On the Value of an Opinion

I finished that last post in what, December? #

There has been a big gap between posts, yes, but I’ve stayed busy adding tons of dumb garbage to the landing page (and of course, actually doing things I get paid to do). Tentatively, and deep down I know that I’m lying, but I’m finished adding non-blog stuff to this site. If only I could stop finding extremely cool projects like this one! (I’ve already got a version of this running in the landing page, go check that out cause it was really dang hard to get running like I wanted)

All this to say I’d like to finally get around to writing more. I think about the writing process for the last post and although it took me forever, due to research and editing and the varied ruminating I had to do organize my thoughts, it was cathartic, satisfying and, I think, even fun. I find that it’s a meaningful practice to sit and break down how and why you actually hold an opinion, cause a lot of times, I’ve realized, you aren’t even sure in each moment why you tell people you believe something in the first place, or even IF you actually believe it, deep down. Not to mention the slightly masturbatory practice of pretending, if just for a moment, that your opinion matters and people care to know it. Let’s be real with ourselves, let’s be present with the truth –

at least as regards questions of being, the future, meanings of life, sports, politics, philosophy, interpersonal issues, and certain facets of social issues and other essentially unquantifiable/speculative/deeply theoretical topics #

– your opinion, and my opinion, are (broadly) unmeaningful, unhelpful, experiential, fleeting, biased takes on things which bear no resemblance to objective truth, and, further, have no substantiave bearing on any reality outside our own. Anyone saying otherwise is deluded, egotistical, and is out of touch with their own and others’ humanity. The reality that these things are true feels nihilistic on the surface, but plumbing its depths a bit revealed, for me, 3 practical conclusions:

1. that inevitably, there will be a large portion of people that disagree with you for reasons you feel incapable of understanding

2. that for all but one’s most foundational beliefs and values, one should in each moment have a loose grip on one’s opinions and be prepared to be proven wrong, and

3. that real wisdom begins with the understanding of how, for all one’s natural gifts, and resources, and education, and accomplishments, and respect, and recognition, we are infinitesimally small in the scope of everything.

To put it more plainly, that opinion that you hold and treasure and write to your local government representatives about and align with publically on social media and metaphorically vote into office every fourth year and advocate for via your grassroots organization that’s actually just a Facebook group, is wrong. Not because my grassroots organization/Facebook group which holds the opposite opinion is right, but because we’re both wrong. We’re both cursed by our humanity to see everything through the lens of our own feelings and experiences, and not the lens of truth.

But can you see the beauty there? #

If we’re both probably wrong about everything, then are the things that put us at odds with each other even real? Do I have a real reason to hate and oppose you if I genuinely recongnize that both our opinions on the subject are probably meaningless? I mean, there’s a plain difference between disagreeing with you by virtue of just not understanding your view versus disagreeing with you by virtue of your participation in or advocation for evil, cruelty, inhumanity, genuine oppression, or hatred. Everyone should obviously be prepared to stand against those things, but most of our disagreements aren’t about objectively bad things like genocide. They’re mostly about sports teams and whether or not we should give the government more money and how my life is harder than X person-variety because I belong to Y person-variety (which, let’s be real, is impossible to be an objective argument - no matter what groups you belong to, you’ll only ever have lived your life. Nobody will ever be able to legitimately understand what it’s like to exist in anyone else’s body or brain. In spite of the pop culture view, there no objective way for you to say your life is worse than mine or vice versa - the quality-of-life indicators that are measurable are incapable of capturing a complete picture of anybody’s lived experience. This is a long aside and warrants further discussion so I may expound upon this in a later post).

Point being, that if we can all agree that what we think about most things doesn’t actually matter, that feels like a great reason to grow closer to people, to lay aside arbitrary convictions that separate us, and to generally be more empathetic, loving, and compassionate towards everybody. It also frees us up to unite more fully and consistently against those things which are objectively evil, and to present a united front to genuine dealers of suffering and atrocities in the world.

That being said, the irony is not lost on me that there are absolutely disagreements on what qualifies as evil or opression, and the fact that this is precisely the line I have identified as being the one line we shouldn’t cross in abandoning our differences in opinion. Functionally this leaves us, in a lot of cases, no different than where we were at the beginning of this post. “Abandon your opinions that separate you from each other!” says Ethan, and you reply, “Well I was prepared to set aside my moderately-held opinion that abortion is a woman’s right in service of peace and civility, but that guy over there thinks that abortion is inhumane, evil, and genocidal, so in spite of my readiness to be civil, his unwillingness to, based upon your argument that his position that abortion, being objectively bad, is something he must stand against, leaves us still at odds!” The whole purpose of this practice has been circumvented in this case, and there are many like it. It’s certainly not like there isn’t a significant swathe of people that would read this post and say, “well, I hold pretty much all my convictions because I think the opposite position is evil, cruel, or inhumane, so by the merits of this argument, I have no reason to change anything.” To this, I would argue a few things.

First, why is it that your opposing positions preclude even just the ability to politely conversate the topic, or a cordial agreement to disagree? You may find yourself talking to a neo-nazi, and that’s certainly a situation that may discourage a civil conversation (it doesn’t necessarily have to!), but as it regards most interactions, you must recognize that even the assessment of an issue as being a question of good versus evil is an opinion that warrants its own scrutiny - more on that below. Second (and this gets at the essence of the first argument), I’d argue that those hypothetical readers haven’t necessarily taken what I have proposed to its logical extreme. See, every opinion you have is rooted in other opinions, down to a few fundamental, root beliefs upon which you found your entire existence.

