On Changing One's Mind

Why are we so skeptical of changing one’s mind?

Why do we view changing an opinion with such suspicion?

Consider this line:

“I don’t like changing my mind any more than the next person — but sometimes one must.”

What a weird thing to confess! Yet I imagine it’s something many of us relate to.

It comes from a recent New York Times op-ed/newsletter piece from John McWhorter “I’ve Changed My Mind. Audra McDonald Was Right”.^[1]

The whole piece is McWhorter explaining why he has changed his opinion regarding a particular instance of the anachronistic use of race in theater. Think about race in Hamilton or maybe Bridgerton; for this particular piece, it concerns Audra McDonald’s choices in her approach to playing Rose in Gypsy. McWhorter has come around to the idea of a “Black Rose,” as McDonald is currently playing the character.

This general debate is a fascinating one but the debate is not what caught my interest here. I am more interested in this reluctance to change one’s mind. Not just a reluctance… a dislike of the act.

“I don’t like changing my mind any more than the next person — but sometimes one must.”

It seems to me that changing one’s mind is a sign of both intellectual growth, adaptability, and humility.

It is easier to understand suspicion of others who change their mind, as I think it is explained by our, well, suspicion of others: the black box of other brains leave us suspicious of their motives in many different types of action, the changing of opinion being just one.

But why the dislike of our own change of mind? And I wonder, too, if this is some perennial human trait, or something historically modern?

I couldn’t help but note that in the same article, McWhorter uses a bit of rhetorical certainty that I found as curious as his closing line. When describing several cases of anachronism that are acceptable to his philosophy, he suggests that such anachronism is at times “the only way” to accomplish a certain goal. The use of modern music in Moulin Rouge is “the only way to give us a sense of how the actual music of the period felt to people of that time”; anachronistic slang in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is “the only way to make the characters in this exquisite confection come across to us as genuinely funny human beings.”^[2]

“The only way” – really? Beyond reflecting a weird aesthetic philosophy, where there is only one way to achieve a certain end – which would seem to me to be the opposite of how art works – that phrase also works to boost the assessor’s rep or credibility, shoring up one’s assessment as meaningful.

It goes one step beyond saying: X works because it accomplishes Y.

It says: despite any misgivings one might have about X, X is really “the only way” to accomplish Y.

And it suggests a character in the observer: there is only one way, and I see it.

Between the dislike of changing one’s mind, and the certainty with which McWhorter articulates his assessment of these other cases of anachronism — there is a connection, no?

No great insight to offer, just a capturing to save and to chew.