Let's Find Positive Incentives

If we can.  I know we're almost all of us backwards and twisted and all melancholic inside at heart, or we strike when we feel most sensitive or we get in needless fights and find ourselves saying hurtful things we don't mean, even during the exact moment we say it.  Why is it that we are so wedded to the first positions we take?  Why is it that changing positions is seen as a weakness?  Shouldn't it be the case that updating one's beliefs based on new evidence is the very standard we should hold ourselves to in an ideal world?  I know it is far easier to come up with complicated and sophisticated reasons to feel bad, to change the objectives if one is settled, to find harm and abuse and righteousness.  The question is exactly the opposite, though, the goal, about unification and inter-subjective friendship.  Not everyone can be a friend, that is true, but for those of us who remain, why not look past differences even if the other person wins, just once?  What's the difference at the end of it all, if you win and make someone else miserable, anyway.