Ask questions.
I was speaking to the person cutting my hair yesterday. Both of us were masked even though both of us are also vaccinated. As she began to cut, we lamented the apparent step backwards our country has taken thanks to the Delta variant.
“If everyone who could get vaccinated would get vaccinated,” I said. “We would be in such a better place.”
She paused. Seemed to measure her words. Then she said, “Yeah, but even though I’m vaccinated, I worry. Someone told me that the government is injecting microchips into our blood with the vaccines, and I think there are serious concerns about fertility. I had my babies already, but what about young women?”
I wanted to pounce. Debunk and disassemble every ridiculous conspiracy theory just uttered. Instead, I decided to ask a lot of questions. I’ve learned that instead of berating people like her, it’s best to ask questions and force them to explain themselves if you hope to genuinely change their mind. Force them to probe their thinking and confront the ridiculousness head-on.
“Where did you hear that?” I asked.
“A friend,” she said. “On Facebook, I think.”
“Is your friend a doctor?” I asked.
“No.”
“Does your friend have any medical training or background in virology or biotech?”
She laughed. “Not at all.”
“Have you heard about the Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns designed to slow our vaccination rates and further divide us?”
“No,” she said, sounding a little alarmed.
To her credit, she stuck with me as I asked question after question after question until I finally dared to offer a suggestion:
“Here is what I suggest:
Believe nothing unless it comes from your doctor. Anyone can say anything on the internet. Anyone can mistakenly believe anything in the internet. Anyone can repeat anything on the internet. Don’t try to parse the data. Don’t try to follow the science. Just listen to your doctor.
Your mom listened to the doctor and got you vaccinated as a baby. My mom listened to the doctor and got me vaccinated as a baby, too. Thank goodness. No measles. No polio. No hepatitis. Now it’s our turn to listen to the doctor.
Okay?”
“Okay,” she said, and I believed her.
She’s already vaccinated, so I didn’t add to the army of the vaccinated, but she’s also chatting with more than two dozen clients every day.
The last thing I want is for her to be talking about microchips and fertility issues with her clients.
I hated asking questions. My instinct is to pounce. Bring out all of my training in debate and all of my love for conflict and go to work. But it turns out that attacking people, making them feel stupid, and telling them that they’re wrong is not an effective way to change a mind.
It feels good, but it’s not going to change hearts and minds.
Asking questions may not work either, but it’s been proven to be more effective than berating and belittling. You need someone intelligent enough, wise enough, and brave enough to examine their own beliefs absent the power structures that put those beliefs in place.
I also got lucky. I was the only client in the salon at the time. Had other clients been siting in the chairs adjacent to me or another hair dresser been on duty, that conversation might not have happened.
I was talking to the right person in the right place at the right time.
But when you find someone like this – a non-ideologue who can question assumptions and challenge convention – progress can be made.
