Righteousness

March 9, 2023

Dear Leland and Everett,

Today I want to talk briefly about righteousness. Briefly because I don’t think the topic requires extensive deliberation. But still worth a letter because of its significance and potential impact on your lives.

Righteousness is the enemy of truth. Righteousness and truth are not opposites, but when righteousness and truth overlap it’s coincidental, not causal. When we get righteous, however, we are utterly convinced we are right and that others are wrong. Our brains trick us into believing that we are in possession of truth when in fact we are at the whims of our emotions.

How do you know when your are being righteousness? Some things to look for: when your mind races for evidence that you are right and that someone else is wrong. Or when your mind races to collect evidence proving someone else is evil, and has wronged you terribly.

My coach likes to talk about the ‘drama triangle’, wherein participants oscillate between one of three roles. The ‘victim’ spends time convincing oneself that they are innocent of all wrongdoing, and purely the victim of circumstance. The ‘villain’ creates the story that someone else is the perpetrating evil and harming us. The ‘hero’ says thing like “I guess I’m just going to have to do it all myself”. When we are righteous, we tend to ping between roles on the drama triangle.

Perhaps most important, when we are righteous we leave no space for curiosity; if you are so convinced that you are exactly right that you are unwilling to entertain other possibilities, you are probably stuck in righteousness.

Leland, because of your rational bent, your form of righteousness mostly comes in the form of scanning for facts that support your argument (or at least your innocence in a confrontation). Put differently, I anticipate you will most often play the role of ‘victim’ when righteous.

Everett, because you are more relationship driven, your form of righteousness comes in the form of feeling betrayed. When outraged, you make statements like “x is a bad person!” or “x tried to kill me!” or “x did [whatever bad thing] on purpose“; these are, I think, ways of expressing the depth of betrayal in your search for justice. I expect you to most commonly fall into the ‘villain’ role when righteous.

Personally (and this is a very recent practice) I’ve found it immensely helpful to identify when I’m in a state of righteousness. Awareness by itself helps me to shift to a state of more controlled consciousness. I take deep breaths and let my nervous system calm down. From there, I am able to explore with more curiosity. When we are righteous it typically means we are gripped by fear or sadness; from a state of curiosity we are able to more honestly assess the sources that have overwhelmed our minds. Almost invariably, I’ve found that righteousness stems either from assumptions I’ve made (e.g. the reason someone else’s actions were outrageous are because it will lead to x, y, and z terrible things), and/or because of past experiences I bring to the situation (e.g. being in a situation where I’m reminded of being scolded by my parents, and so revert to the role of a child who protests his innocence). Identifying the real causes of my distress helps me to have more honest conversations with the counterparty involved, and sometimes even gives me awareness of emotional healing that I need to do independently (via therapy, coaching, or meditation).

Finally, beware interaction with others stuck in a state of righteousness. They, like you, are overcome with emotion. We are wired to assume that others’ anger is justified, but what I’ve found is that the relationship between others’ anger and truth is at best tenuous. Rarely is the topic at hand really what matters, and rarely will capitulating truly solve the problem, at least when dealing with people you truly care about or interact with regularly. Often others’ anger is connected to some genuine learning, and when you can let (or help) them calm down and enter a place of awareness, you can have a meaningful conversation about how to make things better. Sometimes, however, you’ve just stumbled onto someone else’s emotional scar tissue, and there is only so much you can do to help, at least without their willingness and participation.

The world as of this writing is enveloped in righteousness; we take turns triggering and being triggered by others, unconsciously broadcasting our emotional scars to each other daily. I’m hopeful that your generation learns more emotional awareness and can deescalate from righteousness. At the very least, I’m hopeful that I can arm the two of you to inoculate yourselves, and look to join communities where righteousness isn’t enabled. Even at our best, we need others to help us identify when we’ve gone astray.

I love you,

Dad