The risk associated with hype over substance lurks like a shark in the talent pool, ready to eat up any paddling about in the shallow end. Some media have no trouble touching the bottom in the shallow end, knowing that going into deeper waters requires more journalistic effort than simply doggerel paddle.
Lorde, Little and their management are well aware of this I am sure and will be viewing the hype with a critical eye to their longer-term creative futures.
It is nice to be wrong about a book called Being Wrong which I thought could not be right. Written by Kathryn Schulz, it examines the human capacity for being wrong about so many things and why it is all right to be wrong sometimes.
This will come as a great relief to all of us who gets things wrong by being in the wrong place at the wrong time saying the wrong things to the wrong people.
She uses the term wrongology. It may be coincidence that this rhymes with apology as often they follow one another but the author suggests that our minds can do wonderful acrobatics to avoid actually admitting we got something wrong. The flips side is the human trait of being inordinately pleased with ourselves when we are proved right.
Her book suggests the strong urge to be right is one of the reasons we find it hard to admit our mistakes. Individually we hold our world together with a web of beliefs. These can be the mundane (a mattress will support me when I lie down) to big issues such as the human contribution to global warming.
Kathryn notes: "Whether conscious or unconsciously, regardless of whether they are right or wrong, beliefs determine how we feel and how we behave every day of our lives".
In philosophy this is called First Person Constraint on Doxatic Explanation. In her book she translates this as "Coz it's true" and demonstrates how our own beliefs, especially very strong ones, to sustain them must be held to be the right ones and that any other view must, by necessity, be wrong. This goes some way towards explaining why hypocrisy and prejudice are such difficult notions to challenge.
Like a house of cards, prejudice is precariously balanced on the thin edge of evidence. A slight nudge towards being wrong risks the whole edifice and so shoring it up with reinforced righteousness is often the response to any challenge.
The book emphasises that there is nothing wrong with being wrong - it is one of the things that makes us human - rather it is the way we respond and keep our minds open to difference that makes us humane.
Terry Sarten is a writer, musician and social worker. Feedback: tgs@inspire.net.nz
