I was wrong. I'm sorry. I will try to learn from it

There are few words a person can say to me that will make me respect them more. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone acts at one time or another in a way which they would find unacceptable from anyone else. The ability to acknowledge a mistake, is something which we should be instilling in our children from the day that they make their first one. 

Nobody likes to be wrong, but more and more, we are perpetuating a blame culture. Fuelled by the sensationalist press and media, we have become a litigious society of finger-pointers, to the extent that attributing blame and deflecting responsibility has become second nature. 

We see it everywhere. We vilify celebrities for their errors, we shame politicians into resignation for misdemeanours completely unrelated to their ability to govern. We focus on accountability to the extent that the result is countless cover-ups far more damaging than the indiscretions they aim to hide. We put people in positions where they are destined to fail, and then we all but crucify them when they do. 

How would society look if we instead encouraged honesty? If we demonstrated the value of humility? If we taught our children to expect respect rather than punishment when they make mistakes?

Our instinct is to be defensive. To shift blame. To find a way to do anything but take responsibility. The really bizarre thing about that is that there really is nothing more disarming when someone points out your error than to say "actually you're right. I was wrong. I'm sorry. I will try to learn from it". 

Granted, when someone makes the same mistake time and again, when they show an inability to learn from their mistakes, there comes a point where denying them the option to make the same mistake again is the prudent course of action. 

And yet if we can build a culture of humility, where admitting mistakes, respecting the ability to acknowledge them, and demonstrating that we can learn from them, become more important to us than finger-pointing and retribution, maybe those mistakes would be far fewer to begin with. 

If we all went into any venture knowing that mistakes are learning experiences rather than opportunities for humiliation and denigration, and if we spent time helping people learn from their mistakes rather than punishing them, maybe we could make some real progress, and reclaim the press and media as news outlets, rather than outrage pedlars.