When humans want to make sense of something, we look for the familiar. A hook we can hang our experience on, and thereby make a connection. Something which reflects at least part of who we already are.
It’s pretty difficult to change someone’s mind by starting off telling them that they are wrong. A more fruitful approach is finding the part of what they’re saying that you can agree or sympathize with, and then appealing to their current values and beliefs.
When we forget that a point of view is just that: a view from a point, we can invest more of our identity in it than is perhaps warranted. Elevate a point of view to the level of belief or ideology, and the stakes get even higher.
Everyone else is doing the same thing.
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