"Closemindedness"

Because of recent interactions with people who are slightly more conservative than ourselves, there have been several discussions of frustrations with said people. Their ideas seem so constrictive and don't seem like they are beneficial. This frustrates me especially, because I am pro social justice, and I see how the problem can be solved. But instead of seeing how the problem can be solved my way, they only see their way. Sometimes I feel like the subject that we discuss are only based on one thing--one story, or book--that causes their opinion to lean one way. I am so frustrated with this, because I have experienced so much, and the information that I understand has not been spoon-fed to me--I've seen it with my own eyes, and tasted it with my own tongue.
When a person comes to the table (literally. We eat in the caf. They come to the table), with their single story, and argues their point until they are blue in the face, and I get frustrated. It's not just because I'm liberal. To a point, I can have civil conversations with conservatives. I know that people who are conservative are people too, human, and are imperfect, as I am also. And so when I start getting annoyed, I like to draw the conversation out of the concepts, and back into the reality and talk about things that we can agree on. I understand we will have to reach a point where we agree to disagree. This will happen.
But the true challenge comes to mind when I start talking to someone who doesn't know but their one experience--their one perspective. I find myself almost unable to listen to them, because of my life experiences. I know the answer; it's not what they are describing, so I don't listen to the words that they are saying. I label them. "Closeminded." I know that they won't listen to what I say, s I have to take my opinion and throw it out the window, because I cannot convince them of any word that I say. They don't listen to a single word coming out of my mouth when they find out that I am liberal.
Do we liberals think that we are better than conservatives? Of course.
Do those conservatives think they are better than liberals? Yep.
Last night, I came home from band practice and we started talking about talking to conservative people. One of us used the term "Close minded," and then Meg or Bekah said something like "I don't like that term. Saying close minded is close minded."
Instead of talking about the fact that we are liberal or conservative, we need to talk about how we can stop desensitizing people when we talk about them. We can talk about our issues, but we don't want to lose the importance of the issues. We can argue until we are blue in the face about how we are going to feed the hungry, but at the end of the argument, they are still hungry. We can't let the issue lose the face.

So the approach we need to take is to work towards the goal of egalitarianism. Maybe we need to approach things after trying to define goals. Maybe we shouldn't let ourselves become emotional or competitive, and instead become listeners and serve each other. We need to find a way to pull ourselves together despite our differences and meet in the middle. We can't get anywhere if we are pulling the rope in opposite directions.