‘Maybe you’re wrong’

Believe it or not, you can find a fair amount of wisdom on the wall of a coffeeshop.

The phrases that sometimes adorn these spaces — such as cultivating an “attitude of gratitude” or the need to “live in the moment” — may be cliché, but a large amount of insight often lies behind these pop expressions.

I found my favorite coffeehouse proverb on the wall just above the bathroom door at St. Paul’s-own Kopplin’s Coffee, located near the corner of Marshall and Cleveland. There, written in a yellow, all-caps font on the pea-soup green background, were three simple words: “MAYBE YOU’RE WRONG.”

The gentle suggestion has quite a pedigree. It was Socrates who noted that wisdom can only begin by acknowledging one’s own ignorance. To admit that we might be wrong, or might not have the full picture, is to be willing to part with convenient illusions for the sake of acquiring truth, a task made difficult precisely because of our tendency to prefer our own version of the facts.

In the Gospel, Jesus tends to make this point by correcting the false preconceptions about God and righteousness that those around him cling to, like when the Lord rebukes Peter for rejecting the revelation that he must go to Jerusalem, where his life will be taken. Peter is “thinking not as God does, but as human beings do,” preferring his own vision of how the Messiah will save his people to the sobering truth that Jesus — whom Peter has just proclaimed as the Lord! — plainly shares.

Revelation and the wisdom tradition call for an openness to the fact that we don’t contain all the answers to life’s questions within ourselves, but must receive them from reality with fidelity and docility. This is an attitude of intellectual humility, a commitment to, in the words of Father Luigi Giussani — founder of the international Catholic movement Communion and Liberation — loving the truth more than our own preferred version of it. “Maybe you’re wrong” can serve as a gentle call to self-examination, and to stay the course of humbly seeking the truth.

Part of the reason I love Kopplin’s suggestion of intellectual humility is because this virtue seems to be in shockingly short supply today. In real-life conversations but especially on social media, I am continuously blown away by how thoroughly and irretractably convinced people are of their opinions, their version of the facts and their conclusions — often on topics or questions that they have no real knowledge of and no capacity to actually verify!

Perhaps most alarming are instances when someone is confronted with facts that contradict their conclusion, and instead of acknowledging their mistake, they double down, or simply move on to the next topic where they can assert themselves as right. No one is even open to entertaining the possibility that they might be wrong.

This is a phenomenon that seems thoroughly non-partisan — it’s not restricted to one political party or demographic, and it’s capable of characterizing perspectives on any issue, from public health policies and restrictions to questions of Church theology and praxis, regardless of whether that perspective is objectively right or wrong.

What’s going on here? Instead of intellectual humility, what passes for discourse today is dominated by intellectual pride. Instead of “going where the truth leads,” the intellect has been hijacked by the ego, which reduces the truth to mere “information” — raw material it uses as fuel to reach a conclusion that’s been predetermined. There is no willingness to conform to the truth; rather, the truth must conform to our ideological commitments.

This isn’t to say that we can’t come to know the truth regarding political, social or ecclesial matters. We can and we ought to. In fact, to refuse to make judgments when the facts are all there and our intellect is moved toward the truth is not a form of humility, but intellectual despair. My emphasis, therefore, is that we must reach conclusions by remaining faithful to the facts as they present themselves, and with a healthy degree of detachment, aware of both our intellectual shortcomings and limitations as well as our capacity for egotism and self-deception. Our attachment must be to the truth, not to any particular political party or ideology, which so often serve as modern day idols.

Intellectual humility also doesn’t imply a kind of agnosticism to life’s most fundamental questions. Why not? The receptivity at the heart of intellectual humility makes clear the need for a transcendent and ultimate explanation — of reality, yes, but also of ourselves, our desires and the meaning of our lives. We are incapable of providing this explanation ourselves, yet yearning for it is perhaps the most defining element of being human. Openness to this question being answered — and accepting the answer when it comes to us, as Christ has — is foundational to intellectual humility.

In fact, our conviction that Jesus is the ultimate explanation for everything is what allows us to practice intellectual humility in other areas of life. Knowing that an all-loving God created, redeemed and sustains us allows us to accept our limitations and our need to receive from reality, instead of falling into the traps of egotism and intellectual pride, which are truly the products of insecurity and existential fear.

The theologian Bernard Lonergan once said that “perfect objectivity is the fruit of perfect subjectivity.” By this, he meant that we can only see the world rightly when we tear down our idols of ideology and conform our hearts to the truth — the truth of God’s providence and our need for intellectual humility. Prayerfully sitting with the suggestion that “maybe you’re wrong” — and discerning how we react to it and where those reactions come from — can be a fruitful start to this kind of conversion.

Liedl writes from the Twin Cities.