Human
Error And What It Can Teach Us
by
Rev. Paul J. Bern
It
has been my observation that people take a great deal of pride and
personal satisfaction, not to mention their professional identity, in
their educations and professional training. The existence of the
Internet constantly reminds us that knowledge is power, but more
importantly that knowledge is instantly available. Some
self-righteous – even belligerent – individuals take this fact to
its outer extreme by going through life with the attitude that
unlimited Web access equals unlimited personal power and knowledge.
This philosophy of no limitations is the seed from which human
failure sprouts, having failed to recognize that human intelligence
has its limits despite a wealth of available knowledge. King Solomon
wrote in the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament, “The
Lord catches the wise in their craftiness”, and
the prophet Isaiah wrote, “The
intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate”, and,
“God had chosen
the foolish things of the world, and the simple, to confound the
wise”.
So much for human intelligence.
The
fact of the matter is that we do not learn anywhere near as much from
formal education as we do from our own mistakes. For example, I will
use the household cleaner known commercially as “Formula 409”.
How did the inventor come up with this name? He had to make 408
different formulas that didn't work in order to come up with one that
did. That means he/she had to make 408 mistakes in order to come up
with the winning formula that we know today. Life experiences work
exactly the same way. We learn and adapt from our experiences as we
go along in life because that is how the human brain is wired. Our
brains learn from constant modification based on our surroundings,
our environment and the sum of our experiences. On the other hand,
being right can also have its benefits. As pleasures go, it
is, after all, a second-order one at best. Unlike many of life's
other delights – chocolate, the great outdoors, movies, books –
it doesn't enjoy any mainline access to our biochemistry: to our
appetites, our adrenal glands, our sex drive, our emotions. And yet,
the thrill of being right is undeniable, universal, and (perhaps most
oddly) almost entirely undiscriminating. Nor does subject matter; we
can be just as pleased about correctly identifying the model year of
a vintage Corvette, or correctly identifying the sexual orientation
of our co-worker. Stranger still, we're perfectly capable of deriving
satisfaction from being right about disagreeable things: the downturn
in the stock market, say, or the demise of a friend's relationship.
Like
most delectable experiences, rightness isn't ours to enjoy all the
time. As the apostle John wrote, “If we claim to be without sin,
we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our
sins He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify
us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make
Him out to be a liar, and his Word has no place in our lives.”
(1st John chapter 1, verses 8-10, NIV) Clearly, humankind
is prone to error because we're made that way. The time-worn phrase,
“Nobody's perfect”, continues to be a gross understatement, and
it always will. I think the biggest reason we enjoy being right is
because it happens so relatively infrequently. Because when we're
not, we're the one who loses the bet. And sometimes, too, we suffer
grave doubts about the correct answer or course of action – an
anxiety that, itself, reflects our desire to be right.
On
the whole, though, and notwithstanding these lapses and qualms, our
indiscriminate enjoyment of being right is matched by an almost
equally indiscriminate and sometimes irrational feeling that we are
right. At times, this feeling spills into the foreground, such as
when we argue, evangelize, or make predictions. Often, though, it is
just psychological backdrop. Most of us go through life assuming that
we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically
everything: about our political and intellectual convictions, our
religious and moral beliefs, our assessment of other people, our
memories, our grasp of facts. As absurd as it sounds when we stop to
think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously
assuming that we are very close to infallible. Most of us navigate
day-to-day life fairly well, after all, which suggests that we are
routinely right about a great many things. And sometimes we are not
just routinely right but spectacularly right: right about the orbit
of the planets (mathematically derived long before the technology
existed to track them); right about the healing properties of aspirin
(known since at least 3000 BC); right to track down that woman who
smiled at you in the cafe (now your wife of 20 years). Taken
together, these moments of rightness represent both the high-water
marks of human endeavor and the source of countless small joys. They
affirm our sense of being smart, competent, trustworthy, and in tune
with our environment. More important, they keep us alive.
Individually
and collectively, our very existence depends on our ability to reach
accurate conclusions about the world around us. In short, the
experience of being right is imperative for our survival, gratifying
for our ego, and, overall, one of life's cheapest and keenest
satisfactions. Yet even that can be an illusion (or a delusion, take
your pick) as the apostle James, the half-brother of Jesus, wrote:
“The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his
high position. But one who is rich should take pride in his low
position, because he will pass away like a wild flower. For the sun
rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls
and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich man will fade
away even while he goes about his business.” (James chapter 1,
verses 9-11, NIV) But the ministry of Christ was aimed towards those
who were willing to acknowledge their imperfections, just as Jesus
said: “I have not called the righteous, but sinners to
repentance”. As a minister myself, I am glad when I'm right,
but more interested in how we as a culture think about error, what
the Word of God says about it, and how we as individuals cope when
our convictions collapse out from under us. If we relish being right
and regard it as our natural state, then our feelings about being
wrong are the exact opposite. For one thing, we tend to view it as
rare and bizarre – an inexplicable aberration in the normal order
of things. For another, it leaves us feeling idiotic and ashamed.
Like the term paper returned to us covered in red ink, being wrong
makes us cringe and slouch down in our seats; it makes our heart sink
and our resentment rise. At best we regard it as a nuisance, at worst
a nightmare, but in either case – and quite unlike the gleeful
little rush of being right – we experience our errors as deflating
and embarrassing. And it gets worse. In our collective imagination,
error is associated not just with shame and stupidity but also with
ignorance, lazyness, psychopathology, and moral degeneracy. It is the
common view of oneself that our errors are evidence of our gravest
social, intellectual, and moral failings.
Of
all the things we are wrong about, this view of human error might
well top the list. It is our mega-mistake: We are wrong about what it
means to be wrong. Far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority,
the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition. Far from being a
moral flaw, it is inextricable from some of our most humane and
honorable qualities: empathy, optimism, imagination, conviction and
courage. And far from being a mark of indifference or intolerance,
wrongness is a vital part of how we learn and change. Thanks to
error, we can revise our understanding of ourselves and amend our
ideas about the world. For those who refuse to acknowledge their
errors, King Solomon wrote about people like them in the Book of
Proverbs, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the
end it leads to death”. (Proverbs 14: 12) People who insist on
going their own way end up getting consumed by it. The lucky
survivors wind up in jails, mental hospitals, rehab, or any
combination thereof. Given this centrality to both our intellectual
and emotional development, error shouldn't be an embarrassment, and
cannot be an aberration. On the contrary, as Benjamin Franklin once
observed, "the history of the errors of mankind, all things
considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their
discoveries." I believe the healthiest and most productive
attitude we can have about sin and error is that however
disorienting, difficult or humbling our mistakes might be, it is
ultimately wrongness, not rightness, that can teach us who we are.
And in the end, it is that recognition of our own sinful,
mistake-prone nature that ultimately leads us to the sole solution –
Jesus Christ. Ask Him into your hearts today. Jesus came that we
might have life, and have it to the full. Go ahead, just do it.
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