Him: “You always have to be right!”
Me: “Thanks for noticing. I wish we both suffered from that virtue.”
Often, people will say “You always have to be right!” as a way to dodge whatever argument you are making, and change the subject to some supposed moral flaw of yours. When used this way, the saying probably really means something more like, “You can’t stand to lose an argument (and this is a flaw of yours)”. But this runs into the same problem of suggesting that a person ought to be OK with losing arguments.
I think that these kinds of sayings, though, demonstrate a lack of understanding of how some people operated. Some of us don’t want to believe anything that’s false. So, naturally, we want to be right about what we believe and say and do. And when we argue, we want to be right about that, too. It’s a way of life. But others don’t share that same conviction, and they see it as a moral flaw.
Even so, they will sometimes step up to oppose something you have said or written or done, claiming that it is untrue or illogical or immoral in some way—as if such things matter—but in that opposition, they prove to be cavalier about saying things that are demonstrably false, and they neglect to admit to these errors when they are demonstrated by others. And it’s in this sense that the meme spins the initial charge, turning the tables back on the challenger, who demonstrates that he does not “have to be right”, but is quite willing to be wrong.
I think this is one of the most common manifestations of hypocrisy. Billions of people do this, likely, and yet do not think it is morally wrong—until it is done to them. It is gaslighting, of the sort that narcissists do. It is pretending that something’s wrong with you in some regard, when nothing’s wrong with you in that regard. It’s a dodge. It’s an attempt to change the subject—to manipulate the conversation in another direction. And this is done by a lot of people with many great qualities, who have lots and lots to love about their character and their lives! It is an ugly corruption, and is very harmful to those they gaslight in this way. But they’re not seeing themselves clearly, having shut their eyes to such things.