How deep are you willing to go in questioning your assumptions? #

Of course, I’m not suggesting that everyone just let go of every single conviction they have in favor of some abstract concept of peace, or unity. There are unequivocally things that are demonstrably true and good or false and bad, and even for topics where there’s no simple objective/observable truth or falsehood, you may well find that your experience disallows you from seeing the other side as anything other than wrong or evil, and that’s ok.

BUT, #

really, how deep are you actually willing to dig down to the roots of your being? This is a practice that requires genuinely deep honesty, self-awareness, and some ego death, the combination of which I like to refer to as “self-skepticism”. I understand that a certain (probably negative) feeling probably starts to crawl down your back when I imply that one ought to have a default position of being skeptical/distrustful of one’s self, as many poeple are told throughout their lives to “follow your heart” and “trust your gut” - I agree with this sentiment as it regards things like safety, academic test-taking, and maybe business to a measured extent, but deep down, I think we all know it’s bad advice for the vast majority of life. Ask any divorcée or teenage parent where following their heart got them, ask a gambling addict what success trusting their gut has brought them! I’m simply arguing that when we choose to assume, as deeply as possible, that for the majority of situations, we could never be informed enough as to be convinced that our opinion is synonymous with the truth, and that we’re genuinely open to the possibility that we are wrong, then that’s when we start learning more, our social circles open up, the walls between us break down, and we collectively get closer and closer to agreeing on what matters and what might actually be objective reality, which must exist underneath our many layers of abstractions and assumptions.

On a practical level, what I’m trying to say is that I’m deeply convinced that most of our opinions are not good hills to die on in terms of relating to the people around us, and although they can certainly continue to be held, they broadly shouldn’t be a reason you excommmunicate somebody, and certainly shouldn’t be held so closely that you’re incapable of having a calm conversation about them. You may flatly disagree with this, rendering this entire piece moot - but for this article consumer, I would urge you to do some things before writing off these last few minutes of your life as a complete waste of time.

First, I’d urge you to try and take stock of the collective impact of the whole of your opinions, not even in the eyes of society, but just in your own reality that you’re living. What difference have your opinions made for you and for the people you love? I believe that for most of us, if we’re honest (and this includes myself as well) that there has been an impact, and it has been broadly a negative one. They’ve probably resulted in broken relationships, “other”-ing, cliquishness/tribalism, a constant simmer of frustration, unhappiness, mistreatment, general malaise, maybe even loneliness. These things may well be the consequence for aligning with the truth, and the truth probably should be worth that to you, but how can you be sure that what you believe really is the truth? Are you so confident in being right that the consequences are worth it? What are the consequences if you’re wrong? Ultimately, what good has come from holding them, for you or your loved ones?

Second, you should consider the why of your convictions. What biases could you be harboring, conscious or unconscious? Do you only believe certain things because people you trust espoused them? Is the belief tied to a culture you’re a part of? Is it just something that’s popular to believe in your friend group, family, area, or the time period you live in? Is it something you’ve just kinda always believed? Does it stem from a fear of the implications of what you believe not being true? If the opinion comes from outside yourself rather than careful observation and research and deciding for yourself, what makes the source of the opinion trustworthy? What are their motivations for convincing you of their opinion? What biases may they have and why might they be motivated to make you believe something that isn’t true? What is at stake for them if you don’t hold this opinion? It’s perfectly fine to have opinions that don’t originate with you (most of them probably don’t), but you must accept as well that there are countless entities out there peddling hot takes which prey upon your implicit, unearned trust and stand to profit from your acceptance of a lie as truth. These have existed throughout the course of history and will forever into the future - this behooves us to take the time to ascertain whether or not information suppliers in our lives have earned our trust, wouldn’t you agree?

On the first point, I’d like you to be sure that your opinion/belief/conviction is worth being unwilling to budge, and there are certainly beliefs for which a regular, upright, reasonable person should stand their ground in spite of any consequences. But on the second point - does that opinion hold up under scrutiny? Do you hold that opinion for a good reason? Has the source of the opinion proven themself trustworthy? If your belief survives this entire line of questioning, then yes, this is undoubtedly a hill to die on. But if we’re honest, we know that so many convictions, even ones that hosts of people base their entire lives around, would not make it through this filter.

More than anything, I encourage you to take stock of and vet your set of beliefs with some of these questions I’ve provided. If you earnestly, honestly do so, the meaningless ones will fall to the wayside, and the ones that matter and have meaning will be fortified and rooted deeply. Your spine will straighten and you’ll brim with truth, standing with confidence against those that peddle lies for profit, alongside your new friends who are also filled with thoughtful, meaningfully-held convictions and a passion for unearthing the truth!

…Y’know, if this was a perfect world. This only really works when both parties of an interaction subscribe to what I’ve proposed, and it’s unlikely even one party does. Even so, it’s probably good for all of us to at least regularly, soberly assess the reasons we believe what we believe (tl;dr I guess).

I recognize as well that this is all an opinion on the same level as any other. I encourage you to scrutize this take thusly, and determine its worth by your own metrics, without any influence from something that stands to profit off your beliefs (I certainly don’t). And then, should you subscribe to it, put it into practice and see if any good fruit comes of it. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?

The irony of my critique of the value of personal opinions in the form of an opinion piece aside, I feel the need to qualify all this with the encouragement that although this sort of self-skepticism can be confusing and scary, the ultimate result that comes out of purging your life of presumptive belief, dishonesty, and the lies we tell ourselves, plus renewing your confidence in the things which are truly important, can only be positive.

To that end, I want to keep writing here. Not because it matters, or because anybody cares, but because I want to understand myself better, purge lies from my brain, communicate and relate more meaningfully with the people around me, and perhaps brush up against the actual truth that accompanies recognizing meaningless convictions as meaningless (and conversely, meaningful convictions as meaningful). That seems perfectly reasonable.

Comment with your favorite lie you tell yourself.