Being Right

How Certainty Becomes Identity

I entered this world with no opinions that I can remember.

I did not know my name. I did not know that I was male, American, Mormon, intelligent, attractive, likable, successful, or any of the other descriptions that would eventually become attached to the person called Scott.

But that does not mean I arrived as a blank page.

Long before I could form a thought, my body carried an ancient inheritance. My DNA contained instructions for building a human being, along with tendencies that would influence temperament, sensitivity, energy, fear, curiosity, and countless other characteristics. It did not contain a completed personality or a predetermined life story. Research on childhood self-concept points instead to an ongoing interaction between genetic tendencies and environmental experience. Biology helped establish a range of possibilities; life participated in shaping which ones developed. (Research overview)

I may have entered the world without beliefs, but I did not enter without predispositions.

Then life began writing on me.

The Construction of Scott

At first, there was sensation.

Hunger. Warmth. Discomfort. Touch. Sound. A familiar voice. A face moving closer and farther away.

Gradually, patterns began to emerge. Some experiences felt pleasant. Others felt threatening. Certain sounds brought comfort. Certain actions produced attention. Before I could explain anything, my nervous system was already learning how this particular world worked.

Somewhere within those early years, a distinction began forming between what seemed to be me and what seemed to be everything else.

Researchers study one stage of this development by placing a small mark on a child’s face and observing what happens when the child looks into a mirror. Very young infants may respond to the reflection as though it were another child. Beginning around 15 months—and in most typically developing children by about age two—many use the reflection to investigate the mark on their own face. The image in the mirror has become connected to an emerging concept of self. (Review of mirror self-recognition research)

That is me.

It is a simple realization with enormous consequences.

Once there is a me, there can also be a you.

And once there is a me and a you, comparison becomes possible.

Am I bigger or smaller?

Faster or slower?

Approved of or disapproved of?

Included or excluded?

Right or wrong?

As I explored in Mirrors, other people gradually reflect an identity back to us. Parents, siblings, teachers, friends, churches, communities, and eventually the larger culture all participate in the construction.

You are a good boy.

You are being difficult.

You are smart.

You should know better.

People like us do this.

People like them are wrong.

Some reflections encourage us. Some wound us. Some are accurate, and others say more about the mirror than the child standing in front of it. But the young mind does not yet know how to make that distinction. It gathers the reflections and begins assembling them into a person.

That person becomes increasingly complex.

That person became Scott.

The Need for Orientation

A functioning identity is not a mistake. It is one of the tools that allows us to navigate human life.

I need to know where my body ends and yours begins. I need to remember what happened yesterday, anticipate what may happen tomorrow, understand what others expect from me, and make choices that produce reasonably predictable results.

As I wrote in The Human Instruction Manual, identity gives the ego a character through which it can operate: child, student, believer, husband, father, provider, professional, success, failure, victim, survivor.

Without some stable sense of self, life would be profoundly disorienting.

And one of the most useful ways to become oriented is to learn the difference between being right and being wrong.

Put your hand on a hot stove and you quickly discover that your belief about whether it will burn you matters.

Choose the correct answer in school and you receive a good grade.

Understand how something works and you can repair it.

Read another person accurately and you may know whether to approach, retreat, trust, or protect yourself.

Being right has practical value.

It helps us predict.

It helps us solve problems.

It develops competence.

It produces confidence.

It can even keep us alive.

The problem is not that human beings want accurate information. Reality does not adjust itself to accommodate our mistakes. A wrong conclusion can have real consequences.

The problem begins when being right becomes more than a way of understanding reality.

It becomes a way of establishing identity.

When Correctness Becomes Worth

Children learn quickly that the world rewards correct answers.

When I know the answer, adults approve. When I understand what is happening, I feel capable. When I make the right choice, events unfold more predictably. When other people agree with me, I feel less alone.

Being right begins to offer several rewards at once:

Competence: I know what I am doing.

Security: I know what is happening.

Approval: Other people recognize that I know.

Belonging: The people around me believe what I believe.

Status: I may know something that others do not.

None of these needs is inherently unhealthy. But together they can create a powerful psychological equation:

If I am right, I am safe, capable, worthy, and accepted.

The reverse equation is never far behind:

If I am wrong, what does that say about me?

