Pema Chödrön’s lovely quote of the week:
I try to practice what I preach; I’m not always that good at it but I really do try. The other night, I was getting hard-hearted, closed-minded, and fundamentalist about somebody else, and I remembered this expression that you can never hate somebody if you stand in their shoes. I was angry at him because he was holding such a rigid view. In that instant I was able to put myself in his shoes and I realized, “I’m just as riled up, and self-righteous and closed-minded about this as he is. We’re in exactly the same place!” And I saw that the more I held on to my view, the more polarized we would become, and the more we’d be just mirror images of one another—two people with closed minds and hard hearts who both think they’re right, screaming at each other. It changed for me when I saw it from his side, and I was able to see my own aggression and ridiculousness. ~ Pema Chödrön from Practicing Peace in Times of War
Pema’s above quote made me think of a very short post from a bit over a year ago. I’ve cut and pasted it below:
Self-righteousness about any dearly held belief will disallow the communication process with anybody who does not share your belief…enjoy your private bubble.
Or another way of saying the same thing from War in Context:
…the definition of ideological myopia: the ideologue can’t see beyond his or her own convictions and so is singularly lacking when it comes to the art of persuasion.
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While I’m at it, I’ll also share a string of tweets I retweeted yesterday as they, too, highlight a similar point beautifully:
Nobody in all of recorded time has ever changed ideological positions due to a devastating logical argument. Consider that carefully.
— 老虎 (@ZigerShamisen) December 10, 2013
Mockery has also proven ineffective in causing people to change political or religious affiliations.
— 老虎 (@ZigerShamisen) December 10, 2013
For the thousands of hours I spent arguing with people in my life — doing my utmost to persuade — I cannot recall a single conversion.
— 老虎 (@ZigerShamisen) December 10, 2013
Hilariously, I will not even be able to convince *you* right now that arguing with the people in your life is a wasted effort.
— 老虎 (@ZigerShamisen) December 10, 2013
Accept that you can’t wake up anybody and have fun with it! That’s my heartfelt advice.
— 老虎 (@ZigerShamisen) December 10, 2013
