Being open minded is when you are able to consider ideas that lie outside of your social/cultural/religious sphere. In order to be open-minded, you must be aware of your own bias as well as that of the person/entity who is presenting the idea to you.

All in all, it's a lot of work to be open-minded. It's much easier to have knee-jerk reactions.

The ability to consider any possibility or idea, no matter how much it disagrees with your current worldview and/or experience.

Being able to realize that just because you like and dislike certain things, that it doesn't mean it's&that way for others.

Most of all, it's being willing to accept people who are different from you without deciding that there's something bad about them just because it's different.

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."
-- Terry Pratchett, "Diggers"

It's hubris to think that you already know everything that there is to know, so it's important to be open-minded about new ideas. But that doesn't mean that you have to agree with or incorporate them. People can be still be wrong, after all, even in this enlightened age.

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