They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I would say that a little knowledge combined with an unwillingness to consider different viewpoints is even more dangerous. I think of this whenever I see someone jump to conclusions about another person’s views, intentions, or thought processes. Invariably, this exacerbates the communication problems that are already present in the world and leads to nothing but trouble.
A potential solution to this issue is learning more about the world. Learning about different perspectives, philosophies, and cultures makes it much harder to cling to limited worldviews and narrow-minded thinking. The ability to consider many different points of view without feeling the need to automatically agree with them or instantly discount them creates many wonderful possibilities, the greatest of which is patience. Getting to such a point in the first place requires a great deal of patience, and afterward it becomes much easier to be patient when talking with other people about their ideas. This, in turn, creates more opportunities for learning, which increases patience, and so on.
The more pieces of the bigger picture I find, the more nuanced my views become. Doing this also helps me understand different perspectives and think well of people with whom I disagree. I’ve changed my mind on a lot of subjects in my life and remembering just a few of those perspective shifts helps me avoid assuming the worst about others. When I engage someone in a conversation about their views, more often than not, I find that they have good intentions for the world and support the ideas that they think will bring about positive outcomes. These kinds of conversations have been very freeing since they show me that people who think differently than I do often have good intentions behind their thought processes; we usually want the same positive outcomes even if we disagree on the best way to get to them. A little patience and understanding can be wonderful things, and I hope to see more of them both as the world keeps turning.