What is Open Mindedness?

Open mindedness seems to be the all-important virtue for our society today: those who have mastered it are treated as intellectual geniuses who have evolved beyond themselves to embrace the world, and those who do not are treated as imbeciles unable to participate in any form of intelligent discussion. However, even with our obsession over this virtue, many people are unable to grasp what it means or practice it--including those who hail it as the chief political virtue.

Open Mindedness Predicated on Humility

In order to be open minded you must be willing to change your currently held ideas and beliefs if sufficient evidence has convinced you the opposite to be true. This should be a rather common sense practice: once you're proven wrong you change your opinion to coincide with the truth. However, to do this, one must accept that they are in error, something which only the humble can easily do. It is for this reason that open mindedness, and the ability to earnestly seek the truth is predicated on humility, yet this same humility is lacking in most of society today--especially those who boast that they are experts or more intelligent.

A Conservatives Best Debate Tool

Open mindedness is a great tool to use in debates with liberals. It usually tends to be a liberals that pride themselves on open mindedness and tolerance, yet when they are faced with opposing political opinions they quickly deny their legitimacy with any number of insults (eg racist, homophobe, Bible-thumper, etc.) However, this can be used to a conservative's advantage with a simple question:

Do you consider yourself open minded?

The most likely answer is "yes" to which one should reply "Open minded enough to consider my thoughts? Good. Then ...." and proceed with the argument. This is not only useful only for presenting the argument in a fair manner, but also instrumental in concessions. Because the majority of conservative ideologies (if not all) are based on simple truths, and logical premises and conclusions, open mindedness can be used to gain a concession. After the arguments have been presented and you've justified your position with statistics, logic, and science, the other person will either agree that you are correct and leave knowing the truth, or they will insist that their fallacious ideas are correct. To which you may simply reply:

You told me you were open minded. I've shown you how (my argument) is correct with reasonable, logical conclusions drawn from reasonable premises. If you really are open minded why won't you concede that your argument doesn't hold up under inspection?

This is of course only a rough template, but the idea is the same. Expose their hypocrisy in hailing a virtue they do not possess. Even if they never do concede, those who watch your debate or listen in will understand that yours is the more level headed and logical argument.

Final Thoughts

Open mindedness, at least for some people, is a virtue they praise but do not truly understand or hold. When you use it as a tool to expose the truth, nobody who holds truthful ideas or positions will ever fear it. It is only those whose pride and hubris does not allow them to be wrong that cannot accept this virtue and these people will always drift through life always believing lies and fallacious arguments.