Jain philosophers in 7th-century India developed a doctrine called anekāntavāda — the principle that any complex thing has genuinely contradictory truths about it, simultaneously. Not 'partially true from different angles,' but fully, irreducibly true in multiple incompatible directions at once. They used this to explain why arguments between intelligent people rarely resolve: both parties are often right, just about different facets of the same real object. What's striking is how precisely this maps onto a pattern in human behavior that frustrates managers, negotiators, and anyone trying to change another person's mind. When someone resists an idea that seems obviously correct to you, they are usually not being irrational — they're perceiving a real feature of the situation that your frame doesn't contain. The Jain philosopher Haribhadra called the failure to see this 'ekānta' — one-sidedness — and treated it not as ignorance but as a kind of perceptual aggression. The practical consequence: before trying to move someone, the more useful question is 'what true thing are they seeing that I'm not modeling?' Not to be generous. Because they might be holding the part of the picture you need.

Think of someone whose resistance to your idea you've privately labeled as irrational — what would you have to believe about the situation for their position to be completely correct?

Drawing from Jain epistemology (anekāntavāda) — Haribhadra (8th-century Jain philosopher)