Sometimes It Is Better To Have Peace Than To Be Right

Years ago I read the following sentence: “Be selective in your battles; sometimes it is better to have peace than to be right ”. It did not leave me indifferent. It seemed wiser and deeper than it seemed.

Although the war metaphor takes away some meaning, it would be interesting to stop and analyze why sometimes it is better to have peace than to be right. What does this curious phrase mean? What is the relationship between peace and reason? Let’s get started.

Pride: the absent protagonist of this phrase

Without direct allusion to him, pride is the key not only to the phrase itself, but to the need to attend to it. Is pride a virtue or a defect? It would be reductionist to define it as one or the other.

Perhaps the origin of the word can give us clues. It seems that it comes from Catalan and this in turn from French and its meaning refers to a tendency to pride. It therefore seems that pride has negative connotations or, at least, socially undesirable. However, in the definition that the RAE gives us of this word we find that its first meaning does not refer to pride, but to self-recognition, although the second meaning does refer to aspects such as vanity or the feeling of superiority.

It would be interesting to ask ourselves what pride is for or what function it has. The curious thing about this word is that the meanings mentioned that the RAE shows us are part of the same social and psychological process, taking different meanings depending on the context in which they occur.

Pride taken as a sign of love and respect for ourselves protects us from social threats, such as persuasion or humiliation. The problem can appear when pride goes beyond its mere protective function and begins to harm us more than to benefit us… here is the reason for its prominence in the sentence at hand.

Debate and disagree with a purpose

Sometimes we get so caught up in a debate that we forget (or perhaps confuse) why we are engaging in it. Without dwelling on relativisms, universal truths and various pretexts, the exchange of views as an enriching exercise and a practice to cultivate knowledge does not seem to be living at its best. When winning over the other serves as the main motivation to argue and counter-argue, the real loser is learning.

The reason … or rather, “to be right”, that seems to be the sign of victory in any intersection of ideas exposed in our daily lives. Reading debates on social networks, one comes to find phrases such as “I will agree with you when you show me that …”. That’s when it becomes clear that, many times, we do not debate to learn, but to win. If to this we add a context of social dialogue in which a phenomenon called post-truth predominates, the possibilities of disagreeing from enrichment are further reduced.

Is your peace or your “victory” more important?

Put in context, the answer seems easy, but in practice, when sensitive issues are touched, when pride is very present, when we do not communicate with temperance and reflection, that is when we distort the sense of exposing our arguments and listening openly to them. strangers.

There are no tips to internalize the idea that, sometimes, having peace is more important than being “right.” The only thing that would be interesting to know if it is worth investing time and cognitive resources is trying to analyze what real intention we have when starting a debate, a discussion or a disagreement. And if this is a healthy intention, enrichment and learning, it is also interesting to know what intention the other person has.

When two people express their differences by presenting their arguments and open their minds to listen and understand those of the other person, it is likely that both will end their dialogue having learned something. However, if this motivation does not occur in one of the two parts (or in neither), not only will it be difficult to learn, but stress and tension will prevail.

Being selective is a quality that can save us suffering. In this case, the virtue of choosing how and with whom we disagree can protect something as valuable as our inner peace.