by Madeleine Van Hecke, PhD

In my reading as a teacher of classes in creative thinking and critical thinking, I often come across the admonition that people need to be “open.” People should be open to new ideas, different possibilities, multiple perspectives. To encourage my students to be more open-minded, I assign a paper that I call the “poles-apart” paper in which students try to see the world through the eyes of someone whose position on, say, abortion or home-schooling or immigration reform or chiropractic medicine or pacifism is poles apart from their own.

The strongest resistance to this project comes from people who are staunch believers: believers in their religious faith, or in their political position or philosophical ideology. Why are they so reluctant to do this assignment? What was at stake for them?

When the poles apart assignment succeeds, it changes people. Once we are truly able to see the world through the eyes of another person, we develop an understanding and empathy that makes it very difficult for us to dismiss that person’s view out of hand, or to discount those who believe it as stupid, or to demonize them as utterly evil. This means that it also makes it hard to judge them in the same way as we have done in the past. It turns out that what is at stake for many people is that we fear we may lose our moral compass if we really see the world through the eyes of others whose positions we deplore or even abhor.

Before you jump to the conclusion that this is an unrealistic fear, or one held only by religious fundamentalists or political extremists, consider this example:

A college student was asked, in an interview, if she believed that what Hitler did was morally right or wrong.

“Well, from my point of view I would say that what Hitler did was morally terrible… Are you asking me if what he did was morally right or wrong?
Interviewer: Yeah.
“Well, I could say it would be morally wrong from my point of view… They… it’s terrible to say this, but — they were doing what they thought was right.
Interviewer: Was he right or was he wrong?He believed he was right, so was he?
“No — cause I’m looking at it from my point of view.But if you asked Hitler, he would say ‘yes’You can’t… see… there’s no absolute.It depends on your frame of reference” ¹

This student, as clear as she is about her personal conviction that what Hitler did was terrible, is unable to pass a more general moral judgment on his actions. She’s clearly capable of seeing the world through the eyes of someone who is poles apart from herself. But her realization that an action or belief can appear differently to different people has rendered her powerless. She is unable to judge Hitler’s actions in any absolute sense.

Those of us who yearn for genuine dialogue with others who are poles apart from us want to resist the close-mindedness that hinders such discussion, but we also don’t want to sit in the draft of an open mind. We don’t want to feel powerless to evaluate the beliefs or ethics of others, caught in the kind of the moral paralysis reflected in words of the student quoted above. We also know that genuine dialogue will not occur if we merely “make nice.” As philosopher John Dewey wrote: “Open-mindedness … is very different from empty-mindedness. While it is hospitality to new themes, facts, ideas, questions, it is not the kind of hospitality that would be indicated by hanging a sign: ‘Come right in, there is nobody at home.” ²

So how can we be open-minded, and still stand up for what we believe in?

First, we can understand that empathy and understanding do not necessarily have to dictate approval or acceptance of another person’s ideas or behavior. A judge who had listened to the sister of a cold-blooded, unrepentant murderer plead that her brother should be shown mercy because of the horrendous abuse he had himself experienced in childhood commented: “However much my heart grieves for John-the-boy, I cannot disregard or discount the horrible deeds done by John-the-man.” This judge was essentially saying that while the murderer’s childhood made his later actions more understandable, that didn’t preclude the judge from being able to condemn them. It seems to me that horrendous actions, like terrorism, may become more understandable to me when I grasp the sense of powerlessness that a group-turned-terrorist may feel, but that understanding does not mean that I cannot judge the terrorist action as evil.

Secondly, we can sometimes find a “true north,” a guiding principle that seems absolutely fundamental to us, without necessarily holding that principle in an absolute fashion. In the case of terrorism, for example, the principle that to harm innocent people is wrong, regardless of the motivations or desperation of the group inflicting that harm, could be a “true north” that enables one to cleanly condemn terrorist actions even while understanding that the person engaging in those actions is also a freedom fighter, or a defender of his principles, etc. At the same time, if we acknowledge that we might have future insights that cause us to revise our ideas about this matter, we are holding this absolute conviction tentatively.

Harvard Professor William Perry described the notion of being committed to one’s beliefs in this fashion, a fashion which is “tentatively wholehearted” and “wholeheartedly tentative.” ³ These paradoxical phrases are intended to suggest that it is possible to embrace a commitment – to a religion or to a political ideology – with one’s whole heart, even as we accept that our understandings and beliefs might change over time. In fact, Perry’s ideas go further. At the level of what he called capital-C Commitment, our attitude is that future change is not only possible but likely, perhaps inevitable if we remain open to experience and gain in wisdom. It is inevitable that we will, in some ways, revise our beliefs because we assume that our current understanding is incomplete. Despite this knowledge, we live our lives in full dedication to the Commitments we hold, even as we recognize their tentative nature and are willing to engage in revising them – in making a literal “re-vision” of what we believe and how we see the world, should that be warranted by later insights.

