Learning to Celebrate Failure
Greetings fellow Conformists,
Right now, a rogue group is attempting to destroy America.
Unfortunately for America, this group is made up of millions of Americans.
Anti-maskers, racists, and religious extremists have banded together to subvert America in the guise of liberty. They have formed a clique who use liberty only as an excuse to act whatever way they want, twisting the meaning of freedom to always put their own personal beliefs over the basic human rights of other people. As if their freedom to discriminate and endanger others is more important that the right of others to go about their lives without being punished for their existence.
They are masters of spin. Real Americans, they say, put liberty first. Anyone who doesn’t believe in their right to discriminate and pollute the air with their disease is not a real American.
They can’t serve gay people at their bakery because that would infringe on their liberty to believe gay people don’t deserve legal recognition of their partnership and the rights that come with it. They can’t provide birth control to employees who receive health care through their work because that would infringe on their liberty to believe every sperm is sacred. They can’t wear a mask to help stop the spread because that would infringe on their liberty to believe that a global pandemic that’s killed hundreds of thousands of Americans is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese and is no worse than the flu.
What they are demanding is the right to always be right.
Even after society has come to another conclusion, they want the right to cling to and perpetrate their harmful beliefs. Society has agreed that gay people deserve the same rights as heterosexual couples, that birth control is a basic health care measure that allows people to plan their families, that masks are a reasonable accommodation to help prevent the spread of an airborne virus that is extremely dangerous to some. But they put themselves above society. Their individual beliefs and rights trump any needs of other members of society.
https://twitter.com/annehelen/status/1322631571594125312
The need to always be right is anchored in the toxic ideology of “winning.” We can’t admit we’re wrong, or we’re not winning.
And if we’re not winning, we have to make peace with losing. With being wrong. With failing.
In a society that abhors failure, that means experiencing shame.
It doesn’t matter that numbers tell a totally different story. We can’t admit that the rest of the world has developed better ideas and systems, because that would mean we weren’t "number one." We can’t recognize that every other nation on earth has figured out a better health care system than ours, because that would mean we've subjected millions of people to needless suffering. We can’t fathom how other countries don’t have mass shootings like we do, because that would mean we could avoid senseless deaths through sensible compromise. We can’t acknowledge that America is racist, because that would mean we didn’t earn our successes all on our own merits.
In the weeks since the election, there has been a lot of grappling with the vast numbers of people who want to reject an election because they lost. They are ready to throw away democracy, the foundation of America, for the sake of victory. They've put on blinders against the lack of evidence, because their instincts tell them there's no way they could have failed.
How can we prevent this from happening again in four years? How do we save America from falling into authoritarianism?
Empirical facts will not sway people whose ideologies are wrapped up in always being right, in always winning. As a society, and as individuals, we have to learn how to be wrong. To admit when we have failed, and do what we can to make whole those we have harmed through our failings.
Ironically, the scientific method, which they reject as a tool of elites, is the antidote to the supremacy of rightness. The scientific method celebrates failure. Failure is a tool of learning. Using the scientific method, we get closer and closer to rightness through repeated findings of wrongness, eliminating what is not true. And when we find something we think is true, we do everything we can to try to disprove it – because if we can, that means we can eliminate another way we were wrong, and move another step closer to rightness.
We cannot learn if we are afraid of being wrong. We cannot grow.
Failure is a requirement.
America has failed, in so many ways, but while we refuse to admit it, we will not be able to move forward.
Let’s go fail together.
Yours in Conformity,
Drake Starling
Director, Bureau of Conformity