We have direct access to our thoughts, our experiences, and our entire backstories. Because of this, we know and understand views quite well. We know the ways we came upon those views; the reasons we believe in them; the reasons we hold to them; and the complexity, the nuance, and the interconnectedness of them. But we don’t have direct access to anyone else’s thoughts, experiences, backstories, or their reasoning process, so we don’t know why they came to hold those views. Accordingly, their views can seem to be contradictory or overly simplistic.
If we can get inside their heads, put ourselves in their positions, recognize their starting place, and really try to understand how they got from that starting place to the conclusions they drew from it, then their thought process will become clear to us. We’ll be able to see the nuance in what they believe, how their ideas interconnect, and why they hold those positions, even if we ultimately still end up disagreeing with those positions. The more common alternative is (perhaps unintentionally) misunderstanding someone else’s position and trying to reduce big, complex ideas that fit into an even bigger philosophy down to one simple sentence that contains no nuance and leaves out almost everything important (including their backstories and the beginning place for all the points that branch off from it).
If we can avoid that, then we’ll be able to talk to them on a real, human level. We’ll be more open to their ideas and their way of thinking; likewise, they’ll probably be more open to our ideas and our way of thinking. We’ll probably learn how much we have in common with them and how our biggest points of disagreement are likely on the best way to get to a shared goal rather than the goal itself. We’ll have more respect for them and they’ll probably have more respect for us. At the very least, we’ll truly know what they think and why they think it. We could have real conversations about it and more easily see each other as friends rather than enemies. In getting to know them as people, we’ll be able to separate themselves from their views and see them for who they truly are instead of identifying them as their views. I’d like to see more of this and I’m going to practice this whenever I get the chance. How about you?