Staredit Network

I've seen many people, when in contentious arguments, end up telling each other that they're extremely closed minded. However, I do not think closed minded is the right term...


IMO Closed Minded means when one person refuses to see something from a different point of view. They refuse to accept the fact that there are other equally or better views of something. It has to do with the selfish mind. You think your PoV is better than anyone elses PoV. Most importantly, it's something you can control; something you can fix overnight. When you are calling someone being too closed minded or that they need to be opened minded, you're basically telling them to stop being selfish and so stubborn. This may be true in very few cases, but most of the time, it's not.

Take this for example: Lets say you had a gay friend and you weren't gay at all. Even though you wouldn't tell him or show him directly, you sometimes would wonder why he's gay. How could you love another man? In your opinion you couldn't imagine yourself making out with another man. Your friend, on the other hand, doesn't think that way. He tries to tell you that there's nothing wrong with loving a man, but you simply can't understand it (but you keep it to yourself and not express anything that might offend him.) He begins to get frustrated and then he finally says "You're too closed minded to understand." You weren't stubborn were you? You didn't refuse to see why one would like a man; you just couldn't.

It's your personality that prevented you from doing so. It's not necessarily that you didn't accept it, it's that you were unableto accept it. Your personality is an invisible barrier that prevents you from seeing things, liking things, and thinking about things in a different way. The way you grew up, the place you grew up, the people you grew up with, and the DNA codings that you grew up with structure and harden your personality and prevents it from collapsing. I remember once along time ago in one of those "greatest map maker ever threads," I nominated Panzer_Kavalier and said that Normandy Invasion was a great map. (U)Bolt_Head replied with these exact words:

Of course he couldn't understand why, its because he was himself. Tons of other people out there on Battle.net love that game including myself and probably could not understand why anyone, such as bolthead, would hate it. We could argue all we want about it; whose taste is better and whose taste needs more flavor. It's conflict of interests, conflict of personalities.

Before you call someone closed minded, think about it. Are they REALLY being selfish or are they just simply genetically structured in a way which the way they think conflicts with your thinking strategy? 90% of the time, it would be the second one. Infact, you probably cannot tell if they were truly being closed minded or were just simply thinking in a different way so it's best to keep those thoughts to yourself. No matter how right you think you are, do not tell someone that they're closed minded or that they just simply cannot see things in a different way. Two reasons why:
- It provokes them.
- Its useless. What are you hoping to gain out of telling them that? For them to change right on the spot? It wont work.

Just keep that thought to yourself. Also keep in mind that the other side would probably think of you the same way.

Very nice explanation

So to summarize:
Evolutionist: Evolution is right and creation is wrong!
Christian: Why?
E: Fossils!
C: Fossils?
E: Yes. Fossils are a billion years old thus, the world could not have been made in 10k years.
C: How do you know they are that old?
E: Carbon dating tests!
C: But since there's no difinitive proof for that past a few thousand years, couldn't it be somewhat incorrect?
E: No!
C: Why not?
E: Because we tested it on these billion year old fossils!
C: But weren't you just-
E: Fossils!
C: trying to-
E: Carbon dating!
C: Isn't there the POSIBLITY-
E: Rocks! Fosills! Carbon!
^
Closed
Minded

Banker: Would you like to make a withdrawl?
Customer: Yes.
B: How much?
C: One million dollars.
B: You don't have that much in your account:
C:I don't?
B: No
^
Not
Closed
Minded

Do I have it about right?

The customer was just a bad robber.

And yes the guy in the first one shouting fossils was closed minded. He didn't give any explaination beyond "Carbon Dating!"


Closed mindedness seems to be our biggest hinderence in whatever we do. Basically people don't want to know about anything bad is happening anywhere. So they ignore things. They don't give explainations a chance.

frazz your wrong in both those aspects, yes the first one is close-minded, but no one on SEN had only use "fossils" as their evidence. Also the first one had nothing to do with open-mindedness. Its just the bankers job to aks those questions and to tell those answers.

carbon dating can date back to 50,000 years. That's is an extremely long time. They also do some other things, but I don't know. I am no way shape or form a scientist. I'm not smart enough.

Mill nailed it right on the money. Close mindedness can mainly be applied to abstract arguments. Concrete ones however, are quite different. If you provide concrete evidence, then you can say they're being close minded. That's about the only time. Even then, their ego defence mechanism kicks in, and they keep arguing. So yes, it is useless in most cases.

People who call me closed minded usually are closed minded themselves, saying that their point of view is right and I'm stubborn for not changing to theirs.
But.. their idiots.

Um.. No. Read below:



^

Here is an example of a close minded person: S.T.A.R.S-Chris

I don't wish to flame, but point out the faults of him:

"Always right", doesn't consider possibilities of "Strange" things (From my knowlege) ect.. (I'm lazy -_-)

Now me:

"Always right" (In certain areas) I consider the possibilites of "Strange" (Occult, and all that stuff) ect.. (I'm lazy)

Ah, fark it.

Everyone is close minded in some aspect -_-

Have either of you ever actually admitted to being wrong? I'm just a little curious, thats all. -_-

Hell yeah i'm wrong.

man you guys are close minded...

Yeah, close minded. Refusing to see someone else's point of view.

A good word for "close minded" is:
Ignorant

Or at least I pretty much see them as the same thing.
Ex - you are close minded and thus you have less knowlage, so you become more ignorant.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=closed-minded
The immortal words of Urban Dictionary.

"close minded" or "narrow-minded" is not the same as "ignorant". If someone enlightens you with logic and you deny it without any reason why, you're being narrow-minded. If someone asks you what the capital of Ohio is and you don't know, that doesn't mean you're narrow-minded, you just don't know; you're ignorant of the fact.

This is a classic double-take narrow-minded statement. You see, saying someone is narrow-minded doesn't mean you're narrow-minded too. BUT, saying such a thing without any reason as to why we're narrow-minded is quite a worthless statement. Many people would love to say "Oh this moron is so narrow-minded", but by saying that you're being narrow-minded yourselves! Maybe he DID have reasoning to say that and you didn't know! In other words, immediately jumping to conclusions is also very narrow-minded.

Procuress, why do you call them narrow-minded? Do you have a reason for it?