Now an idea is no longer merely an idea.

It has become a mirror.

Born Into the Truth

I was raised in the Mormon Church.

At that time, the message I received was not that ours was one useful spiritual tradition among many. Other religions might contain goodness and portions of truth, but ours was the restored Church. It possessed the priesthood, the necessary ordinances, the keys of the kingdom, and the most complete understanding of God’s plan.

We did not merely believe that we had found a path.

We believed we had been given the truth.

As a child, I had little reason and almost no ability to challenge that conclusion. The adults around me believed it. The people I loved reinforced it. The stories, testimonies, songs, lessons, rituals, and community all pointed in the same direction.

The Church gave me more than theology.

It gave me a map of reality.

It told me where I came from, why I was here, what God expected from me, what would happen after death, which authority I could trust, and what kind of person I should become.

It also gave me family, community, identity, purpose, and belonging.

I do not say that dismissively. Those are substantial gifts. Human beings need orientation, and Mormonism offered an unusually detailed compass.

But the compass came with certainty.

If the Church was true, then questioning its authority was not simply examining an idea. It could mean questioning my family, my community, my eternal future, and the identity I had been given.

Being wrong would cost more than losing an argument.

It could cost the world that told me who I was.

More Human Than Mormon

It would be easy to make Mormonism the villain of this chapter.

That would also miss the point.

The need to be right is not uniquely Mormon. Religions, political movements, nations, businesses, families, scientific communities, and individual people all construct explanations of reality and then become attached to them.

Theologies do not create the human need for certainty from nothing. Human beings create theologies, ideologies, and institutions partly from that need.

We want to know where we stand.

We want the world to make sense.

We want to belong to the people who understand it.

We want to believe that our group sees something the others have missed.

Perhaps every tribe has some version of we are the ones who know.

Religion may promise salvation. Politics may promise justice. Business may promise the correct strategy. Science may promise the best current explanation. Spirituality may promise a higher consciousness that the less awakened have not yet discovered.

The content changes.

The internal posture can remain remarkably similar.

Changing My Beliefs Without Changing My Mind

Eventually, I began questioning the religious framework I had inherited.

Some answers no longer seemed adequate. Some claims did not fit my experience. Some forms of authority felt imposed rather than discovered. I needed permission to ask my own questions and retain responsibility for my own conclusions.

Changing my beliefs felt like liberation.

But there is a subtle trap in leaving one system of certainty.

I can reject the old answers while preserving the same internal operating system.

I once believed I possessed the truth because I belonged to the true Church. Later, I could begin believing that I possessed the truth because I had become perceptive enough to see through it.

The beliefs had changed.

But had my relationship with being right changed?

I could replace religious certainty with philosophical certainty, spiritual certainty, political certainty, scientific certainty, or certainty about my own superior open-mindedness.

The ego is remarkably adaptable. It can make an identity out of being a believer or a skeptic. It can feel superior because it follows authority or because it rejects authority. It can become proud of having answers and equally proud of claiming that no answers exist.

It can even become attached to the identity of being unattached.

Perhaps leaving a belief system is not the same as leaving the need that made certainty so attractive.

When an Idea Becomes Me

I can hold an ordinary idea lightly.

If I believe a store closes at nine and discover that it closes at eight, I usually adjust without an identity crisis. I wanted accurate information, and now I have it.

But some beliefs carry much more weight.

They tell me whether I am intelligent, moral, perceptive, loyal, enlightened, or worthy. They connect me to people I love. They explain sacrifices I have made and choices that have shaped my life. They hold entire chapters of my story together.

When one of those beliefs is challenged, my mind may not experience the challenge as new information.

It may experience it as danger.

This is where the distinction I make between ego and soul becomes useful to me.

The ego has spent a lifetime constructing and protecting the identity called Scott. It has good reason to resist anything that threatens to pull that structure apart.

It asks:

If this belief is wrong, what else might be wrong?

What will other people think of me?

What happens to the choices I made because of it?

Who will I be without it?

At that point, I may believe I am defending the truth when I am actually defending myself.

And that creates a difficult possibility:

The more I need to be right, the less capable I may become of discovering what is true.

Being right is useful.

Needing to be right is dangerous.

The difference between them is where the next part of this exploration begins.

Continued in The Cost of Being Right.