And there is another philosopher, much older, who seems to agree with me, or rather we will say that it is I who agree with him, it is Marcus Aurelius, a very famous philosopher whom I have spoken about dozens of times. Roman philosopher, he was Roman emperor, he is considered to be one of the greatest Stoic philosophers.
he said the following thing. Now, I'm going to paraphrase because I don't have the exact quote, I didn't take the book, but in his book Thoughts for Myself , which is a kind of diary, he wrote a diary for himself and he wrote down his thoughts to be better, it was an exercise in personal reflection. And one of his reflections, one of his meditations, was: "If someone shows me that my reasoning is wrong, I will gladly change it because I am seeking the truth. I will be grateful to my interlocutor for opening my eyes."
So, I'll say that again, I wrote it down on a little piece of paper. Again, this is not an excerpt from the book, it's just a paraphrase, I'm the one who reformulated what he says in one of his australia whatsapp number data meditations. He basically says: "If someone shows me that my reasoning is wrong, that I'm wrong, I will gladly change it because I'm looking for the truth. I will be grateful to my interlocutor for opening my eyes."
So what is Marcus Aurelius telling us here? He's simply telling us that when he's talking to someone and... I hope you can hear me with this wind. There's a lot of wind like we had in the last episode, a lot of wind, but it doesn't matter. What Marcus Aurelius is saying is that if someone shows him that he's wrong, well he has no problem admitting it, admitting that he's wrong, because he's not looking to be right, he's looking for the truth. It's the truth that's useful, not being right. He even says that he'll be grateful to his interlocutor for opening his eyes.
I find this message already very logical, very rational and it is difficult not to agree with it, but at the same time it is counter-intuitive this message, because in general we do not have the humility to recognize that. Our ego pushes us to want to be right. We want to be right, we do not want to be wrong and admit it, when in the end we do not care about being right or wrong. The important thing is the truth. Because if we are wrong, if we are wrong, it is bad for us, it is bad for our actions, it is bad for our goals, it is bad for our life, so it is bad for us to be wrong. So, it is better if we are wrong, to admit it, to recognize it and to be informed of it. So, we can be happy and we can thank the person who showed us that we were wrong.