Change My Mind—Please!

Last week I shared a political message on Facebook. (“No, Kevin, not you! Surely!”) “Opposing student loan forgiveness because you paid off yours,” the text read, “is like not feeding the hungry because you already ate.” As someone who believes Jesus said to feed the hungry, and also to forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, this one felt personal. So yeah, though I didn’t write it, I shared it for everyone to see.

A conservative-leaning friend replied: “Not true! Big difference!” In today’s social media environment, where people curate the information they receive and often only hear claims they already believe, I’m eager to hear what those who oppose me believe, beyond image macros that rally True Believers. So I answered my friend: “Do go on” [no punctuation]. Because I meant it, I wanted to hear the continuing argument.

I’m still waiting to hear back.

When I began teaching college-level writing over a decade ago, I needed to choose my dominant philosophy. I selected Aristotelean rhetoric, for a few simple reasons. First, it has over two millennia of practical testing, meaning there are few surprises. Second, it’s based closely on an awareness, not only of what the writer wants to say, but also what the audience will receive. It requires a level of empathy often missing from modern, and especially digital, rhetorical theories.

Aristotelean rhetoric was designed for a primarily oral culture, where written texts were primarily memory aides or classroom tools. It presumed the communicator primarily spoke aloud, to a live audience, and could gauge their responses immediately. When applying these terms to writing, it often requires imagining how one’s audience will respond in advance. And that means one must know one’s audience enough to accurately anticipate their responses.

So when someone disagrees with me, and I reply “Do go on,” I don’t mean this flippantly. It means I’ve failed to anticipate their response, and need more information to accurately map their beliefs and answer their likely objections. It also means I might have overlooked important information. Therefore, in a rhetorical approach, asking someone to explain their position means necessarily asking them to make a good-faith effort to change my mind.

This last point seems increasingly uncommon in today's information ecosystem. Social media, which creates a custom knowledge bubble, mostly reinforces what audiences already believe. When we only communicate with people who share our core beliefs, we emerge with a more extreme, intolerant version of our original opinions. Psychologists call this tendency “group polarization,” but the military has what I consider an altogether more accurate term: “incestuous amplification.”

It’s become fashionable to complain about polarization in today’s culture. I’ve done so, too. But this trend isn’t new. Though the digital environment increases this tendency, as Jill Lepore writes, this has actually been the trend since at least the middle 1960s, and arguably since World War II. America’s increasingly technocratic, specialist-driven society increases the natural human bent to seek people most like ourselves, and never communicate outside our sphere.

In such a willfully deaf environment, I cannot simply demand others listen to me. That’s the behavior of pre-teens still struggling to learn rudimentary empathy. Rather, Aristotle teaches that to persuade others, I must first listen to them, learn their beliefs and thought maps, and tailor my message accordingly. This means treating others’ opinions as seriously as my own, giving them serious consideration in sober tones.

I cannot treat others’ opinions seriously, and simultaneously pass preemptive judgement upon them. I can only take other people seriously, by first opening myself to persuasion. That is, I must be willing to change my mind. Not that I must be credulous, believe everything somebody says with authority, and get led around by the nose. Rather, I acknowledge I haven’t seen everything, my viewpoint isn’t universal, and others might have something to teach me.

Easier said than done, right? Though I stressed this every semester for my students, it’s taken years to internalize. I still sometimes get it wrong. Like all moral principles, it’s more about striving than achieving: I seriously, solemnly try to remain open to persuasion. When I ask someone to change my mind, unlike certain internet personalities, I mean it. I yearn to remain open to others’ viewpoints, changing my mind for better information.

Therefore, if you say something I disagree with, and I ask you to expand, this isn’t flippant. I mean it. You might not change my mind right away, but I’m willing to let you try.