For those of us who consider ourselves at war with Islamic fascism it is often extremely difficult to understand how our political opponents can fail to see what is so clear to us. At the same time, those who think that our invasion of Iraq was a terrible blunder in no way related to the war on terror are unable to understand why we don't see such obvious "facts" as that Bush lied, and the war is all about oil, and terrorism is essentially a police problem to which a military response is inappropriate at best, and down right dangerous to us (by creating many more enemies than we can possibly kill) at worst. Most of the time, even when these questions are addressed in a common language, people tend to talk past or at each other, rather than to each other. There is almost no real debate and minimal chance of changing anyone's mind. Those of us who have not been infected with the thought disorder known as post-modernism and believe that there exists an actual reality that we can reasonably and objectively approach; if that is the case, what is it that prevents people from recognizing facts that are right in front of their eyes? Actually, it is more accurate to ask, what makes it so hard for people to accept facts that are in conflict with their pre-existing beliefs? If we can understand this, we will have a much better understanding of what makes it so difficult for a person to change their mind.
There are several important points that must be understood to grasp why changing a mind is such a difficult task:
1) The mind is extremely conservative. Once a person has established his models of how the world works, his paradigms, he will unconsciously filter all new data in ways which tend to reinforce his paradigms. Information that supports his world view is readily accepted without reservation. Information that would tend to question his paradigm is greeted with extreme skepticism. Multiple efforts are made to falsify the offending data and as soon as a reasonable way is found to discount it, it is dismissed. In a pinch, the data can just be ignored.
2) An individual's mind is composed of multiple well organized self and object representations that all relate to each other in multiple and complex ways; changing one risks changing all the others. To try to simplify: We all have multiple aspects to our identity; these varying aspects have many features in common and certainly have a continuity with the "I" at the core, but the various sub-identities are not all the same. You are different with your boss than your co-worker, and different with your spouse and your children; in fact you are different subtly and not so subtly depending on your state of mind. You are different when sleep deprived or hungry or sexually frustrated. These are all different aspects of who "You" are; if you change one aspect of your identity, it tends to destabilize others as well. For people who are interested in politics and invested in the world, their political views are incorporated into their self-identity. Thus, a traditional liberal believes that people, at their core, are "good"; a conservative is more likely to believe that people, at their core, are amoral. These paradigms influence how they understand what is happening in the world and how they handle contradictory data.
[Of note, one of the most common reactions in Psychoanalysis to an accurate interpretation is anger. When we show a person something about themselves that they have managed to keep themselves unaware of, it is often an unpleasant experience and they do not thank us.]
3) Along with our multiple selves, we all exist within a milieu of multiple "others". These significant others are comprised of our families, our "tribes", et al. Our tribal identify can include our ethnicity, our religion, our politics, and can be as varied as Evangelical Christian or Upper West Side Liberal. The important point is that if basic precepts of the tribe are questioned, the offending person faces expulsion from the group. The impact of this can not be underestimated. Many former Liberal Democrats now known as Neo-cons have experienced just such alienation from the important people in their lives.
Thus, fundamental change involves destabilizing one's sense of self and destabilizing important relationships. It risks alienation from everything that has been familiar and comfortable. It is no wonder that most people prefer stability, even an uncomfortable or dysfunctional stability, to the insecure, unknowable, danger of change.
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