And not just slightly wrong, but persistently obstinately pigheadedly wrong.
There's no need to be wrong these days, all the facts are there. All you need to do is look.
Experts have spent years establishing the truth, often many lifetimes, so we ought to trust their conclusions rather than jump to ridiculous incorrect conclusions. A simple search for facts is all it takes to skewer these falsehoods, but people blunder on convinced their version is correct whereas in fact it's fundamentally wrong.
It's not clear where all this wrongness comes from. Nobody's born with wrong opinions but many accrue them later in life. Could be nature, could be nurture, probably the latter.
There are teachers trying to undo the wrongness parents have wrought. There are parents trying to undo the wrongness teachers have wrought. A lot of the wrongness comes from friends and social situations where pressure moulds us, and a lot comes from never having been taught right or wrong in the first place.
There's factual wrong and then there's moral wrong. Factual wrong ought to be easier to counter but not everyone has all the information, perhaps through ignorance, perhaps through not looking hard enough, perhaps because it's been modified or hidden. Those guilty of factual wrong thus often blunder in and make things worse, sometimes appallingly so, and those who pushed the untruths often cheer unseen from the sidelines, job done.
Moral wrong is harder to define. People think they know what's morally right but there are shades and nuances, even in the case of absolute moral judgements the vast majority would take as fixed. Here the waters muddy but this isn't always recognised, thus people go round stating so-called unalienable truths which to other eyes are patently wrong.
So much in our society is tarnished by being seen to be wrong when perhaps it isn't. People with a rigid worldview bang on about their truths to the exclusion of other opinions. If they're particularly good at this they shift the argument away from truth to the detriment of all. They of course think the rest of us are the wrong'uns, despite the wrong'uns being them.
Politics is all about shades of wrong, a spectrum of beliefs where all of us eventually come to rest. Nothing in politics is undeniably wrong, it all depends where you stand, but that doesn't stop millions of people describing millions of other people as wrong and firmly believing they're right.
One particularly devious political tactic is claiming to know what everyone else is thinking. "What people really want is...," they'll argue, before outlining something only certain people want. The inference is always that if you're not thinking this you're wrong, and they get away with it because it resonates so strongly with those who think it's right.
We can all point at a moment where society took a wrong turn but we can't all agree when and what that was. One citizen's wail of despair is another citizen's liberation, and vice versa, has been since the dawn of time.
Some people descend into becoming beacons of wrongness. They once held it all together, indeed were convincingly personable, then found their hobbyhorse and rode it relentlessly without a care for how wrong it is. Please stop, the rest of us cry, please stop with your relentless stream of wrongness... or are suckered in and join the wrong crowd on the wrong side of the argument.
And too many people are inordinately obsessed by other people being wrong. Look at what this person is saying, they say, look how wrong it is. Look at this too, also wrong, indeed shockingly incorrect, as is this, and this, and this, and this. They appear to spend all their time being appalled by the wrongness of others, and thus amplify that wrongness so they can't unsee it and alas neither can we.
These people were more interesting before they became obsessed by others' wrongness. They'd tell you about themselves, things they did, what they liked, but now they only point out flaws in others and how wrong they are. You can perhaps deduce what they believe because it's the opposite of what they're frothing about, but in attempting to counter negativity they end up mainlining negativity themselves.
We shouldn't fixate relentlessly on wrongness. So many things in life are wrong that it threatens to overwhelm, to tarnish the day and drag us down. There's nothing we can do about the biggest wrongs either, the scale of the injustice being so great that one angry little message from an insignificant soul will change absolutely nothing.
But equally we really should fixate on wrongness. Someone needs to make a stand, someone needs to counter the arguments else the grim tide will roll in and all will be lost. We can be one voice among many, a wave that sweeps back and changes the world for the better (or at least better serves our own worldview, be that fundamentally wrong or right).
Sometimes what's wrong changes. Many years ago it was right to think and act a certain way, then things moved on and a different viewpoint took hold. Our moral compass never shifted but society's did, and unless we adapt we can find ourselves on the wrong side of the argument... or railing that it should never have changed.
It's human nature to assume that others are wrong and we are right. It's particularly easy to do this if we surround ourselves with like-minded souls and like-minded opinions, an echo chamber that magnifies our assumptions and reinforces our beliefs. That's great if we are indeed correct by verifiable means, and somewhat dangerous in any other circumstance.
Other people are all too often wrong, that's just how it is. Their wrongness causes ripples, creates friction and makes our lives worse. But it's worth remembering that sometimes we just haven't looked hard enough, or thought hard enough, and the viewpoint that's wrong is our own.
Life'd be better if we stopped and thought before applying the label of wrongness to others, remembering wrongness can be a sliding scale, a directional vector, a subjective opinion, and sometimes we're at fault.
But sometimes no, other people really are wrong and we must call them out and attempt to put things right, because the very nature of our society depends on it.
