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The Secret to Changing Hearts and Minds
Since publishing Cowakening: Social Change in a Time of Covid, I have received some truly inspiring feedback and, repeatedly, a question — what can each of us do, on an individual level, to help promote the cause of human rights? Because the cornerstone of human rights is mutual respect and understanding, I do believe that each of us has the power to further that respect and understanding in our respective corners of the world.
Improving the world means finding a way to get positive ideas to take hold. In turn, this requires effective communication because communication is how we transmit ideas: it is how one person’s struggle becomes a community’s cause and how a community’s cause becomes a global movement.
Starting with Empathy
When someone is presenting a viewpoint with which you strongly disagree, what happens? If you are like most people, you feel a rising tide of emotion while your mind feverishly works out the litany of things you want to say in response. You focus so intensely on what you want to say that you stop listening and nearly stop hearing.
This is the moment that communication breaks down and a conversation turns to argument — the moment when speaking with someone turns to speaking at someone. In the current sociopolitical climate, this type of breakdown has become all too common and has contributed to the deep fissures in our collective viewpoints.
When you engage in an argument, what is your goal? Is it simply to shout your viewpoint and walk away? This may make you briefly feel better but will surely be counterproductive to winning hearts and minds, especially if those hearts and minds are on the opposite side of the issue.
Implanting your viewpoint is a lot like cultivating a garden. It requires understanding and preparing the soil, starting with small seeds, and then putting in the time and effort to water the baby plants of new thinking and protect them from the weeds of prior beliefs and the insects of destructive ideas. In this context, empathy is the lens through which we can understand the other side.
