Jumping To Conclusions

I have to confess that there are just some people that I have trouble taking seriously. The problem with that attitude is that I run the risk of missing something important.

Jonathon Haidt offers this advice in his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion:

“We make our first judgments rapidly, and we are dreadful at seeking out evidence that might disconfirm those initial judgments.”

In the same book he also writes:

“If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical

people become when they disagree with you. But if you think about moral reasoning as a skill we humans evolved to further our social agendas—to justify our own actions and to defend the teams we belong to—then things will make a lot more sense.”

So how do we deal with the people with whom we disagree? From Kirsten Powers in her book Saving Grace: Speak Your Truth, Stay Centered, and Learn to Coexist with People Who Drive You Nuts:

“You should also do an inventory of your go-to tactics in a debate or disagreement. You might find that you engage in behavior that is unhelpful and maybe even unnecessarily antagonizing, and it needs to be changed.”

Wilfred Trotter in The Herd Instinct writes:

“If we watch ourselves honestly, we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely stated.”

This advice from Proverbs 18:13:

“He that answereth a matter before he hearth it, it is folly and shame unto him.”

Timothy Leary in one of his saner moments said, “You are only as young as the last time you changed your mind.”

In Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change John Robert Lewis writes:

“All of our struggles here are based on one erroneous, pervasive, and persistent belief that we are somehow separated from the divine, that some of us have more light than others, therefore making them more deserving than others. We believe some people are more special, more beautiful, more capable, more influential, more intelligent, more gifted, and have a greater capacity for good than others, often based on material possessions and outer appearances.”

The converse is true. We are so distrustful of some people’s motives that we immediately reject what they might offer. Granted they might have earned that distrust over time, but as they say even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while.

It might be helpful to at least begin to listen because there might be something important in what is being said, even by your opponents.