Thirdly, we can recognize that not standing up for what we believe in as a way of keeping the peace usually is not a sign of genuine respect for others. The “make nice” individual is often motivated by the laudable desire to show respect for the political or religious beliefs of others. Such a person recognizes that it is disrespectful (not to say arrogant) to assume that we have the capital “T” Truth, while everyone else has, at best, small “t” truths. The solution that the make nice person comes up with is to show respect by refusing to challenge the political or religious beliefs of others, offering instead a blanket acceptance. But is blanket acceptance truly respectful?

I would argue that if I truly respect you I will not dismiss beliefs that you take seriously as inconsequential. It seems to me that this is what blanket acceptance does, essentially saying that our differences don’t matter and thus ignoring their significance. Moreover, if I respect you I will enter into genuine dialogue with you. I won’t just skate on the surface; I’ll be willing to be truly engaged with you. Such engagement means that, at times, we will discover that we don’t see eye-to-eye, but nevertheless we will hang in there. We will strive to see the world through one another’s eyes, not by discounting either of our visions as unimportant but by trying to come to grips with the two conflicting visions we glimpse.

As Harlon Dalton ⁴ writes in another context, we should, indeed, treasure those moments when we are stunned to realize how differently each of us views the world because it is in those moments that we are most likely to discover what we had failed to grasp previously. These moments, if they lead to meaningful discussion, help us to discover and address our own blind spots. When we truly cannot understand how someone else can think a certain way, doesn’t that suggest that, whatever the limitations of their thinking, we too must have a blind spot that keeps us from understanding them?

Finally, as I search for ways to stand up for what I believe in, while being genuinely open to other perspectives, I’ll recognize that both myself and the person who is poles apart from me may need help in finding a safe way to talk honestly with one another. One way of understanding why the poles apart assignment was so threatening to some of my students is to see that I was asking them to consider perspectives that could potentially turn their worlds upside-down. What if they discover that the perspective that is poles apart from their own has validity? It’s as if they are standing on the edge of a cliff, and I’m asking them to jump into an abyss. They don’t know what they will find there, and they don’t know how they will get out if they flounder there.

Aren’t we challenging people in this same way when we encourage them to engage in dialogue with people whose religious or political beliefs are poles apart from their own? Isn’t it likely that many people in that situation will fear losing their moral compasses if they are truly open-minded? In addition, many will have a host of other fears, such as fearing to offend, fearing to show their ignorance, fearing conflict.

So we need to provide people with a discussion situation that blends challenge and support. The challenge is already there, built-in the activity; the very act of talking honestly with one another challenges us. For support, we need to provide a safety net. That safety net consists in all the things that we do to create a safe place for discussion, such as creating pre-discussion activities that remind participants of their common humanity and laying out ground rules to encourage civility during the discussion. We want to create a “safe test” in which people don’t have to jump into an abyss, but can instead simply put a toe over the edge of the cliff. As psychologist Robert Kegan writes, safe tests “involve keeping our weight firmly balanced on what we are sure is solid ground, and carefully sticking a toe over the edge of the world we have created by [our assumptions] to see whether indeed there is nothing but space beyond the edge, or whether, as Columbus’ crew discovered, the world may be shaped differently than we had imagined.” ⁵

¹ Clinchy, B. and Zimmerman, C. (1981). “Epistemology and Agency in the Development of Undergraduate Women.” In The Undergraduate Woman: Issues in Educational Equity. Edited by P. Perun. Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, p. 167.

² Dewey, John. (1933). How We Think. Chicago: Henry Regnery

³ Perry, William G. (1970). Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years: A Scheme. NY: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

⁴ Dalton, Harlon. Racial Healing. p. 73 Dalton, Harlon. Racial Healing: Confronting the Fear between Blacks and Whites. NY:Doubleday Anchor Books, 1995.

⁵ Kegan, Robert and Lisa Laskow Lahey How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work, SanFrancisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001, p. 85.

Madeleine Van Hecke, PhD is the author of Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things, Prometheus Books, Inc., 2007. She offers workshops and seminars on reducing negativity in the workplace, improving communication, handling stress, and encouraging innovative thinking. For other free articles, including “What to Do When Other People’s Blind Spots Are Driving YOU Crazy,” visit www.overcomeblindspots.com.

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