Useful Fictions: Everyone's the hero of their own story, 2025-June-4 by Cate Hall

But if you do want to persuade, you have to offer people an alternative narrative. A new heroic story they can inhabit. With some emotional intelligence, you can make someone feel as if you’re not a villain mocking them, but rather, a sympathetic helper who can bring them new information. After all, many heroic plots involve the hero breaking free from a false allegiance, with the help of an unlikely sidekick who alerts them to some deception.

In fact, this is maybe the only approach that allows us to make progress. You will never find the bottom of people’s willingness to change their factual views about the world in order to maintain their self-image — the last 10 years have been a lesson in nothing if not this.