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David McElroy

An Alien Sent to Observe the Human Race

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If you made an error yesterday, it’s ‘foolish consistency’ to stick with it

By David McElroy · August 8, 2017

Most people are afraid to turn around when they’ve made a choice they’ve determined to be wrong. If they turn the wrong way down a road — confidently declaring it to be the way to go — they persist with the error long after it’s obvious.

We humans hate admitting we’re wrong.

We trap ourselves with our desire to be consistent, even if we don’t consciously know what we’re doing. Most of us are terrified of being seen as contradictory, so we’re afraid to reverse course and say, “I know I said X, but I was wrong and I’ve realized Y is the truth.”

Most people keep themselves locked into X long after they’ve realized Y is true, because they’re too weak to admit to having been wrong and forthrightly turn around. This is what Ralph Waldo Emerson meant in a widely misunderstood passage in his 1841 essay on “Self-Reliance.”

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines,” Emerson wrote. “With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.”

Emerson isn’t saying to be hypocritical. He isn’t saying to be intentionally confusing to people. He’s merely suggesting that you should speak truth as you understand it today — and also speak truth as you understand it tomorrow. If something about your understanding has changed, he says it is a “foolish consistency” to stick with what you had said before.

My life has been full of major changes. When I was young, I was a mainstream conservative. As I discovered the contradictions of my positions, I was forced into the libertarian camp. As I understood more and more about the principles in which I believed, I had to walk away from the entire political system — because my ethics insisted that nothing but a voluntary system could be moral.

I’ve radically changed my theological views. I’ve radically changed my ideas of what a good life is. I’ve radically changed my understanding of how to educate children and how to raise them in healthy ways. I’ve radically changed in my understanding of myself and what I’m trying to do with my life. Perhaps the most difficult reversal was walking away from a marriage that I had thought for years was close to perfect.

Every one of these changes required me to change my mind — then admit to others that I had been wrong — and then walk in a different direction. That isn’t easy.

We’ve been taught to be consistent. We’ve been taught to keep our word. We’ve been taught that it’s “waffling” to change our minds. What we haven’t been taught is how to say, “I was wrong,” and, “I’m going to correct this before the mistake goes any further.”

We all need to find what’s right for ourselves to do and be today and tomorrow and every day. If my conclusions about some things stay consistent — who I love, what my values are, where my ethical boundaries are — that’s great. But when I find I’ve been wrong about certain things, I have to turn around and admit my error.

A courageous and wise person admits he was wrong yesterday — or that something once true is no longer true — and changes course today.

If you’re sticking with something you said yesterday — merely because you said it yesterday — but you have now discovered the truth lies elsewhere, you owe it to yourself to say so. What’s more, your commitment ought to be to truth, not consistency with your own past errors.

If you’re driving down the wrong road of life — and it’s obvious you made a wrong turn — it’s time to turn around before things get worse. There’s nothing worse than the feeling inside of living a lie.

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It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode in the car with me. She was on her way to her “forever home” with me, but she didn’t know that, so she was terrified that night. It was a much happier and braver girl who took a ride in the car tonight so we could go through a drive-through window and order a hamburger for her — to celebrate five years with me. She had a great time. If she could remember five years ago tonight, she would be proud of how far she’s come, too. #dog #dogs #dogstagram #dogsofinstagram #cute #cutedog #pets #petstagram #petsofinstagram #instadog #ilovedogs #birmingham #alabama
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Briefly

It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode in the car with me. She was on her way to her “forever home” with me that night, but she didn’t know it, so she was terrified. It was a much happier and braver girl who took a ride in the car tonight so we could go through a drive-through window and order a hamburger for her — to celebrate five years with me. She had a great time. If she could remember five years ago tonight, she would be proud of how far she’s come, too. If you’d like to know more about Lucy’s journey from scared dog to brave queen of the household, here’s something I wrote after her first year with me. I’m hoping this girl will have many more happy years with me.

I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

Years ago, I heard a question that seemed very insightful at the time. You’ve probably heard it, too. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? The question is intended to help you uncover things you really want to do, but which you’re afraid to try — for fear of failure. In an interview today, I heard the great marketing guru Seth Godin give a different point of view. He said the better question is to ask what you would do even if you knew it would fail. That struck me as far more insightful than the original version. We ought to be doing what we know is right, not what will maximize our success or praise from others. There are some battles that are worth fighting even if you believe you’re doomed to failure. Those battles are often for love or important ideas or our children. Some things are simply worth fighting for — and the truth is that you might win anyway. Do the right thing. Take the chance.

The more I understand about myself, about human nature and about the nature of reality, the more I realize I’m a radical by the standards of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Seeing the things which I’m stumbling toward makes me an enemy of many of the core ideas upon which contemporary culture is built. It exposes the culture as a monstrous lie — like a dangerous infection that’s slowly destroying what human were created to be. My “inner observer” has always known that truth was found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but I’m slowly finding words to explain what has merely been instinct until now. The Enlightenment was humanity’s great leap forward, but shallow and arrogant thinkers for the next two centuries threw away the fruits of that achievement. We can’t go forward as a species until we go back to correct this intellectual and spiritual error — and part of that is acknowledging that our collective attempts to do away with our Creator will always fail.

I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

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