Get Out of Your Own Echo Chamber

Affirmation feels good.  We all need more of it, both receiving and giving.  No one would ever say we should be stingy about affirming and being affirmed.

However.  There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.  Not that we should be sparse in giving and receiving affirmation.  But that we should be careful when we knowingly or unknowingly sort ourselves in ways such that all we give and receive is affirmation.

Just about all of us respect, appreciate, and are willing to fight for diversity.  And yet part of diversity is diversity of perspectives, and not just the "I accept that people think differently from me" but also the "I'm going to actually take a moment to understand the world from someone else's perspective, at the very least to emerge with a deeper appreciation of that perspective and perhaps also to have my own perspective shifted in some meaningful way."

As you know, this is something that is very important to me, important enough that I am very diligent about what I absorb in terms of information, instruction, and human interaction.  I am a practicing Christian who reads mostly non-Christian (and a fair number of anti-Christian) books.  I am a registered Republican whose media consumption and social discourse is mostly with Democrats.  And I am a second generation Taiwanese American from the Bay Area suburbs who interacts with just about every other kind of person besides people like me. 

What about you?  It feels good to have your own identity, beliefs, and hunches affirmed by information and people that back you up.  But what are you doing to get out of your own echo chamber, to stretch a little, and to tap into what's good about diversity?