I only really trust someone’s judgement when I know they’ve changed their mind on something important.
Sometimes I’ve said this publicly, and people bristle. Changing your mind isn’t seen as positive. Being right is important, and sticking to things is strong.
People like being right, and want to be seen as strong.
The important fact, though, is that those two things are opposed to each other.
Most people arrive at adulthood with a fairly firm set of opinions about the world. All obviously correct.
I’m tongue-in-cheek, of course. What are the chances that we’d be right about absolutely everything first time? Even approximately?
Slim. That’s the fair assessment. It’s technically possible someone may never have been wrong about anything important, but I’ve never met such a person, and it definitely isn’t me.
So I find it very useful, when needing to find out about anybody, to see if they can tell me about something serious that they’ve completely changed their view about. Not their favourite colour, but something that people treat as a part of the foundation of their identity. Something like religion or politics, or that others expect to govern how they behave or appear.
If they can’t think of anything … I think it’s fair to assume they haven’t actually considered why they believe what they do about anything, and whether they’re happy with the reasons for their beliefs.
I am convinced that none of us can properly examine our beliefs and maintain them all. To examine, to question, is to be prepared to look differently, and I don’t find it plausible that any of us have only beliefs that withstand scrutiny. So if nothing has ever changed, those beliefs are only surface things, and I put less weight on them. All of them.
Not everybody agrees with me on this, but it’s served me well.
However …
When I’ve detailed this before, I’ve left it there. But recently I’ve realised there’s something else.
It’s quite common for people who do change their minds to flip quite drastically. There’s a reason “the zeal of the convert” is an old phrase.
It can feel drastic, changing a belief that we consider core to our selves, and there’s a temptation to make the very change as central to our identity as the original belief, or more so. Extreme aversion to the original belief, or identification with something so different as to be extreme in itself.
And while that’s understandable, it doesn’t make for a balanced view any more than beliefs that have never been questioned do.
So I have changed my thinking about this a bit, too. The real challenge is:
Have you ever changed a core belief?
And are you now able to discuss that moderately and dispassionately?
Not that I ask anybody except myself this outright, of course. But if you and I are ever talking about something that matters, you can bet those questions will be going through my mind and I’ll be looking for clues.