In his 2023 book, The Persuaders, Anand Giridharadas warns of the danger of assuming the worst of people, especially that people will never change. He calls it the write-off, assuming that whole groups of people will never come around to a particular point of view, that it’s not possible to “pull people back from various forms of political madness.”
As the book title makes clear, Giridharadas believes in the power of persuasion, illustrating that belief with compelling stories and interviews. Even more, he insists that people can change. Writing them off is too easy, he suggests, and ignores an essential human reality.
I share his view for both strategic and moral reasons. Writing people off is bad strategy, because their left-behind voices and votes could change critical socio-political tides. Writing people off is a moral mistake, I think, because it denies agency and complexity. It ignores full human potential — for new insight, for changed minds and softened hearts.
I’ll always agree and act on the belief that all humans have the potential to change. It’s just as clear to me that we’re vulnerable to being afraid, and that fear can shut change down. We can forgo open minds and careful thought in favor of going along with the status quo, or protecting our tribe and our sense of belonging. Moreover, humans are far too diverse in culture, geography, histories and beliefs to get everyone on the same page.
Honoring diversity requires me to recognize that some realities of being human can lead to resisting, even rejecting, diversity. But how do I respond to that paradox, and still hold on to hope?
Not everyone can be persuaded to take up ideas and behaviors in service of a just peace and humanizing change, but that doesn’t mean people won’t change. So when persuasion doesn’t work, what will I do anyway?
It took more years than I’m proud to admit for me to acknowledge the human condition — especially its limits — and to ask what I’ll do anyway. I put much of my faith in education. I trusted the power of advocacy and nonviolent action.
And while my own small contributions and those of thousands of others certainly prompted change — that work hasn’t been enough. Fierce pushback remains against change toward a world in which everyone can thrive.
I’m with Anand Giridharadas: persuasion is powerful, especially under conditions of earnest curiosity and compassion. I’ll keep at it, and I won’t hold so tight to persuasion that I ignore the reasons it doesn’t always work.
Hope lies, I think, in seeing human reality clearly and thinking carefully about what will work anyway. Hope lies in acting on that thinking, risking failure, trying again. Sometimes that’s exactly what it means to not write people off; it’s insisting, in fact, on the possibility of change.
- Lucinda Garthwaite, Executive Director
References
“‘Giving up on the idea of persuasion is actually giving up on democracy.’” Adam Lowenstein. Reframe Your Inbox. Substack. Dec 11, 2022.
The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds and Democracy. (2023) Anand Giridharadas. Penguin Books.