How we change our minds (or not)

Why do we have different opinions?

Well, you have been arguing that so much of our thoughts are affected by personal experiences. That means differences in experiences lead to those in opinions.

Why do we react differently to the same event? Namely, why do we differ in its interpretation?
 

... Comrade, these are the same as the first question.

Just checking! What about our personalities? Don't they matter in how we view the world?

Haven't we talked about this, too? Already as babies, we differ in how we behave. That is by nature. But who we are at any point in life is an intricate product of nature and nurture.

It seems to me that when we are young nurture have greater influence on who we are or to become. Curiously, we shed some of the aspects that we cultivate through nurture, as we age.

Didn't we talk about this?

In a slightly different context. Come to think of it, when I say aging, I should differentiate biological aging from social aging, or change in social standing that is associated with age.

Which one have you been referring to?

I guess both, but mostly the latter. For example, we abandon much of the virtuous attitude that the grown-ups attempt to inculcate us with, because when we become grown-up ourselves, there is nobody to punish us. It results from the changes in our social ranking.

After we leave our parents' house, there are no more rules imposed on us except for the law...

It is no coincidence that the time we reach our physical peak is when we become a full-fledged member of the society. In many countries, that is when we are allowed to participate in formal politics, plus all other things that are prohibited as minor persons.

As a way of taming them? 'Don't wreck havoc, because you are now part of the establishment'?

Exactly.

Why doesn't it happen a bit earlier? It may not be a bad idea to contain the youth in advance.

Before that period, the adults can outsmart them; their gaining physical strength does not yet pose a threat. University students are often admired and hated for good reasons. That is when our mental capability becomes developed enough to say something relevant to the real world. Add to that the capacity to beat up the old folks...

Because of their paucity of experience, they are idealistic. 

It irritates the older people who have been benefiting from having adapted themselves to the system. First, because they may lose their privilege, and second, because they know that the students have legitimate reasons to question how the society is run. None of us enjoy it when our disciples, so to speak, turn around and use what we taught them as a weapon against us. 

Traitors...! But then, why do we pass on idealistic ideas to younger generations? 

Some of us have strong enough beliefs of how societies should be, even after the co-opting phase, and are motivated to transmit those thoughts so that the future society will be closer to their ideal.

Aren't they the ones who are not getting as much out from the society as they wished? Isn't it a way for them to get back to the powerful?

I agree that some certainly fit that description. It would be hard to pin down why they turned out to be not so powerful: because they never abandoned their ideals, or something else prevented them from becoming one of the powerful and that is why they hang on to the ideals.

They have much less to lose by espousing the same ideals as when they were eighteen. Plus, they can draw comfort from the power-money-dirt equation.

Anyway, observing the big social changes that have happened in the past few months around the world, you must have noticed that it is mainly the people in their twenties who have been leading the movements.

The countries in question have a pyramid-shaped demography, too.

As a society gets better off in terms of material, its birth rate usually goes down and the average age becomes higher. That in turn slows down the social transformation process.

Because there are fewer and fewer of the young who are willing to challenge the status quo.

At the same time, the society becomes more and more burdened with retirees who require financial support by the rest of the population and with infirm folks who require nursing and medication.

Such activities are akin to engaging in safe disposal of hazardous waste...

Irreverence aside, I have to agree with you.

I said it for you, and no word of appreciation, eh?

If civilizations are not destroyed by wars, plagues, or environmental degradation, it would be the aging process that puts them into slow, but steady, decline... Getting back to my very first question of differences in our thoughts, do you think we ever change our opinions?

Sure, isn't that why we engage in debates?

Most of the time, we do not manage to convince the other.

Wait a second, didn't we talk about that?

What we can do is to overwhelm the other party with our emotions.

That's called passion, comrade. How can we buy into something that the advocate is not sure about her/himself? 

The problem is that objectivity discourages us to be narrowly focused. The more objective the advocate is, the less forceful s/he would be.

In other words, the most reasonable tends to be the weakest.

In the short-term, or on surface, at least.
 

If someone is foaming through the corner of her/his mouth, we have all the incentive to say, "Sure, sure, sure." We don't want to get sprayed with saliva.

You seem to know whom I am thinking about... It doesn't have to be a lunatic, though. We usually don't come to change our opinions through a debate. At best, we end debates by a very reluctant admission that the other party may be right in certain things that we touched upon.

As a courtesy, you mean.

Remember, our convictions and beliefs are founded in our personal experiences, so unless we go through events that convince us otherwise, we would most likely not change them. Needless to say, debates do not qualify as such.

Doesn't this point to the utility of fiction work? The mock experience given by reading novels can augment the real-world ones.

I think you are right about that, but we should never overestimate art. As many artists have said already, art cannot change the world.

Perhaps not directly... 

I remember reading about a lecture on racism that Tahar Ben Jellon gave to highschool students. At the end of the talk, a student asked if he had been successful in making a racist change his ideas about race.

The answer was 'no'?

You got it. By the way, I know more than a few who have been transformed from a fundamentalist in one religion to that in another. 

How is that possible, such a big swing!

One would think so at first, but it is rather natural. What such people need is a thought, belief, ethic system that they can follow by the letter. They are the opposite of anti-authority people.

After all, all religions are alike, so it may not be that dramatic.

In my opinion, labeling means a lot to them, too. They want a word that neatly explains who they are.

They love to be pigeonholed, or have a strong urge to belong to a certain group.

