Your Opinion Doesn't Matter (please leave it at the door)

Why would you want to have an opinion about everything? This question is almost heresy, maybe especially on a platform like Steemit. Yet it's a fundamentally important question, even though it hurts to ask it.

Changes in society

I'm a big fan of inclusion, of making sure that the world we live in, the government we have and the policies we make, create an equal and open society in which people can follow their own dreams, in a safe environment in which they do not need to fear for their lives or their livelihood.

Democracy as it is practised today, is one more type of government that makes sure people fall in line. It relies more and more on the idea that people feel heard, feel they are part of the process, feel they have influence on things. Those are all important aspects to democracy, and any type of just form of government. Yet with the increase of the amount of people, the broadening of the concept of who is to have a vote - at least compared to ancient Greek society where democracy was first thoughts of in these terms - we have hardly developed new mechanisms to manage these huge number of citizens.

Opinions are the fuel of today's society

Media has become one of the most important mechanisms to keep people engaged and involved, while also making sure to limit their influence at the same time. So yes, you have more ways to get noticed, to be heard, to form pressure groups, whatever. Media has become more and more important. But unfortunately not in the way that media is supposed to function: to inform the citizens. Sure, information is a part of it, but media hasn't been independent enough for a long time, to actually be able to call itself independent. It's become more about numbers. About money. Media writes for those who are willing to consume it. And what you want and what you can hear and read, is influenced by what you already think.

This is also what media concerns have been noticing. Opinions matter. Questionnaires are a good tool - even if you never look at the results. People want to be heard. In a world where an individual is increasingly hit by higher levels of loneliness, emptiness and meaninglessness, being heard and being seen count.

Steemit wouldn't exist without this desire to be seen.

And there is nothing wrong with this desire in itself. It becomes problematic when it trumps anything else. Being heard, going to a demonstration and wondering about your social media presence, should not be more important than addressing that particular concern you're protesting about.

Sharing your opinion is letting yourself be used

There is this big game going on, in which debates are held on a slogan-level, opinions are presented as important because they are an opinion - and every person counts, right? It doesn't matter to be informed anymore, by being someone, you count. Everyone is as valuable as the next person. We live in relativism heaven, in which only a few people are left who dare to say their opinion is more important than others'. Because that is fascism. The only way to say your opinion is more true, is if you have the largest group of equally valuable people behind you.

And in some ways this is true. When someone is killed, when someone is ill, when someone hurts - it doesn't matter who this person is, or what happened. That person matters, their pain matters. But when it comes to opinions, we should make sure not everyone's opinion matters.

Stop having an opinion

How can we do that? It starts by accepting there are things you don't have to have an opinion about. Take yourself out of the political game that is fueled by your opinion. The game of making people feel engaged, involved in the world, by having a discussion with friends about this and that. And yeah, it might be important how you vote every now and then. But statistics show that people already have their opinion made up, have already decided about how the world works. So when the moment comes for them to vote, the result is not surprising.

What would be surprising, is to stop having an opinion. To allow yourself to not already know what is going on. Some days ago I met a friend who is doing a PhD in climate studies, modelling how ice caps move, etc. She told me up front: "I don't have an opinion about climate change. I simply don't know enough about it." I looked at her, and understood completely. She was fed-up by hearing opinions about things, especially from people who don't know about... about most things. And by saying it like this, she made sure that people would understand that if she, having studied all this for years, cannot have an opinion, other people surely also cannot know enough.

It's not an easy task to stop having opinions about everything. We're wired to have them. in college, we had to write papers on a certain concept or theory all the time, asking to have a personal reflection about it, forming an opinion, even when as a freshman I was not in a position to really know that theory or concept. Marketing seems to be all about opinions. Job interviews ask for opinions - can you do this and this? Research shows that men get the job more easily, because they understand how that game works, and give their opinion about themselves more freely than women. Opinions are asked for everywhere. Leave a comment! Tel us what you think! And in the mean time, everything just continues as is.

Try to not have an opinion for a week. Or keep a journal about all the opinions you notice. Maybe it's impossible, and certain opinions, when kept to yourself, are fine. But it influences your behavior, it makes you choose certain things and miss out on others. Your opinions hurt not only others, but also yourself.

Of course you don't need to know anything about something to still be entitled to have an opinion.

But that doesn't also entitle you to share that opinion.

And no, this is not just my opinion. Or is it?