics, and religion are widely regarded as off-limit. Today, public policy issues like climate change and public health (vaccinations, naturopathic medicines, fast food marketing, etc.) also provoke such polemic that useful debate is impeded.

It is not the topic that is the problem. 

 

It is that positive, meaningful conversation on these topics descends all too quickly from a meaningful dialogue to dogmatism, from disagreement to disagreeableness.

How do you turn an intelligent conversation into a ideological battle? Allow participants to advance confidently held, but opposing beliefs while assiduously denying uncertainty.