Short Thoughts

Quoting Russ Roberts in conversation with Lowry Pressly discussing his book The Right to Oblivion: Privacy and the Good Life

I think he’s saying one other thing, or at least I learned one other thing from it. Which is that—and this is something you learn from marriage or a close friendship—you feel an injustice, or you’re accused of an injustice, and you play back the tape in your mind and you realize, ‘Nope, I was right.’ I did the right thing, and my friend or my wife is misremembering this, and let’s bring it out in the light. Let’s play the tape. Let’s get the video. Let’s get the CCTV—the closed circuit television—of that conversation we had three weeks ago at breakfast. And I’m going to show her—she’s going to show me—how it really was.

And, that’s not available, that tape. And, your mind has—it’s an illusion to think you can bring that into the light and settle it. And, it’s one of the deepest things I think you learn from marriage, is that your self-righteousness is usually—it’s either wrong, it’s a fake memory. We don’t have the tape. And, it’s much better to just say, ‘Maybe I was wrong and I’m going to learn from it.’

But, the idea that you could just get that big flashlight and illuminate that dark corner from childhood, from two years ago, from last week, it’s just an illusion. And it’s a dangerous, unhelpful illusion for interacting with other human beings who have the same challenges you do.