Whenever I first read about what dialectical materialism is I didn't get it because it's like "that's how thinking works, duh. How else would you do it"? I've always thought that way, to the point that I struggle to think any other way. Idealism always made me extremely frustrated and confused and feel like the people using it had suddenly lost their mind. Even as a kid who didn't know what any of these words meant that is how I felt.
I figured out enough as I grew up, but I'm still not completely comfortable around people who think the way most Americans(and Westerners in general) think.
It may not be the dialectical materialism exactly that people I can more closely relate to believe in, but just the fact that they can think coherently, and consistently think coherently. They won't just accept contradictions without figuring out where they meet. If you point out a contradiction they can talk about it, they don't assume you have some special motivation for asking questions and begin searching for said motivation, ignoring what you said in the process.
I have a feeling there is some theory or something somewhere that would give me the vocabulary to talk about this more clearly. I'm struggling to find terms for these concepts.
What's up with that?
Sorry for the late reply
Yeah I don't disagree, conversations can both change minds and be a learning experience. I just had the absolute worst 'radical' takes only a few years ago and was arrogant, just sucks eventually being a dick about things you're not even sure about. But on that note, my uncle's wayy more open to explictly leftist shit these days, it just took being more open to his POV as well. He's definitely starting to come around to the 'poverty is the root of crime' thing, and in my experience once that sticks it's hard not to come around to a politics around eradicating poverty. We'll probably never agree on everything but still, he's at least somewhat closet lefty now.