Dear Luv Doc,
I love my boyfriend and we get along most of the time, but every now and again we get into an argument about something or other and he will never admit he is wrong. Never. Not even a little bit. He will argue all night long and blame everyone and everything but himself – including me – but he will never simply admit that he is wrong. The result of every argument we have is that if I want it to end I have to say I am sorry and I have to be the one to change. Never him. And now he says he wants to put off planning our wedding until we can “work some things out.” By “we” he means me, but he hasn’t said what he wants “us” to work out. I feel like I am fighting a losing battle. Should I surrender?
– White Flag
As much as I desperately want to tell you how wrong you are, I can’t. I know there exists some minuscule statistical probability that you are always wrong – which would in turn make me wrong, but not even The Donald is wrong 100% of the time, and he’s actually trying. After all, politically incorrect is still incorrect. I myself am wrong a sobering amount of the time, mainly because I think it’s a fun challenge to actually try to remember shit with my mind rather than a Google search algorithm. It should come as no surprise that’s a doomed operation from the get-go, but it keeps things interesting.
Nobody likes somebody who is right all the time – even if they are actually right all the time. At the very least, it’s annoying. In a larger philosophical sense, it might well be what leads to the final showdown between humans and robots. Make no mistake, the robots are coming. In fact, they’re already here. All over the world, every day, house pets fight pitched battles against soulless Roombas that have no concept of territorial sovereignty. Today, it’s a shih tzu named Waffles heroically guarding his chew toy. Tomorrow, it’s Sarah Connor with an M4 saving her toddler Johnny from that guy who looks like he just spilled out of a thermometer. Either way, the shit will be going down. It’s inevitable.
Question is, whose side are you going to be on? Psalm 37:29 of the Bible says, “the righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein forever.” Spooky shit, eh? Especially if “the righteous” are a bunch of mercurial robots hellbent on wiping the scourge of inherently flawed humanity from the face of the land.
I’m not saying your boyfriend is a robot. I think we can both agree that I would at least have to cut through his epidermis to make the call on that. He may, however, be something much worse. He could either be a) one of those people who truly believe they’re always right, or b) one of those people who believe that to admit they’re wrong is a sign of weakness. Now, as I stated earlier, I am wrong about half the time, but in this I am absolutely right: Both of those types of people are fucking psychopaths – way worse than robots. Get out now. Save yourself and your future John Connor.
This article appears in September 16 • 2016.
