Your Sunday Sermon
February 24, 2019
Today’s Sunday Sermon: No, You’re Not Entitled To Your Uninformed Opinion
“All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
Repeat after me: Just because we don’t personally like something does not make that thing wrong, untrue, or bad.
In a world now occupied by pundits, personalities, and OpEd’s disguised as articles, many people have a hard time distinguishing facts from a personal judgement or preference. Here’s the thing: Opinions are subjective, whereas facts are not. Opinions can be formed based on rumor, propaganda, edited videos, hearsay, and actual fake news. Facts, on the other hand, are based on evidence, science, studies, research, and statistics. When we dismiss evidence because it doesn’t jibe with our personal biases/opinions, we are doing ourselves a major disservice, because when we can’t be critical of our own pre-judgements and biases, we cannot grow and learn. So, nope, you cannot disagree with presented evidence and facts and then say, “Well that’s just my opinion!” Facts don’t give a fuck about your opinion.
“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”
― Harlan Ellison
You’re entitled to an opinion when it’s a personal preference. Your opinion could be on whether or not you enjoyed a movie, whether pineapple belongs on a pizza, or whether green is a better color than blue. We all have different tastes in music, art, cars, food, colors, fashion, etc. And that’s great! Yay for diversity! That being said, your opinion should never dispute evidence. Your opinion should never trump facts, even when you’d like it to.
As I mentioned last week, “Some of you really want to build TheWall® but, when presented with evidence such as fewer southern border crossings in decades, VISA overstays outnumbering border crossings, a majority of drugs coming through legal ports of entry, and the fact immigrants commit less crimes than US born citizens, you respond, “Well, that’s just my opinion!” Here’s the thing: My opinion of you is that you hold racial biases that you may not even be aware of.”
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
― Oscar Wilde
We’re so easily offended, so busy playing defense, so put off by other people simply for thinking differently than we do, that we’ve become too quick to defend our personal beliefs and, ironically, end up taking everything much too personally. We’ve come to dismiss facts and evidence in order to continue to support our own biases. Again, this is dangerous because we cannot become better people when we refuse to learn. Having an open mind isn’t a bad thing; How many times were you reluctant to see a movie, go to a concert, catch a play, try a new food, buy a new album, or go on a date only to be pleasantly surprised? How many times have you been wrong about something or someone in the past? Increasingly, our own anxiety is getting the better of us, and this has lead us to believe that it’s better to stick to what you know instead of actually finding out what’s real and what’s imagined bullshit. We’ve become insulated and insular, we’ve become skeptical and sketchy, we’ve become defiant and resolute, and we’re really beginning to become annoying AF.
“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions.”― Albert Einstein (Essay to Leo Baeck, 1953)
Opinions can either be based on facts or emotions: It’s up to us to decide which. Personal PREFERENCES are based on emotions. Sometimes we love or hate a song because of a memory, we like a certain color because it makes us happy, we prefer the lake over the beach, we decide we like chocolate over vanilla. We run into trouble when we start to believe our opinions are actual FACTS. “Trump is the best president ever!”, for example, is not a fact (ask any historian), it’s an opinion based on emotions, based on your personal preference. It’s up to us to examine those emotions and then carefully weigh them against the truth. If we allow ourselves to exist on a steady diet of fear, anxiety, paranoia, or propaganda, we must ask ourselves why we are afraid of seeking and knowing the truth. What are we afraid to learn about ourselves? That we may hold racial biases? We may be easily conned? We might not be as smart as we think we are? Good! That’s how we learn, damn it.
When it comes to having conversations or debate, we have to at least agree to the facts. We are never going to find solutions until we can agree to believe science and fact. Only then can we form opinions on how to best solve situations like war, hunger, poverty, climate change, education, immigration, income inequality, and access to healthcare. These are things which affect us all, no matter our race, religion, political party, or gender. Therefore, if we are going to evolve together we must learn how to have nuanced conversations and debates together.
Unfortunately, we tend to believe only what our inner circle tells us to believe whether a church or mosque, sewing circle, political rally, or news show. According to a recent PEW study, both Republicans and Democrats are more likely to think news statements are factual when they appeal to their side — even if they are only opinions. In other words, we want to have someone back up our emotions so badly, we believe things to be factual when they are, indeed, not.
Take, TheWall®, for example: If we can agree to the facts about border crossings, asylum seekers, and visa overstayers, (and the actual facts and statistics are plenty) we can then discuss what may be the most practical solutions to solve the problem and then get the problem solved. This is how adulting works. We do it all the time! Our shower backs up, we investigate why, we find out there’s a hair clog, and then we decide if we’re going to fish it out or use Drano. We get to the bottom of it first and seek the truth, and THEN we figure out how to solve it. Can you imagine if homicide detectives could just form opinions instead of collect evidence? How about scientists? Your doctor? Your teacher? Your boss? If you demand the truth for only SOME things which directly affect you, but ignore the truth when it doesn’t suit a personal opinion, you’re not only a hypocrite, you’re an asshole. If you went to the doctor’s office and told your doctor about your symptoms and your doc said, “Well, you look good to me!” would you be okay with that? Or would you rather have a doctor who gives you a check-up, runs some blood tests, and then makes an educated diagnosis based on all the evidence? If your answer is the latter, then congratulations, that means you’re not totally hopeless! (Pro-Tip: If there is empirical data to back something up, then it is a FACT, not an opinion. You may think it should be something else, but that does not change it). No matter how badly we want to, sometimes we cannot wish things away that are real, even when they make us uncomfortable. If that doctor came back with a cancer diagnosis, that truth might hurt, but science could save your life with treatment. Again, first we must believe in science and fact.
This week, try to have constructive conversations rooted in research, evidence, and fact. Remember that your opinions are personal preferences based on your own reality, and that you help create and perpetuate that reality. Find out why you do that. Gather the facts, and if the facts still make you feel uncomfortable, ask yourself why. Then, get to the bottom of your beliefs so that you may build yourself up. We can only contribute positively to this world when we become better humans, and we become better humans when we stop being lazy, quit making excuses for our biases, and start doing the work it takes to live in truth and power.
READING CORNER:
http://researchguides.njit.edu/evaluate/bias
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