Quote:
Originally Posted by DEJ
If you keep messaging the way you currently do then yes you will never bring me over to your way of thinking. Putting down the side you do not agree with will never accomplish anything. So in summary it is also up to you.
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One point of my post was to show that these worldviews are deeply entrenched and probably not changeable in a person over the age of 20 or so.
That's true regardless of how the message is expressed! These basic worldviews are a huge part of our identity. You can't give them up without feeling like your identity is under assault. It's who you are.
Think of what it takes to get someone into and out of a cult. They have to experience a complete shift in their identity. Getting people out of a cult is very, very difficult because people feel psychologically threatened when you present them with facts that are counter to their built identity.
Very few people are willing to consciously sit down and think through their system of beliefs---what it's built on, whether it serves good or bad purposes, whether it works for themselves and others.
The forces that maintain beliefs are subconscious. It takes a strong act of will to examine your beliefs point by point and be open to the possibility of changing them. Religious beliefs are an example of this, but in recent years political beliefs have become associated with very strong emotions to an extent that wasn't really the case in past eras. When the emotions become externalized---like at a political rally---the adrenaline rush pretty much rules out any possibility of introspection about your beliefs. Even in this forum, people make strong public statements affirming their identity. Every time you thank a poster, you're affirming your identity---always the same predictable group of people, affirming the same beliefs. There's really no retreat from that because now your public image is on the line. You can't say, "You know, I was thinking about my reasons for why I don't want to wear a mask. I guess I was only thinking my own needs. I decided that I do owe it to others to not make them sick if I'm infected, so I've decided to wear a mask. I regret that I may have unknowingly exposed people to COVID by not wearing a mask."
I think we need to be realistic about the extent to which people can change their beliefs and behaviors. Apparently people only change when they're faced with a monumental catastrophe. The sad truth is that the death of 570,000 Americans due to COVID-19 is not monumental enough. The current status of the climate crisis is not monumental enough. If you walked out your front door tomorrow and discovered that half of the people in your town had died of COVID---the plague wiped out half of Europe in the 1300s---and the temperature was 120 degrees in December, I dare say that would be monumental enough to change your beliefs and behaviors. The question is whether there is a midpoint in the size of the catastrophe that will change people's behavior in time to reverse a crisis. We haven't reached that point yet with COVID and we may have already passed the point where effective change is possible with the climate crisis.
I'm not putting you down. I'm making observations about human nature that apply to you and me both.