How Minds Change
Why We Are Not So Smart
One of my many hobbies involves reviewing books. If I like a book that I receive, I review and recommend it. (If I don’t, I simply don’t write a review.)
That said, I recently received David McRaney’s How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion. The fact that this article exists is proof that I enjoyed the book. Here’s why.
Over the past several years, we humans have suffered collective and (such is life) individual traumas. Although the nature of capitalism — with its requirement that one market oneself, that one hide one’s flawed yet beautiful genuineness behind a “persona” — sometimes hides such traumas, they exist. Simply look around. Watch the news.
Does the collective mental health of our nation — its ability to reason rationally — encourage you?
Not me.
The current state of humanity — chaotic — suggests that many of us need to change our minds. So perhaps we should admit, as McRaney wrote in his first book, that we are not so smart. Such an admission is not easy; it requires humility. Courage. Nonetheless, it is a necessary component of a well-lived life.
While How Minds Change does not focus on mental health per se, if part of mental hygiene involves changing one’s mind when evidence supports such a change, then his book could be one component of a healthier collective psyche.
Are you brave enough to question yourself? If so, take a chance on a copy of How Minds Change. Learn why changing your mind can be a good thing, an utterly excellent thing. Learn why some people never change their minds even after years of failure.
Most of all, in this hyper-conversational era of ours, learn what techniques might crack open the hardened and calcified attitudes of your bigoted uncle next Thanksgiving. (Hint: Shouting will probably fail.)
If you give How Minds Change a chance, you — like the author — might learn why with the right approach, mind-change is not only possible but probable. And that’s so important.
Because I do not have all the answers, and you don’t either.
Michael Elias Shammas is a lawyer, scholar, and writer. Currently stationed at Tulane Law School, he imperfectly teaches and (changing his mind) learns from some of the most argumentative people on the planet: law students! You can follow him on Twitter, read his in-progress and published scholarship, or email him at mshammas6367@gmail.com.
