In the Pulitzer Prize winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird , the middle-aged lawyer Atticus Finch taught his daughter a simple trick to get along better with all kinds of folks.

"You never understand a person until you consider things from his point of view," he inspired, "or, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."

But the real problem is that we have to make sure we've completely shaken off our feelings and dogma before we can really climb into someone's skin. Try as we might, we just can't, most of the time.

And is that all? Not really. We can try Atticus' trick for same-sex marriage and – well, yes – many of us, I suspect, simply find it hard to feel connected.

To the teaching of Atticus we must now add a "fly on the wall" position, a position where we are a neutral observer. From there, we can look at both ourselves and others, and find out what's going on between us. That would then give us a new perspective, somewhat like Gregor's metamorphosis in the story by Franz Kafka.

I think.