Accepting the 10%. The premise behind this phrase is not discounting people who share 90% of your views based on the ten they don’t. Basically people have a tendency to find and focus on the points of disagreement rather than the commonality. I’ll show you why this is bad and how to try and overcome this tendency.
Not accepting the 10%, focusing on the 90% that I do agree with is something I even struggle with. It’s a concept I am trying to make myself aware of and ensure that I’m not letting it creep in. In many cases there are people who you share many of the same beliefs with and one big difference is all it takes to evoke the “Your different I hate you” response”. This only serves to further divide us all.
I first heard about this from two podcast I listen to. Paul Wheaton explained it best in one of his podcasts about a friend of his. They both shared many same ideas but they had one different one out of hundreds. This one difference of opinion caused a huge rift with his friend and eventually caused the end of a friendship.
Our world is in pretty bad shape and such divisiveness will not allow the radical change needed to keep us from turmoil. It allows us to be tricked and led by a government that cares nothing for us. People that otherwise would unite to cause a positive change divided because of something petty.
As a personal example recently I was out on a first date and the girl started talking about politics. I sorta wanted to avoid the topic of politics, which suck, because I didn’t want to rant. She started talking about her being very liberal…at this point I felt myself trying to dismiss her based on the one difference. A small political difference which should not be a big deal since I don’t care much for politics anyway. Well I caught myself thinking that way. Realized i was checking out based one the 10% and forced myself to stop it. To remain open minded and not throw out the 90%. It turned out to be a good idea too. The date ended up being pretty great and I wold have never know had I focused on differences and not the similarities.
So when someone say’s something you don’t agree with and you feel the focus switch to that difference, Stop it. Realize that because someone does not agree with you 100%, which only a drone would, that does not make them wrong. If more people did this focus on working together the future might have a much brighter view.