We frequently see changing one’s mind as a weakness, when really, we should support people who do better when they know better.
I know a solid handful of people who, in the last couple of years, have pretty substantially changed their point of view on a variety of impactful topics.
The problem is—often, we reject people if they haven’t aligned with us all along.
Consider the following:
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
In that context, I feel like we should celebrate anyone who is brave enough to say, “I helped make this mess, but I’m going to help clean it up.”
Why wouldn’t we want help cleaning it up?