Is it better to be right or happy?

Oldest Boy’s school diary has some suggestions for a successful year. Some are uncontroversial, like smiling at people and getting to school on time. But one of the suggestions got me thinking.

It is more important to be happy than right.

Is that so?

Most of the time, there’s no conflict. I feel happy when I’m found to be right, don’t you? And believing wrong things tends to lead to unhappiness. Sure, people can be happy with false beliefs for their entire lives. But I’d guess that knowing what’s right would be more conducive to happiness. Your world-view will match reality a bit better, and there’s less cognitive dissonance.

On the other hand, lately I’m equally happy being shown where I’m wrong. Then I don’t have to believe those wrong things anymore! And when you ‘have to be right’, then ego gets into it, you start defending territory instead of conducting honest inquiry, and you’re very unlikely to find out anything new. No thanks. Show me where I’m factually wrong, and I’ll thank you.

Maybe “being right” means two separate things:

1) Being ‘proven right’ in a discussion. This I don’t care much about, though it’s nice. I’d rather be the kind of person who cares what is right, rather than who is right. If this is the definition, maybe Oldest Boy’s book has a point. Let’s leave this aside.

2) Knowing what’s really going on, as close as we can get.

This second sense of ‘being right’ is, I’d say, more important than being happy. Like I say, usually there’s no conflict. But if there were, I’d want to know what’s true and be miserable.

Lots of people in the USA believed wrong things — that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, that invading Iraq was a good idea, that Bush was a good president who deserved a second term. They’re pretty happy in their safe houses. They still send emails round to each other about freedom and so on. But they were wrong. And with their false beliefs, they have happily created hell on earth for a lot of people. That kind of happiness looks self-serving and empty to me.

I was pretty happy in my religion of origin. I believed some ideas that are demonstrably false. I could have done so happily (mostly) for the rest of my life, believing that I would live again with my family after I died. But then I would have spent my life in the service of a story, with someone else getting all that tithing money, and no eternity at the end of it. I’ve given up on those stories now, and that was painful. It kind of sucks thinking I’m just going to die someday. But if that’s true, I’d rather know it, and live my life by sound principles.

Is self-deception happiness? Is ignorance bliss? Reality, though tinged with sadness, is all the happiness I need.