Why lefties have no reason to be smug

I’m an extremely liberal and left-wing individual but I make a point of stepping outside of that mindset on occasion to become temporarily more neutral and look more objectively at what’s going on in the never-ending push and pull between the left and the right.

When I do this I often shake my head at the smug superiority that people on the left wield as a blunt instrument. We do this to elevate ourselves and to foster unity by denigrating the views and the character of adversaries on the right.

Most people on the left are guilty of this to some degree, myself included. Even a guy as smart and empathetic as Barack Obama can come across as smug and arrogant at times, particularly when he is preaching to the converted.

Science tell us that people on the left are more open-minded, community-focussed, and cause-motivated. We tend to be pretty self-satisfied about this. But if that’s the case, why are we so quick to vilify and disparage the human beings and communities on the right who have different views? Maybe we’re not the calm, unifying, and peace-loving beacons of hope that we imagine ourselves to be.

Adopting our leftist worldlier-than-thou attitude may help us feel good about ourselves and our ideas, but when it comes to dealing with those on the right, the strategy is worse than shooting ourselves in the foot. It’s actually closer to shooting ourselves in the face.

Let’s say you think you have the best set of plans for humanity at a given time but there are sizeable numbers of people who are dead set against those plans. What’s the absolute worst way to try to change their views? That’s right. The worst way is to be smug, arrogant, and cynically dismissive of those people. With just a few gestures and facial expressions you can virtually ensure that the resistant cohort will never align themselves with your self-evidently brilliant plans.

I get it. It’s a huge challenge when somebody seems to be deliberately ignoring mountains of evidence to take up a position that seems to guarantee an increase in human suffering. The key is to look past the frustrations and try to see what’s really motivating that stubborn person. Most of the time it is fear.

Science tells us that in general right-minded individuals are highly stressed by change, by doubt, by anything that might destabilize them. They want the world to be black-and-white and easy to assess. This means that fancy-dancy people from the big cities who preach reform are typically seen as a threat, as someone not to be trusted.

So, what’s a better strategy?

A great volleyball coach I worked with as I got into coaching myself gave me a tip on leadership that I’ll never forget. It’s a cliché because it’s true. He said, “They don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”

Many of us instinctively know that to earn trust and affect someone’s heart and mind we must first and foremost show the person that we care about them. And the care must be genuine. That’s why smug people on the left should do some soul searching and ask themselves an important question:

How much do you really care about the plight of the people that oppose you?

If you care very little or not at all, and just you’re fine coming across as smug and superior, you’re ensuring for yourself a lifetime of stubborn opponents who will staunchly refuse to see the light no matter how brightly you shine it.