How to Talk to a Closed-Minded Person: Introduction

Have a hard time dealing with those narrow-minded people in your life? Whether they be your in-laws, the store cashier, or your coworkers, this guide may be able to help…

Consider this the Introduction to How to Talk to a Closed-Minded Person (If You Must), a new blog post series — which will hopefully end up looking like a serialized book — written entirely by me. This will be a societal guidebook, mixed with to political and personal references, to dealing with and understanding the minds of the narrow, and of the wide. How someone chooses to gather and accept information — whether it be facts or opinion — tells you who they are on multiple scales. In all simplicity this is a psychological, societal, political, and personal guide. When this is all finished, I will make this series into an ebook available as a PDF download for In Perspective readers.

Throughout this guide I’ll often refer to the closed-minded person as “the person you are talking to” or just “the closed-minded” or “the narrow-minded”. You know who they are.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “narrow-minded” as

not willing to listen to or tolerate other people's views; prejudiced.

American Heritage says “closed-minded” or “close-minded” is the

Intolerant of the beliefs and opinions of others; stubbornly unreceptive to new ideas.

The terminology is similar to “narrow minded”:

lacking tolerance or flexibility or breadth of view.

Thus, ‘narrow-‘ and ‘closed-minded’ are, for all practical purposes, synonymous and are used interchangeably in this guide.

Anyone familiar with the works of Ann Coulter knows my title is styled after her book How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) (complete bullocks, by the way). Just going by her distorted definition of the word "liberal", you know that woman is either insane or a good actor — call her whatever you want. I do not hope for this guide to resort to that hitting-below-the-knees, nonsensical, partisan mudslinging, disgusting extreme ideological polarization that people like Coulter stoop to.

This series will have a relaxed and informal, sometimes humorous outlook. I hope for some of it to sound laid back, so the layperson can relate to it.

How to Talk to a Narrow-Minded Pompous Ass (If You Must) was originally going to be the title of this multi-part blog post series, but I decided to shorten and mellow down the title a bit. The series is to come in chapters; the final product might be in chapters too.

Just as a note: this is not an attack on Christianity or other religions. People have a right to hold their own beliefs; I respect that right, even if I don’t respect the beliefs. But there are parts of the Bible praising the narrow-minded:

... narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
--Jesus Christ, Matthew 7:14

I wrote this guide partly for fun, and partly because of people, lunatics in fact, like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, but also so called firebrand lefties in the United States who also refuse to employ the tactic of logic and utilize a closed-mindedness of considerable proportions. I find it amazing how these kinds of people have millions of readers, listeners, and followers. They are treated like gods by some, and the devil by others. Their partisanship only furthers the polarized divide in the mind numbingly closed-minded realms of American politics and ideology.

~clearthought
http://cafzal.blogspot.com/