I’d like to take a moment to thank all of you who voted for Oneway Purpose. I’d like to specifically thank Alex and Brett Harris of ‘The Rebelution’ for nominating and recommending me in the Best Canadian Blog (student) category.

Thankyou all!

“But that’s your opinion.”
 

In my opinion that is one of the most menacing comments which can be uttered. There seems to be some type of satisfaction in informing the speaker of what is obvious to any human mind. I am not innocent of the charge, as most of us. But what are the reasons that we bring ourselves down so far?

This statement usually stems only where, a) there is disagreement, b) one side has no more questions/answers, c) our cherished understandings are being challenged. The reason we say it is because we fear that the opponent does not fully understand the importance of that fact. It generally surfaces only where we feel the other is stating for facts what appears to us to be his opinion. But what impact does such a revelation have?

First of all, the speaker believes what he is saying to be fact, but is not ignorant of the actuality that he arrived there by his reasoning. You on the other hand, may not believe what he is saying to be a fact, but you are also not ignorant that he arrived there by his reasoning. You both have the last in common. According to the dictionary, an opinion is: “A belief or conclusion held with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or proof.” Therefore we can rightly conclude that an opinion is a belief which we have not been convinced of, because of the lack of positive knowledge or proof.

But there is a great problem with requesting the speaker to acknowledge that their view is an opinion. In fact it is fatal to any progress. We are asking the speaker to do what they cannot do, we are asking them demote this issue in their mind to a level from which we can discard it. We are asking them to put aside all the facts and proof for this understanding, simply because we cannot see it. We would feel so much more comfortable to hear, “In my opinion,” because, we could then discard the import of the message. Why? Because we then know that not only we, but also our contestant does not have sufficient facts for this understanding. It is somewhat of an encouragement in our choice to reject it. But this stems from only one thing—our dependence on another’s opinion.

Yes, in doing what we thought was rejecting opinion we have brought our self to succumb to the very thing we were fighting against. We have shown our dependence on the security of another’s understanding. We now feel safe, because another has agreed with us that yes, this is just an opinion; it is not supported. Therefore we have shown that the real reason is that we are insecure ourselves.

If we were not dependent on public opinion for what we believe, then we would not have the desire to inform others of this. We would collect the facts that we have been given, and draw a conclusion from them. We can come to the conclusion that their view is only an opinion, unsupported by positive evidence. We can try to bring some of our own questions into the picture to show the other person that they do not have all the answers. But to acknowledge what we are asking them to would deliver a lethal injection to the argument.

We have no business worrying about whether the person speaking has understood that he does not have all the facts. If we do, then we have lowered ourselves, we have showed our insecurity, we have shown that we are down and out, that we have lost without question.

As the speaker we have full responsibility to acknowledge that what we are saying is only an opinion if we do not have it fully supported by positive data. If we do have such a foundation though, we should not say it, but rather deliver the evidence which we have collected to the mind of our listener to decide for himself.

When we are asked to bring our understanding down to this level, we can reply that they have the full privilege to view it as such, but as for ourselves, we cannot until it has properly entered the definition of “opinion” in our minds.

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.—Elizabeth Cady Stanton

© David D. Boskovic, free to share, leave name intact, contact before publishing.