It’s easy to have a closed mind. You can live in your own little world where you know what is best. You’re ideas or beliefs won’t be threatened by the ideas or beliefs of another person. On the other hand, an open mind is not only difficult to maintain but also not characteristic of homo sapiens. Open-mindedness is a trait that exists seemingly without an evolutionary reason. In fact, open-mindedness is probably the opposite of a survival trait. In our species’ history, it was better to avoid people who weren’t the same as us because they might be dangerous. We ostracized people with new ideas, we called them crazy, we called them strange, we did this to protect ourselves, and we still do it today.

Today Is Not Yesterday

We live in a different world today than that of our ancestors. We are safe from enemy tribes attacking our homes to become the new inhabitants. We have created laws that prohibit this type of behavior and we have law enforcers that keep us safe. People of different cultures CAN live together today in harmony, however, many WILL NOT.

Those who don’t want to live with people who are different are closed minded. They feel uncomfortable around people that live a different life than their own. They feel threatened by the ideas other people share. These are just feelings. In reality, it is most likely that the individuals whom closed minded people fear are no threat at all. If someone doesn’t agree with someone else, both people will still live. Both people can have the same success, they can live their lives regardless of the agreement or disagreement with another person. So why do we let our feelings harm other people? Why do we let our irrational fears limit our ability to work together? The answer isn’t easy to discover because it can’t be answered with logic…..it’s not logical to hate someone for disagreeing with you.

Accept the Differences and Move On

It seems silly to live in fear of something that won’t harm us. People visit psychologists to help them live with irrational fears of spiders, for example, because although some spiders can be deadly most of them are perfectly harmless. Differences are harmless. Just because a person has a fresh new perspective, it doesn’t mean he or she is a serial killer. That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? But that’s what so many closed minded people seem to believe.

Christians treat people who don’t believe in god like misguided, dangerous animals that need to be tamed and trained. People in developed countries treat people from developing countries like diseased creatures that need to be cleansed. However, when you start accepting people for who they are and allow yourself to see all people as people, your perspective changes. You look at Christians, Atheists, Rich, and Poor people and all you see is people. Sort of like when you look at a garden of orange, yellow, purple, and pink roses, all you see are roses. The same species of rose can have different colors. News flash, all living humans are homo sapiens. We are all the same species even though we have different colors, beliefs, and ideas.

If you are open-minded, act open-minded. This means allowing closed minded people to do their thing. Let them be who they are and let yourself be who you are. You can agree to disagree with anyone and move on.