Fallibility is Human and Necessary for Change

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There is not a single person who has avoided being wrong throughout his or her entire life, or maybe even day. But also, nobody, or at least very few, accept fallibility as tolerable. Throughout history, there have been people who refuse to be wrong, and it often has lead to despondency. Although everyone wants to be right, fallibility is a necessary step to avoiding harm and improving the world.
Nobody wants to be wrong. It is associated with “shame, stupidity, ignorance, indolence, psychopathology, and moral degeneracy” (Schulz). Also, as people, we revel in other’s wrongness as much as we do our own accuracy, which has created an environment in which being wrong is unnerving to the point of a possible, legitimate fear. But not only is our society giving us the fear of being wrong, life is. Our existence is dependent on making accurate conclusions (Schulz). If humans couldn’t make accurate conclusions, then death would be upon each person extremely prematurely; therefore, a fear of being wrong is completely legitimate, but it is also mildly vacuous. Everyone is wrong at some point. Augustine said, “fallor ergo sum” which means “I err therefore I am” (Schulz). Being wrong is not only apart of who we are, but it also makes us into who we are. Fallibility is human and makes each person whom he or she is. It can allow us to change our worldviews, learn, and look through a “window into normal human nature”. Of course though, a sense of omniscience is seemingly the natural state of the human mind, while the opposite is generally true. Being wrong is much like death in that it happens to all and very few can accept it (Schulz). So, can one simply learn a lot and know everything to avoid being wrong? Quite the opposite is true, as Ro...

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...olumbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. © 2012 The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia © 2012, Columbia
University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. Used with the permission of Columbia University Press. All Rights Reserved. Publisher:
The Columbia University Press. Place of publication: Not available.
Publication year: 2013.

Clinton, Bill. "'I Misled People.'" The White House. Washington D.C. 17 Aug.
1998. The History Place. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.
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Caesar, Julius. The Civil Wars. Trans. W. A. McDevitte and W. S. Bohn. N.p.:
n.p., n.d. The Internet Classics. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.
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Burton, Robert. On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not.
N.p.: St. Martin's Griffin, 2009. Print.

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