The absolute, one line summary is that nobody changed anybody's mind by yelling their arguments and calling the other person an idiot. Expanded form runs more to the following.
If you really want to change somebody's opinion, really look back at your own life and think about times that you changed your mind. What convinced you? Was it the part where you stated your opinion (right? wrong? doesn't matter right now) and they got right in your face, called you crazy for believing that, and yelled all the justifications for their statement at you? I'm betting probably not. My experiences have been more a slow absorption of opinions, facts, and beliefs from the people around me who genuinely do believe what they are saying. These are people you respect (or even just know) and hearing them say whatever they have to say stops you for a minute so that you can look at what you think and decide if this has bearing.
The best example I can think of is atheists vs people who believe in a religion. I was pretty atheistic in my teen years. Didn't understand how anyone could believe in something with absolutely no proof or way of reproducing results. Sure, people I knew and respected were "believers", but they were just wrong on that and maybe a few other things, we agreed on a lot more items. My mind really started to change when tragedy struck. I'll skip the details of that part - the important point right now is that it was the believers who stepped in and helped. The church community immediately brought comfort and support, with no pressure about belief or anything. They just wanted to do the right thing and help people who needed help. Of course there was help from others as well, that's just a given in a situation like that, but not from strangers.
So that's what got me thinking about my own beliefs and how I interacted with others, which got me into attending a church regularly. Not because I necessarily believed in everything, but because I wanted to give back some of the help that was given to me. Talking to people in church led to a few realizations; lots of people attend who *gasp* don't think it's literally true. Who think maybe there's something more to our world than what can be seen and felt, or maybe there isn't, but the overall message to try and be better to other people is worth paying attention to. It's more about community and attitude than dogma.
That went on longer than I intended, but the point here is that it was calm, quiet opinions that don't care whether they 'win' an argument are the ones that will end up changing minds. The Richard Dawkins types of the world who are more concerned with making the people they debate look foolish than in trying to show them a small incremental point they can get behind over and over until they come around to the same way of thinking don't help anything.
No comments:
Post a Comment