Opinionated

It was intriguing to listen to two friends jocularly engage in an exchange about being opinionated. While their back-and-forth was in context of their discussion group, I was hearing it through a philosophical sense. Like what is an opinion? Why have one? When should it be shared? And more.

Someone once asserted that opinions are like personal flatulence: Everyone has them and they all stink except one’s own. Of course, that’s an opinion since the assertion hasn’t been—thankfully—empirically tested.

Essentially, an opinion is a person’s interpretation of information. It could be about food, religion, social-political issues, and a host of others. Opinion is not about truth, which resides in an elevated place. Instead, opinion is common, pedestrian.

With regard to everyone having an opinion, I’ve learned that’s not necessarily the case. I’ve talked with people who won’t take a stance—express an opinion—about substantive issues, despite them offering one about the social-political environment in their defense. Ironically, they generally consider themselves to be good citizens. Seriously?  

Publicly expressing an opinion is a recent phenomenon. Prior to the Enlightenment, people almost always lived under tyrannies. Whether in state ones like emperors, kings, and caliphs or ecclesiastical ones like popes, bishops, and ayatollahs, the ruler’s word was law. Other than in the Greek city-states where democracy flourished and Rome where the republican form of government was devised, expressing an opinion could be a dangerous enterprise. It didn’t become safe until the post-Guttenberg (printing press), post-Reformation  era. Even then, expressing an opinion often resulted in unpleasantries, like being excommunicated, burned at the stake, or stretched on a rack by Torquemada, the Spanish Inquisitor.

By the late seventeenth century, most notably in England and the Dutch Republic, it was becoming safer to express an opinion, albeit within certain bounds. It wouldn’t become part of the American ethos, however, until decades later, primarily because of the people we celebrate at Thanksgiving—the Puritans at Plymouth Rock—who were as tyrannical as the authorities they fled. Recall the Salem Witch Trials. Same story, different place.

It’s good we’re periodically reminded about our rights delineated in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness among them. But it’s also important to be reminded that with rights comes responsibility, especially during election season. Like being informed, thoughtfully forming an opinion, and expressing it in a variety of ways, from engaging in constructive debate or intelligent conversation—not a shouting match—to writing a letter to the editor.

Prior to forming and expressing an opinion, it’s good practice to research and build a credible, fact-based case about why you believe such and such so you can explain your positions without embarrassing yourself. Another is to trace your past to understand how and why your point of view evolved to what it is now. The reason is an opinion is not based solely on recently acquired information. It’s an outcome of a lifetime of experiences.

The foundation of democracy is an educated, informed, involved citizenry. It’s the reason Thomas Jefferson and crew worked to establish public schools where critical thinking skills could be taught, and the early twentieth-century reformers enacted compulsory attendance laws for children. (Plus, to keep them out of the coal mines and factories.)

You’d think that given the history of tyrannical governance, the current oppressive tyrannies in Russia, Iran, and elsewhere, and our history of courageous individuals, like Thomas Paine whose Common Sense propelled the Thirteen Colonies toward independence, Americans would value and protect their right to express an opinion. But that’s often not the case anymore. A new form of tyranny has taken hold over the past decade: Self-enforced silence when it comes to a healthy exchange of ideas in the public square. Many have become fearful of speaking their minds outside their bubble. That’s frightening and dangerous.

Although freely expressing an opinion had an inauspicious beginning in America, it’s become and remains the American way. Our democracy depends on citizens having conversations not just about which team will win the Super Bowl but also about issues like immigration, reproductive and voting rights, and whether we value our democracy so much that we’re willing to put ourselves on the line by voicing our opinions publicly and forthrightly.

Try it. You might ruffle a few feathers, but you might also prompt another to reconsider an untenable position. And in the process, maybe make a new friend.

My friends’ back-and-forth was, of course, in context of the standard meaning of opinionated, which means being stridently vocal about one’s point of view. But it made me wonder about which is worse: being opinionated or not speaking one’s mind at all.

When my friends’ exchange waned, I chimed in with, “You know, I wish more people were opinionated.”

But that’s just my opinion.