There is an old joke based on a common saying: If a man is talking in the forest and there are no woman around, is he still wrong. In this joke the sense of wrongness is being blamed on women. The implication is that women are critical of men, especially the man in their life, and woman are the blame for men feeling wrong all the time.
There is an Ogden Nash poem that sends out the same message:
To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up.
Ogden Nash
I feel wrong. I can say with confidence that I do not feel wrong because of my wife. I am absolutely, without reservation, sure that Kathie is not the reason for my wrong feelings, because I felt like the distillate of wrong most of my life. Probably, if there is ever a time when I feel right, that right feeling can be blamed on my wife. I do not feel wrong all the time, but if you were to measure the rightness in my life, to the wrongness in my life, it would look like a teaspoon of right compared to an ocean full of wrong. My wife has put up with me for almost 39 years, and that makes her a saint. I am not a fun person to be around, because my pores ooze wrongness. If you feel like you are mostly wrong most of the time then you will lack self-confidence. How can you be confident of anything if you are pretty damn sure that you will be wrong more often than not?
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde
I was drug up by black belt fundamentalists in THE TRUE CHURCH, and the dogma pounded into us there was so inflexible that it is like trying to fit your hand into latex gloves three sizes too small. You can try, but you’ll never fit in, and the more you try the more your faith will tear away from you.
One of the things that is wrong with religion is that it teaches us to be satisfied with answers which are not really answers at all.
Richard Dawkins
Now, in my memory, not only was that the dogma of my childhood, but my parents made it very clear to me that I was about the least perfect life form to ever inhabit the earth. I was called stupid so often that it felt like my middle name. I was stupid, a stupid idiot, a knot-head, a dummy. I was constantly corrected. Don’t eat like that, don’t talk when I’m talking, why can’t you do anything right?
Some blame wrong acts on the intrinsic badness of mankind.
Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.
James Madison
It is hard to argue with this notion, because so much bad seems to be going on, all the time. But maybe the notion of wrongness, and badness, and sinfulness, are just that: notions. I was raised to assume that there was good and bad, right and wrong, the saved and sinners. It was not just that I was taught this, but I had absolutely no doubt that I would never be RIGHT ENOUGH to be saved. There was never any question that right existed, but it was absolutely certain that wrong not only existed but it was widely spread over the entire earth.
Well, I’m not 5 years old anymore, but there is a 5 year old hiding inside of me. I have grown up a little. I don’t suffer like I did as a kid. I don’t feel wrong all the time, anymore. Before I felt wrong all the time. Now I only feel wrong most of the time. That’s improvement. In some ways my feelings are like me watching a movie. Part of me is sitting near the back of the theatre, eating popcorn and watching me battle with my feelings, sparring with my negative core beliefs. Sometimes, just before I step into a room where I am going to be pummeled by self-hatred and self-doubt, that other part of me is yelling, “Don’t open that door!”
If you share my tendency to always assume I am wrong then the following may describe you to you:
"I’m not good enough" means that I feel success is just not possible for me.
If you think, "I’m not lovable" then you are feeling, I am not cared enough about to be hated or loved.
If you think, I am unwanted then it means I belong nowhere, I will feel out of place, and in the way forever.
If you believe in your mind "I am defective" then you're saying, it is hopeless for me to even try to improve because I’m made of broken stuff.
If you think, "I am powerless," that means I have no control over my life.
And if you ever think, "I’m ignorant! I am stupid," that is like saying, why try to improve? I’m unteachable, and un-learnable.
Core beliefs are always stated in “I” statements such as the phrase, “I am stupid.” A statement like “Nobody believes I could ever be a lawyer,” is called a supporting belief. The supporting belief is always a prediction. One follows the other. Because THIS is true, that means that THIS OTHER GOAL will be out of your reach forever.
Core beliefs are always stated in “I” statements such as the phrase, “I am stupid.” A statement like “Nobody believes I could ever be a lawyer,” is called a supporting belief. The supporting belief is always a prediction. One follows the other. Because THIS is true, that means that THIS OTHER GOAL will be out of your reach forever.
It may not feel like a lie, but let’s just agree for the moment that these core beliefs are untrue. It is possible that other people really do think you are too dumb to be THIS and too UNATTRACTIVE to have a romantic interest, or too weak to make a move or to change. Other folks may view you as a weak-minded, undisciplined, defective loser, because you have made it your job to convince the world that your core beliefs are true. The untrue core belief is what helps other people to label and dismiss you. In other words, these fibbing core beliefs become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
I believe that I trigger my core beliefs when circumstances remind my child mind of times when those entrusted with my care, those charged with the responsibility of nurturing me, instead crushed me like a swollen seed; they smashed me before I had a chance to germinate.
What if Wrong is not Wrong? What if Wrong does not exist? What we call wrong is actually just a choice. Usually when someone does something you think is wrong, you are actually saying, “That choice is not likely to be good for me.”
I remember my Uncle Charles at a gathering of men from THE TRUE CHURCH. These were farmers and ranchers that were suffering from a long Texas drought. Someone lead a group prayer asking God for rain. Uncle Charles objected. He pointed out that while rain would be very helpful to farmers and the pasture land, it would be very bad for a company in town that dried and processed cow manure for shipment to garden centers. The rain would help one group and hurt another. Rain would be right to one group and wrong to another.
I watch the Discovery Channel and sometimes I see something like a polar bear trying to kill and eat a seal. If the bear succeeds the seal dies. If the seal escapes the bear and/or her cubs may starve to death. Which outcome is the wrong outcome? Neither outcome is the wrong outcome. Neither outcome is the right outcome. Either outcome is just an outcome, it is just what happened.
Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
Alan Watts
Have you read Mark Twain’s War Prayer?
How unloving it is to pray for victory at war.
It might be war, and it might be a football game, but in any conflict there is going to be a winner, and many of us believe God will be on our side, because why? Will God be on our side because we just want what we want. We think we’ll get a little magical assistance if we pray. If an outcome doesn’t go my way I may feel it is wrong, because the only right way is the way that helps me.
It might be war, and it might be a football game, but in any conflict there is going to be a winner, and many of us believe God will be on our side, because why? Will God be on our side because we just want what we want. We think we’ll get a little magical assistance if we pray. If an outcome doesn’t go my way I may feel it is wrong, because the only right way is the way that helps me.
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