A friend recently sent me a link to the Edge World Question Center. Each year, Edge, a foundation that promotes inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, poses a question to the world’s leading thinkers.

This year’s question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?“, prompted many answers, to which I keep returning to explore.

It’s a good question, and one I’ve pondered often. Last March I asked, “Since when is changing your mind a bad thing?“:

There is no greater insult in America today than “flip-flopper”, a label anyone with political ambitions is eager to avoid. It’s as if the act of changing one’s mind as the result of reasoned self-reflection is somehow as shameful, as, say, lying about sex with an intern, rather than a mark of maturity and character.

Certainly anyone who changes their views with the prevailing wind as a matter of political expediency deserves our condemnation, as do those who fail to keep their promises, both political and otherwise.

But as a mediator I have to ask, what’s so great about consistency anyway? If you’re going in the wrong direction, what’s the problem with heading in a better one? When exactly did it get to be a bad thing to change your mind?

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, in considering the question Edge posed, had this to say as he contemplated his own change of mind:

When a politician changes his mind, he is a ‘flip-flopper.’ Politicians will do almost anything to disown the virtue — as some of us might see it — of flexibility. Margaret Thatcher said, “The lady is not for turning.” Tony Blair said, “I don’t have a reverse gear.” Leading Democratic Presidential candidates, whose original decision to vote in favour of invading Iraq had been based on information believed in good faith but now known to be false, still stand by their earlier error for fear of the dread accusation: ‘flip-flopper’. How very different is the world of science. Scientists actually gain kudos through changing their minds. If a scientist cannot come up with an example where he has changed his mind during his career, he is hidebound, rigid, inflexible, dogmatic! It is not really all that paradoxical, when you think about it further, that prestige in politics and science should push in opposite directions.

What about you? Are you ready to exercise your reverse gear? Or, like Blair, do you deny owning one?

What have you changed your mind about?

One of the best blogs on cognition, behavior, and the mind sciences is The Situationist, which examines the implications of social psychology for law, policymaking, and legal theory. In honor of Martin Luther King Day, which is celebrated in the U.S. today, The Situationist has republished a post from 2007, “Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Situationism“.

Pointing to excerpts from the text of King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail“, this post makes the case that “Martin Luther King, Jr. was, among other things, a situationist“:

To be sure, King is most revered in some circles for quotations that are easily construed as dispositionist, such as: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Taken alone, as it often is, that sentence seems to set a low bar. Indeed, some Americans contend that we’ve arrived at that promised land; after all, most of us (mostly incorrectly) imagine ourselves to be judging people based solely on their dispositions, choices, personalities, or, in short, their characters.

Putting King’s quotation in context, however, it becomes clear that his was largely a situationist message. He was encouraging us all to recognize the subtle and not-so-subtle situational forces that caused inequalities and to question (what John Jost calls) system-justifying ideologies that helped maintain those inequalities.

In reading King’s movingly written “Letter”, and The Situationist post, I would say that not only was King a situationist but a skilled master of negotiation and conflict resolution. Consider what King says about community and the mutual responsibility that flows from it:

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

Or this about negotiation and the need to confront issues and talk them through:

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

Read King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail“. What messages does it hold for you, as a mediator, as a negotiator, as a resolver of disputes, or simply as a human being?

Last week in joint posts fellow blogger Colin Samuel and I saluted the anonymous editor of Blawg Review for his significant contributions to the legal community in creating the  invaluable resource that Blawg Review shows itself to be, week after week.

The most recent two editions of Blawg Review demonstrate why Colin and I were moved to say,

Presented each week by a different host, Blawg Review shows readers the many faces of the law, both in the U.S. and across the globe. In the best tradition of law and justice, as an institution it is open for all to participate, bringing well-deserved attention, appreciation, and traffic to the many lawyers, legal academics, law students, legal professionals, and others who blog about legal topics and issues.

Today’s presentation of Blawg Review #143 is hosted by Public Defender Stuff, which celebrates the enduring legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., and reminds readers of the principles of equality and justice that Dr. King stood for.

Meanwhile, the widely respected legal business coach Susan Cartier Liebel hosts Blawg Review #142 at Build a Solo Practice, where she distills a week’s worth of posts and expert advice into a “Letter to a New Lawyer”.