We all live inside an amorphous and sometimes conflicting cloud of opinion of our own making.
People rarely change their opinions, and we are usually making a mistake when we set out to change one. People hold tight to their opinions and often will defend those opinions to the death.
The great writers and the best minds have often written and spoken about it.
John Stuart Mill, a champion of libertarian ideals, argues in On Liberty that, even when wrong, opinions eventually lead to progress and truth. His Harm Principle, that people should be free to act and think as they please as long as they do no harm to others, is excellent until an opinion fist collides with our collective chins.
Emerson, first and middle name not needed, wrote in Self-Reliance “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
Having a personal voice is celebrated in Virginia Wolf’s A Room of One’s Own.
Let me not be so foolish as to be a fly on the face of such great people, but we have entered into an age where opinions are often lethal. I’ll pick on Ted Kaczynski as one of way too many recent examples.
What we need are yearly classes in reasoned debate and discussion.
Proposed new school curriculum: Why our opinions should be more like a sponge than a brick!
PS:
Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”
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