No One Cares What You (Or I) Think

Christian Gabriel
Jul 20, 2017 · 6 min read

Perhaps one of the most egregious lies that American culture has insidiously spread among it’s populace is that everyone’s opinion is important, valid and worth being heard. The colloquial phrase “opinions are like assholes” gets tossed around, and yet we live in a society where now more than ever someone’s baseless, fact free and arbitrary thoughts on just about anything are allowed to masquerade as a worthy contribution to discussion and debate. We have multiple generations of Americans, empowered by different but similar conceptual philosophies, out in the world not only believing that their opinions are substantive but also that those opinions deserve to matter to other people. Of course this isn’t really anything new. It’s simply a modern iteration of a millennia old human tradition: being all up in other people’s business.

Religion has played a key role in structuring our society this way. As soon as religion was organized into governing, social and cultural power structures it was weaponized not only to police people’s thoughts and behaviors, but to ensure that people would police other people’s thoughts and behaviors. Concepts of “morality,” some based on simple tenets such as kindness, compassion and respect existed, but so also did arbitrary notions of “right and wrong” or “good and bad” that simply served the interests of the ruling class. Human sexuality and romantic relationships seem to have always been on the short list of heavily monitored, prescribed and policed behaviors, and modern human conflicts of religion versus secular still lean heavily toward these factors. Take two of the most enduring modern conservative/religious political battles which still have the power to swing American elections: abortion and LGBTQ rights. Both are at their essence rooted in the desire to control and police human bodies and those bodies’ sexuality. Religion at least derives its self-righteous desire for individuals to concern themselves with what other individuals are doing through reading, ignoring and (mis)interpretations of certain scriptures. As shrug-inducing as this may be to non-believers, at least religious zealots have actual text to point to in order to justify their beliefs, even if there isn’t much logic to judging others based on philosophies they don’t even believe in and then expecting them to endow any weight to said philosophies. An ongoing conundrum of modern American (and human) civilization indeed.

Separate from organized religion, and a much more recent human phenomena that operates in a similar fashion, stands the social media age. Whereas older generations were driven mostly by their various concepts of “morality,” mostly derived from one organized faith or another, social media has given rise to a whole new era of the false belief that anything that pops into one’s head is worthy of world wide broadcast. Working in tandem with the rise in popularity of the celebrity famous for being famous (not a new concept but given new life via the vast and wide-ranging medium of the internet), an individual’s social media acts as their own personal reality show in which the import of anything they say and do is validated by those who follow, “like” and comment. Similar in concept to religious proselytizing but without a literal text to back it up, mediums like Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat and Twitter encourage us to disseminate our thoughts (i.e. opinions and beliefs) to others, believe that they are real and factual based on nothing but our own sense of self importance, and to double down on them when challenged. We’ve seen this inclination play out all the way to the current presidential administration. Statements don’t have to be based on facts, evidence, experience or tangible knowledge of any kind, and when questioned or challenged for proof, they simply stand for themselves in a kind of infallible state of being. Phrases like “well that’s just my opinion,” “we can agree to disagree,” and “i said what i said/i think what i think” proliferate and guard against any need for a reality, fact-based discussion or analysis of anything.

This is not to say that people shouldn’t be allowed to hold different belief systems or that everything a person thinks and feels must be backed up with hard data and evidence for it to be “real.” The concept of “reality” to a certain extent is subjective and obviously in the case of many faith based ideas and philosophies there is a suspension of disbelief that one must adhere to. Yet the major overarching mistake that both many organized religious practices and the modern age of social media relevance make is to presuppose that something one person believes is or should be of any relevance to another. There are, of course, a few universal things that the majority of humans will agree fall into binary categories of “right and wrong,” Violence, terror, and cruelty are mostly regarded as evils of society, despite many religious/philosophical practices that delve into and make use of them in various ways. Forgetting those social ills for the sake of this discussion, on matters more pertaining to autonomous, individual concepts of behavior and desire rooted in the corporal, there is far too much concern woven into the fabric of our culture for what others are doing with their own minds and bodies. What religion one practices, who they have sexual or romantic relationships with and what kind of shapes those relationships take, how they clothe and decorate their own bodies, etc. etc. really should not concern anyone who isn’t directly involved in their life. Beyond that, one’s unsolicited opinion about things they have no involvement, experience, or knowledge of is irrelevant. It’s one thing to be aware of this and to offer one’s thoughts anyway for the sake of engagement, discussion or even conflict, if that’s your prerogative. But even with the ironic and misleading disclaimer “it’s just my opinion” so often in place to indicate that you don’t seek validation despite the fact that you are putting it out there, people need to be aware that in actuality, no one is obligated to care about your opinion and most people simply don’t or won’t. They’re living their lives unbothered by your objections to whatever they’re doing that rubs you the wrong way. Your belief system is not of any importance to someone who does not share that same belief system, and it’s a waste of your time and energy insisting that it should be.

The best way to present your ideas to the world is to stick to things within the realm of your own experience or education and to offer them in a way that doesn’t negatively judge others for thinking or living differently from yourself. And even then still, no one is obligated to care. Even if you are highly educated or informed on any given issue, you will never be an authority on another person’s life and experience. Part of your own journey through consciousness should be accepting that humans are vastly different from one another in a myriad of ways, and that we have little to gain from attempting to control, alter or suppress innate characteristics within each other, especially in the name of socially contructed moral or philosophical belief systems that not everyone shares. The only thing that happens when you put your negative, judgemental and baseless thoughts out into the world and then stand by them when challenged is that you look ignorant and closed minded. Far too many people are concerned with things that others are doing which they not only don’t understand but also have no direct affect on them whatsoever. It’s that lack of comprehension that compels people to want everyone to know that they “disagree” or “don’t approve” or “would never” and to believe that anyone else should give a damn about that. So many of the social and cultural clashes that continue to divide modern Americans from another could at least be lessened if more people simply worried about their own business, their own behavior and stayed in their own lane. To quote (sometimes problematic himself) drag icon RuPaul, “If they ain’t payin’ your bills, pay them bitches no mind.” It’s an ideology that can go both ways. And now that I’ve written this verbose diatribe full of opinions about how no one should care about people’s opinions, feel free to disregard all of it.

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Christian Gabriel

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Writer, Musician & Artist

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