What is certain is that a mind well made is better than one well stuffed...

This screen is a smoke screen

Continuing on the theme of technology and human relationships, I see an increased tendency to cling onto old friends.

Thanks to the Internet, we can stay connected even when we move away from each other.

They may be good relationships, but we are prone to make less efforts to get to know the people who are in our spatial vicinities.

Is that bad?

The people with whom we share physical space are important in our lives, solely by that fact.

Such as my next door neighbor who lets his trees overgrow into my garden...

We and our neighbors benefit from the same systems for water, electricity, gas, telephone lines, public transportation and so on. Any change you desire in them is not possible, if you are the only one with that opinion. When information about such public utilities is scarce, your neighbor may have a crucial piece that you do not have. For example, you may be wondering how long the power cut is going to last, and your neighbor may know that the electricity would not be coming back in the next 36 hours.

A more useful case would be when my neighbor could alert me to imminent electricity or water supply cut... The Internet is making us negligent of our neighbors, and that is not for our own good. Is this your point?

When the power system is disrupted, by a natural disaster for example, we are disconnected from our friends and acquaintances with whom we communicated through electronic means. Buried cables can be easily disrupted by earthquakes.

And we are left with our neighbors whose names we know but whom we have barely seen in the past several years or more...

We encounter less surprise in our lives. That is another consequence of socializing only with the ones that we get along well with.

Wasn't that the whole purpose of not interacting with people whom we dislike?

You know, sometimes it is your enemy who tells you the uncomfortable truth about you.
  

That's why I want to stay away from them!

Surprises are not always negative and we are depriving ourselves from positive ones, too.

We can't sort the two, because of their very nature as surprises. 

The technology has made many of our hands-on skills redundant, but I realize that it is not something new. It is the very purpose of technology.

Think about the laundry machine. You should be grateful that somebody invented it.

True, but some skills are worth keeping, such as musical-instrument playing.

Aren't you happy that you are spared of listening to very bad performances by amateur players, because we can always play music CDs? 

Yes and no, because many elements in playing an instrument could be understood only by trying our hands at them. Any type of activity needs a broad and thick amateur base to support the very best.

I'm glad that you found a good raison d'être for us the mediocre and the simply untalented.

Anyway, the biggest skills that we are losing is in the domain of human relationships.

You said we are much less obliged to be in good terms with people, because the availability of most goods and services does not depend on whom we know and whether the procurers are willing to do us a favor of parting with what we need.

That is chiefly because technology replaces many of human skills, but I missed the point last time that the number of offers for goods and services also matters. Suppose you are the best chest maker in the area. Further suppose that there is a machine which replicates your chest making skills. If you are the only one who own or could operate it, people would still try to be in good terms with you so that they could have a very good chest.

But if the guy down the street owns the same machine and if people don't like me, they could go to him.

The real strength of technology is in mass production of productive means, comrade! It allows many of us without skills to act as if we were skilled producers. And because it creates many producers whom we can turn to, we don't have to worry about being in good terms with one particular person.

We can buy music CDs from literally millions of sellers. The process of inserting a CD in a CD player and making music come out of it requires much less talent than making music with an instrument.

It implies that technology for mass production is useless if we do not have the mechanism to distribute and sell the products.

Another necessary ingredient is the development of commercial institutions...

The more merchants exist for items that are comparable, the less dependent we are on a specific vendor. It means that we can be less concerned about figuring out people. If we could obtain what we want through only one person, we would have to bring up our needs when s/he is in a good mood.

We can't say, "Ah, excuse me, do you happen to be feeling charitable enough to accept my request without grunting, spitting in my face, or making unreasonable demands in exchange?"

We have to judge based on indirect evidences.

That becomes easier, the more you know the person.

We still encounter occasions in which we need to make a decision about a person whom we just met. However, since our lives nowadays require less and less of face-to-face interactions, we are losing the skills to gauge a person by how s/he looks and behaves in a few minutes.

Chatting online doesn't count as in-person interactions?

Think about all the information that gets lost. The timing it takes in responding is less related to how eager the person is to chat, but more to how fast s/he can type. The tone of the voice, the hand gestures, the facial expressions, etc. are all unavailable.

We can tell quite a lot from the eyes for sure. But do we have to worry about not seeing in person if we could keep in touch otherwise?

There is a great deal to face-to-face interactions, especially with your own species.

If so, it poses an insurmountable problem for you.

Right, I'm one of a kind... In any case, anything that we are told personally has a bigger impact on us than what we read, given that the contents are the same. You must have experienced it yourself.

I guess that is why we go to live lectures instead of just reading a textbook.

For important meetings, the best mode is in person. If that is infeasible, we opt for video conferencing, not telephone conferencing or online chatting.

Although many of us look on the screen as if we had been released from the psychiatric ward for the occasion... 

I may decide to buy something extra, just because an affable storekeeper recommended it. That's different from clicking on "Here's what we recommend for you" and clicking again on one of their recommendations. We shouldn't underestimate how much our interactions with living beings, in particular homo sapiens, could be life enriching.

Come to think of it, people usually keep pets for nothing other than their company.

You see? There is something affecting when your eyes meet with those of a deer for a second in the woods. I don't think it's available online.

That's why we meet in a café rather than e-mail each other, right?

Otherwise, how can you treat me to a piece of Linzer Torte when you feel like it, for example? 

Comrade... why are you waving to the waiter?