If you’re anything like me, you’re probably a very opinionated person. You will have views on all sorts of things, from the best flavour of ice cream to the true meaning of life. Now having such a vast array of opinions can be fun. It makes you a more interesting person, because you’ll have a unique perspective on things. It gives you something to discuss with others. It makes you more intelligent, as having strong opinions requires a lengthly and time-consuming thought process, where you spend time consuming and analysing information. Unless your opinions aren’t well thought out, in which case having them can make you seem ignorant or arrogant.
Like many of us, Epicurus was certainly opinionated. But he also believed that a pleasurable life derived from an absence of stress and conflict. On occasion, holding an expressing opinions can be a very fraught affair, in which neither you nor those you talk to come away having enjoyed themselves or learnt anything. The problem with society, particularly in polite and respectable circles, is that we are expected to have opinions on everything, however ill-informed our judgement really can be.
Which brings me to this week’s article, written by Lara Prendergast https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/07/why-must-i-have-a-strong-opinion-about-everything/. For Prendergast, her position as online editor of The Spectator means she is expected to have opinions on all of the topics her magazine covers. But in reality, it isn’t reasonable to expect her (or anyone else) to hold definitive views on such a vast array of subjects. Particularly if you pride yourself on your judgements being based on a great amount of evidence and reasoning, not mere assertion. Nowhere is this more true than in the academic world, where professors and lecturers are expected to know a great deal about their specialist field, but far less about anything else. It wouldn’t be reasonable to ask an economist their views on international relations, even if the economist had some interest in the subject. Even within subjects this principle applies; a 20th century British historian could not be expected to analyse the fall of the Roman Empire.
The importance of withholding an opinion has increased in recent years. Prendergast gives two reasons. The first is that the world has become more complicated, with issues being commonly discussed that didn’t even exist a few years ago. Now we are expected to hold views on everything from driverless cars to 3D printing. For the older generation, this can seem daunting. The world isn’t just becoming more complicated in terms of science and technology, but also in terms of social change. As the world becomes more globalised, we are expected to hold views on other cultures, religions and races, even if we’re totally unfamiliar with them. If you asked me about the experience of black people in Britain, I wouldn’t have the first idea.
The other problem with giving an opinion is the simultaneous rise of political correctness and hyper-partisanship, with has increased the social penalties for expressing the ‘wrong’ opinion. Social conventions about acceptable and unacceptable speech have always existed; many religious societies have long been intolerant of what they consider to be blasphemous views. But in modern society, political correctness has been secularised. If you say that abortion ought to be completely unregulated to a group of Republicans, or that illegal immigrants ought to be deported en masse to a group of Democrats, you can expect a harsh and occasionally violent backlash. If expressing a view will cause conflict, it may be better to just not express the view at all.
Prendergast comes to a few conclusions, all of which I agree with. People are encouraged to express opinions too hastily, when the priority ought to be learning the facts. Social media has created intellectual bubbles where people are used to only hearing opinions that concur with their own, so any that runs contrary to what they usually hear seems inflammatory. However, none of this means that opinions are bad. Like Prendergast, I love expressing and hearing different perspectives- it’s a large part of why I contribute to this blog. But at the same time, we ought to be refrain from giving our judgement more often. Opinions should be reserved for situations where they will be heard respectfully, by people well-informed enough to give a proper response to them. No one has the right to demand to go unchallenged, regardless of the situation. Opinions should also be only given when they can be properly explained. One of the pitfalls of social media, especially Twitter, is that this often isn’t the case. Moreover, out of politeness, the person who started the conversation on a topic ought to be given the last word. This is just so that discussions can be ended as genially as possible, instead of everyone fighting to get their say long after it should have ended.
One of the most troublesome things that have happened over the last few decades is the growing lack of respect for people who have devoted years to a subject, investigated it, mulled over it, attended conferences, prepared papers. They are called “experts”, and increasingly experts are reviled and their knowledge called into question. I am thinking particularly of climate scientists, but there are a host of other fields where knowledge and experience seem to count for nothing. The anonymity of the internet has allowed professional haters and naysayers to question everything that is postulated by the “establishment” or out of the so-called “swamp”. If a point of view that doesn’t fit your world view it has to be “crap”. Over the years I have had a sprinkling of these people on this blog, and it is impossible to debate or discuss anything with them. They just enjoy hating.
It is quite possible that your average ” expert” does turn out to be wrong – science is based on theories thst can always be changed as new information appears. That is part of the life of a scientist. The world is imperfect and our individual knowledge of any subjuect is imperfect along with it. But there should be nothing wrong with venturing an opinion on a subject and maybe learning something new and interesting from subsequent dialogue. One should never stop learning. The haters want to shut us down, intolerant as ever, like the Catholic Inquisition. Don’t let them; venture an opinion, but research it as much as possible before you do.