# On being right vs. being right

There's this funny conflation of semantics of the word "right" in English language:

> **right**
> correct; proper; just; appropriate: the right way
> 1. Conforming with or conformable to justice, law, or morality: do the right thing and confess.
> 2. In accordance with fact, reason, or truth; correct: the right answer.
> ...
> -- [The Free Dictionary](https://www.thefreedictionary.com/right)

People use the term interchangeably.

But the difference goes deeper than just semantics. Especially when we argue with somebody, we are often pushing to prove that we are right (as in _correct_), completely ignoring whether doing so is also the right thing to do (as in _appropriate_ or _just_). An example of this is when somebody behaves like an idiot (subjectively judging of course). While it is true, making that explicit to the person is most of the time quite unhelpful as it tends to kill the interaction (because emotions), rather than advance it towards some common understanding. In other words, telling somebody that they are an idiot is right as in _correct_, it is rarely right as in _the right thing to do_.

And this is why conflating these two meanings is so dangerous. Especially nowadays we often argue (on Intertubes and in real life too) and try to persuade the other party that our worldview is "righter" than theirs (as in more truthful, factual, etc.), but too often we fail to do _the righter thing_. Which is listening, using empathy, trying to understand the other one, touching a common base and trying to move on from there. That's more difficult (no wonder, we are all really good at finding the minimum energy path forward - which tends to be the lazy one most of the time). In other words, **to be right (as in _correct_) is way easier than doing the right thing (as in _productive_, appropriate_, or _pragmatically useful_**.

P.S.
While other languages make a stronger distinction between the two terms (German "richtig zu sein" vs. "recht zu haben", also many Slavic languages also make this distinction explicit). Yet, my observation is that in real life native speakers of those languages still conflate these two meanings. It seems to overarch languages.

P.P.S
There is also this interesting Dutch distinction between "gelijk hebben" and "gelijk krijgen", but that seems to be a somewhat subtler animal. As in "doing the right _and_ correct thing" vs. "getting social recognition for it" (_vindication_).