अधर्मं धर्ममिति या मन्यते तमसाऽऽवृता।सर्वार्थान्विपरीतांश्च बुद्धिः सा पार्थ तामसी॥
adharmaṃ dharmam iti yā manyate tamasāvṛtāsarvārthān viparītānś ca buddhiḥ sā pārtha tāmasī
Word by word
The verse says
The understanding that takes wrong for right, wrapped in darkness, and turns every single thing the opposite way about: that one, Arjuna, is dark.
In plain words
The third kind, and the phrase to notice is at the end.
Sarvārthān viparītān - everything reversed. Not some things. All of them.
This is not a person who is mistaken about a few matters. The whole instrument is inverted, which means every correction entering it also gets turned around.
Where you've felt this · in community
An older cousin of yours believes that the relatives who check on him are after something. The one who borrowed money and vanished, he says, was the only honest one. Every kindness is read as a move. The more people try, the more evidence he has that they are working at something.
Going deeper
A reversal that processes correction as further proof is the state described, and it explains why this one so rarely resolves.
With ordinary error, new information helps. With a reversed instrument, new information arrives and gets turned around with everything else. Concern is read as interference, honesty as attack, patience as proof of an angle. The system is closed, and it is closed by the very fault you would need to fix.
It is worth being careful with this verse. It describes a condition, and it is not a label to hang on people who disagree with you. The mark is not holding a wrong view; it is that everything without exception comes out the other way round.
What it asks of you is mostly patience and a lowering of expectation. You cannot argue someone out of this, because argument is an input and the inputs are what is being inverted. What sometimes works is time, steadiness, and still being there.