In a world addicted to admiration of strong leaders, some kinds of weakness are even more essential

Photo by Roswitha Schacht

A thousand business books tell you to identify your strengths and weaknesses. So far, so good. But the implication that follows — that you should follow your strengths and either avoid or overcome areas of weakness — may not always be correct, especially when it comes to discovering the truth about things.

Dictionary definitions often approach the notion of weakness though absence: absence of strength, firmness, vigor. That’s our first clue to situations where weakness becomes an asset and strength turns into a drawback.

Another clue comes from the idea of weakness as fragility: something that is easily bent or broken; something liable to fail under too much pressure or strain.

None of these definitions sound as if they might be hiding something desirable. Maybe that’s why so many people quickly pass them by and hurry on to dwell on strength, firmness, and power as the only source of leadership qualities.

Patience. The answer lies, as so often, in the context.

Food for thought

The context in which weakness truly shines, in my opinion, is that of thought, opinion, and belief.

When you hold a strong opinion, a strong prior belief, or simply a strong thought about something, it’s easy to be tempted into looking no further. You already know the answer. There’s no need for additional exploration. Anything that might — just perhaps — threaten the firmness of your belief is dismissed as irrelevant or a minor detail.

Strong opinions slyly morph into fixed positions to be defended rather than questioned; mental patterns that are uncomfortable to examine, whatever the evidence that they might be neither as firm, nor as correct, as you believe. Contrary ideas look like the enemy, creeping up to destroy your security and sense of knowing what’s right. They become a threat to avoid or destroy to retain your comfort and peace of mind.

And the older you get — and the more you worship at the shrine of strong, determined, unwavering belief as the basis of truth — the harder it becomes to admit that — just maybe — you’ve had things wrong all this time. That your opinions have either become out-dated, or have been shown to be incorrect by newer evidence.

For some, evidence itself — that cornerstone of objective truth — becomes the enemy. They fear submitting their opinions to any kind of objective, evidence-based scrutiny, precisely because they suspect, deep down, that the result might not be what they want. For such people, blind faith — a firm belief in things that have not been proved and yet must not be doubted — is transformed into a virtue.

Never mind that there is no logic for acting like this. Never mind that closing your mind to questioning will not change the reality that what you believe could be wrong. Never mind that it makes you rigid, inflexible, and dictatorial. Nothing matters save that the beliefs on which you have built your self-image and sense of identity must never, never be called into question.

The amazing power of weakness

If there is any path to becoming enlightened about the truth of things, it lies through weakness.

When your opinions, beliefs, and thoughts are all weak, they are easily changed in the face of fresh evidence. There is nothing to cling to; no need to defend what you never held “true,” save in the most provisional way. No need to suspect questioners; no need to seek to play down or squash contrary positions.

Instead, the way lies open to fresh ideas and discoveries. Exploration — and the chance it brings to find better ways and more convincing theories — is something to we welcomed and sought out, not feared. The whole of scientific progress depends on “weak” theories and opinions: ones that are held only until fresh evidence is found, either to continue holding them a little longer, or let them go without regret. Creativity too can arise only when current ideas and systems are seen as wide open to change and improvement.

Sadly, the history of human thought is studded with situations in which people have belittled, reviled, exiled, and even killed one another to avoid having to admit that what they believed was, in reality, incorrect. Some cases we now laugh at, such as the long period in which it was unthinkable to suggest that world was anything but flat; others can still excite hatred and violence, especially religious intolerance and racial hatreds. All have caused mankind to stray further from any ability to discover the truth about how the world works.

A thought for the week

If I have any message for you this Monday morning — any thought to mull over this week — it is to be suspicious of strong beliefs and opinions, most especially when they are your own. They will not always be wrong; but, if they are, you will probably be almost the last person to admit it. Nor can you easily work out which may be worth holding to a little longer, and which are best abandoned right away, unless you first admit to the possibility that all are incorrect.

In the meantime, you could well have done yourself and others great damage by stubbornly defending mental artifacts that were never worth more than a provisional agreement; and that only until something better came along.

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