Changing hearts and minds

[pegkerr]

I have been thinking a great deal about a rather large, amorphous subject the last few days. Various threads of thought about a wide variety of subjects has led to this post, including:

-- the painful processing I had to do to get over the last election as I wondered about how Americans can have such vastly different visions of what direction our country should take. How do we come together?

-- reading Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think by George Lakoff

-- the heated rhetoric about the Schiavo case

-- thinking about the Islamic fundamentalist worldview vs. American world view

-- a post here I made a while ago about my encounter with a man who felt differently than I did about mothers working outside the home, which I recently reposted at feminist here

-- a post I made about trying to change a coworker's mind about gay civil rights

-- a post wayfairer made about coming out to some students she was tutoring (and how one's viewpoint that "I hate gays" abruptly changed to "okay, I hate gay men, but lesbians are cool") when he realized that oops, his tutor was gay.

There are places in the world where if people disagree, they solve the disparity of opinion by trying to kill the people on the other side. I would hope that there are better ways of sorting out opinions. We write our various essays/rants here in LiveJournal not just to vent, but because we want to influence others to come to join our point of view (at least I do). But it seems to me that a lot of public discourse, at least in America today, isn't trying to do that. If we're lazy, we friend those on LJ who think only the way we do, and we listen to our favorite radio stations, and we have our favorite columnists who tell us what we already agree with.

There was an article in my paper today about Ann Coulter. People go to hear Ann Coulter not because they want to be persuaded by her arguments, but just to hear her bash the opposition. But I rather doubt that Ann Coulter has ever changed anyone's mind about anything. It's rather difficult to listen to "discourse" which basically boils down to: "Anyone who doesn't agree with me is venal and stupid."

Is anyone ever listening anymore with the possibility about changing his or her mind about anything?

Tell me about something, some issue, that you changed your mind about. (Abortion? Gay rights? Stem cell research? Or . . . ?) Share your experience of what led you to change your mind. And I don't mean "I used to sorta feel this way, but now I sorta feel the other way." I'm interested in people who have radically changed a very strong opinion about something. I'm not interested in re-hashing the particular arguments or starting a flame war on the issue, whatever it is: I'm interested in what made you alter your opinion. Was it gradual or sudden? Did the people you cared about (who initially believed as you did) disapprove when you started thinking differently? Was it prompted by something that you read? Someone that you met who either made you think of the issue because of the way they lived, or because of something they said? How do you feel about yourself, looking back at what you believed in your past.? Was it easy or painful to do? What else changed for you when you changed your mind? Do you change your mind less often now?