We tend to look for things to validate our own experience.
It could be what we like, or the way we go about business, articles that say things that we agree with, political positions, sides of a controversy like Ferguson, the way we do church, etc. We say things like, "I have always thought that..." to help validate something about ourselves.
It is more difficult to look for things that we don't like or that come from a perspective we don't understand or isn't 'like us'.
Perhaps, in doing this, we are hoping that we are right, that something is true about us, that we can get that confirmed. Perhaps this will increase our standing or get us closer to something else we are wanting even more.
Here's the thing, we must be willing to set aside our demands for validation. Though we will always need some of it (to function as human-beings), if we are or become unwilling to see things from another person's point-of-view, we will doom ourselves to the inevitability of violence against others. We can see this happening at nearly all levels of relationships -- inter-personally, in families, with our neighbors, within our communities and country, and between nations.
