The joy of admitting you are wrong

One dull weekend in the late 1990s, I got into a slightly heated argument with some dude I hardly know over an actor who appeared in The Fast Show, the wonderful British sketch comedy programme. I was certain that an actor in that was also in a recent movie, and that other somebody was certain it was someone different.

Until that point in time, it would have been hard to convince me I was wrong - and I was very, very drunk at the time, so I was totally steadfast - but we also had the internet by then, and we looked it up, and I was 100 percent wrong about it.

What I could not convince anybody else was that I was fine with being proven wrong, because I have often been wrong about things, and there is no real growth or development in a person's life if they can't admit that.

It was hard to convince them that I was okay with being wrong, because it's human nature to be upset about it, to feel a little foolish or chastened. 

Which, of course, is an attitude that is responsible for a lot of shit in the world these days. World leaders who can't admit they might have fucked up, and double down on their catastrophes, because the very idea that they could learn from their mistakes - and maybe even avoid them in the future - is completely unthinkable.

I'm wrong about all sorts of things, and I change my opinion all the time. I look back at things I wrote on this blog a couple of years ago and think that I sound like a total dipshit, as my tastes and opinions change, and I reassess things and come to a different conclusion.

I don't regret all the Radiohead hate I hurled at my mates after they fell for the first album - Thom was a whiny git and Creep just tried too hard, I insisted - but turned all the way around when OK Computer came along with the sound of the future. I was happy to admit I was wrong, and change with the times, and I could live with the constant reminders I got about my earlier hatred.

Usually it's the other way around, and I dislike stuff that I once thought was the bee's knees, and there are just too many examples of that to go around, because the movies and comics I once loved can now look clumsy and dumb.

I change my mind all the time and I'm not going to deny what I once felt. Human beings are complex creatures and contain multitudes, and can have different opinions from day to day, let alone over years.

And world leaders, or the odd in-law who doesn't like to be called out on their racist attitudes of old, who just can't admit that they were wrong, are really missing out on something. I am glad to be proven wrong about something, because I learn from it. I never got anything wrong about The Fast Show ever again, at least.