In acknowledging this within ourselves, it allows the possibility for us to drop our biases occasionally and pay attention to something without interpreting, with a beginner's mind and a child-like openness, in order to get a sense of what things are at their essence.

It's useful to notice that we go through life with deeply ingrained biases - that we rarely or ever see things with pure objectivity.

What forms your interpretation? The conditioning you have experienced throughout your life, which includes the stories you carry in your mind about how life is.

This is not a blanket criticism of all apologists, many of whom may be well-intentioned. This is intended to help those of us on the receiving end of their work understand that persuasive techniques are being purposely used on us in order to add us to their camp.

The whole process is designed to push you into the conclusion they want you to reach, and add you to their number of converted followers.

They are ready to counter your objections with answers they have prepared in advance. If possible, they will leverage your emotional needs or vulnerabilites to their advantage.

Their task is not to provide unbiased data and allow you to draw your own conclusion. The method is to advocate for points that support their ideology, and strawman or ignore ones that don't.

Intuition is a deep knowing that comes more directly from timeless wisdom. It is inherent in every person, but often goes unnoticed due to the noise of daily drama.

As a person becomes more aware of who they are below their surface existence, the more resilient and capable they become, no matter how turbulent things may be at the surface.

But the deeper you go below the surface, the calmer the water becomes, as surface
disturbances like waves and wind diminish with depth.

For a person, the surface includes all the ever-changing attributes of thoughts, feelings, the physical body, and life circumstances.

Exploring the validity of different viewpoints is one thing. The clash of threatened egos is a very different thing.

If they do, it may or may not have anything to do with the validity of the viewpoint; it may be an indication that the person derives their sense of identity from the viewpoint, and their ego is being threatened by the challenge.

Either way, the conditioning someone receives early on will greatly inform the thoughts and feelings that inform the choices they make later on.

Or, it may have the effect of creating a deep attraction to the same kind of environment, and finding ways to recreate it through adult relationships and affiliations because it feels like "home", for better or worse.

It may have the effect of creating a repulsion against that kind of environment and being attracted to something very different from what they were raised with.