Changing people's minds

When I was an employee union organizer a million years ago, I was taught that there are two kinds of belief systems.  

One is rational/intellectual.  If you provide the proof and facts, then you can change the mind of a person like this.  

The other kind of belief system is simply belief - not based on facts, just based on what a person “believes” in their heart to be true because of how they were raised, or taught, or just want to believe.  This is the tough one - you have to grab people like this by the heart in order to change their minds.  It hard because it upends their entire belief system, and they don’t necessarily want that to change.  

Persuasion is very tricky, and requires a lot of listening and appealing to other parts of their belief system (love, faith, and other non-rational beliefs that guard their mind from change.)  

Cold

It is actually cold in Central Florida right now. It was 26 degrees F (-3 degrees C) when I woke up this morning at 8:00. I have yet to do the walk around to see what survived this bitter night, but the azalea's out the back door look pretty sad. The flowers are on the ground, or hanging limp. They are spent. We'll see if the buds are lost over the next week.  

Still, I remember the first killing frost of years gone by in Upstate New York.  Everything was beautifully alive in the evening and frozen dead the next morning.  This wasn't that.