Change Your Mind

A healthy mind is one that can embrace change when there is good reason to. Be wary of people who show you that they are so rooted in a viewpoint or belief system that you know there is almost zero chance that they will change their mind. In fact, it’s almost a form of self-dehumanisation, which I’ll explain. We know how hard it is for people to change their mind generally, even in light of new evidence that should prompt them. And this barrier and the intransigence is exacerbated when the individual in question is a public figure whose status, reputation and income depends on holding those views. You know the sort of people I mean – I’m thinking of people like (to name just four) Richard Dawkins, Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Ham and Greta Thunberg (although her condition seems to have other factors).

For those who have a lot riding on it, there are three fundamental costs. The first is that changing your mind requires you to admit not only that you were mistaken but that you were unreliable or defective about how you drew your conclusions. The second is that it often alienates the very audience or community that supported or elevated you in the first place. The third is that it can kind of feel like a partial death of self – a minor dismantling of part of who you are, which could even provoke a deep, destabilising crisis of meaning.

Wrapped up in that triumvirate cost package is the potential for economic cost (loss of income), loss of future opportunity in that particular niche, accusations of betraying the tribe, selling out, giving ammunition to "the other side”, and exposure to personal weakness and vulnerability that will likely be disconcerting. It’s no wonder changing one’s mind brings such a sense of foreboding, but the inability to do so is far worse.

I said that inability to change one's mind is a form of self-dehumanisation – and this is because it robs oneself of the most valuable human qualities. Although individuals caught in this trap are usually unaware of the damage it’s doing - it brings about a fundamental surrender of core human capacities, like truthseeking, curiosity, growth, and adaptive intelligence that are so vital to human well-being. In one sense, to cling rigidly to a belief when there is every reason to change your mind on it is to reject the very faculties that distinguish us from machines or ideologies. A person who refuses to revise their worldview effectively reduces themselves to a kind of deterministic script with a predictable output, and somewhat ceases to be a fully living mind. That’s why it’s a form of self-dehumanisation – it’s the wanton trading of the richness of human fluidity and potential adventure of truthseeking for the sterile comfort of conformity, dwelling in the realm of a parochial illusion. We don't just close our minds when we are unwilling or unable to change them - we abandon a part of our humanity, and taint the rich potential of our own evolving selves.