Changing Minds

I don't pretend to know the secrets of the universe. or, really, the secrets of anything. But I have learned one thing, over the years, of how to persuade. How to change another person's mind, for better or for worse. How to win them over to my way of thinking.

No, there's no particular trick or social engineering game at work. It doesn't always work, either. What's weird is that, prior to all this recent talk on rhetoric and its true nature, I would have called what I do "diplomacy" rather than argument. Even if diplomacy implies that I'm trying to talk somebody into disarming their nuclear missiles, rather than trying to get them to give up meat. Not that I would do the latter. I'm not out to evangelize.

Where was I? Oh, yes, my secret trick.

The problem with argument and with debate, I've found, is... well, hold on, let me qualify what I mean. I don't think that there is a problem with either concept; what's problematic, what's broken is the way we regard both things. It's our perception that's damaged, that needs to be fixed.

When we try to argue our point against another person's, and I see this all of the time in political discussions of any kind, the problem seems to stem for the fact that people like labels. They like to be Republican. Or Democrat. Or Socialist. Or Nihilist. Whatever.

Labels are corrosively convenient. Slap a label and you know what to say in any argument! You don't need to take the time to figure out exactly why you hate the gays, or why you think babies don't qualify as people (yeah, it happens on all sides). You just form an identity and you run with it, and apply the label to all beliefs.

Which means that when somebody criticizes one of your ideas, because you started at the top with the big "I am a ____" declaration, you feel like you're the one being attacked. This wouldn't happen if you'd taken the time to reason out each point and considered it to a satisfactory conclusion, and that's just the truth, plain and simple. In one scenario, a person who argues a point with you basically is saying: "I disagree with your opinion on this issue." In the other, the same person is saying, "I disagree with you and everything that you believe in, and you're stupid."

I'm a vegetarian. You can imagine the implications about what that means about who I am as a person and how I might react to certain issues. And the reality is that some of those assumptions are probably wrong, because the initial reaction is to equate a vegetarian to a set of pre-determined beliefs without considering all possible outcomes.

When I was first introduced to vegetarianism, I wasn't initially enthusiastic. After all, animals are delicious. And not every point that somebody made about why vegetarianism is a good idea resonated with me. For example, I'm not particularly vocal about animal rights. While I do think that factory farming is an abomination, and I think that we do have some obligation to reduce suffering in the world, there are more pressing problems that I consider "more important," especially since they more directly relate to my own species. So, the activist who told me that eating meat is morally equivalent to racism didn't really endear me to the idea.

What turned me onto the idea of abstaining from meat was the philosophical considerations, how food defined our species for thousands of years. It literally shaped the entire course of our development throughout history. It is a critical aspect of who we are, and yet, most of us don't think about what we eat, except in the "oh, this probably has too many calories, I shouldn't" way. And that was an interesting point to me, the fact that we engage in a form of self-deception when it comes to eating meat, and it was from that point that I eventually came to adopt my current way of thinking.

My point is that I came to the label of vegetarian from an idea. And even though I will call myself a vegetarian, I don't think it defines me as a person, even if other people are quick to make that assumption. And this means that when somebody attacks vegetarianism, I don't feel like I'm being personally attacked, even in some cases when they're deliberately trying to attack me. My entire identity and self-worth doesn't hinge on this one idea that I feel has applications to my life.

Maybe if more people started thinking that way, we could move away from the age of screaming matches and hurt feelings. Except for the fact that, as we've all come to agree, such theatrics "put butts in the seats," to use a sports cliche. So, maybe we need to change more than just our thinking, but I still hold to the belief that changing how we relate to our ideas wouldn't be a bad place to start.