The value of opinions

As sentient beings we are all entitled to our own opinions. Recently this old rule of thumb caused a lot of trouble. But in the end, what’s the point in opinions? Are they a right or not? Which value they bring and when?

The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.

(Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Opinion is a very widespread noun which, according to a simple Google search means: a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.

Other definitions do away with the possible lack of liaison between facts and opinions. Since different sources have different but important nuances we’ll rely on etymology to get to the most original meaning possible (knowing that there is always a proto-root for each root, etc etc). Again, according to Google opinion is a middle English noun imported by ancient French opinio(n), which was in turn borrowed by the latin root opinari which means “think, believe”.
Latin opinari takes its form from op indo-european root (related to the eye), with the meaning to what I have in my eye.

It’s how I see, not what I see.

According to linguistic then, opinion is more about what we believe, than what we may just understand from real world investigation.

That’s the root of all the arguments between conspiracy-theorists and fact supporters, for example. To the latter saying you can’t just ignore facts, the former reply that everyone is entitled to her own opinions.

Now, this post is not about this kind of arguments (at least not those that spawn by a criminal misinterpretation of the “entitlement” concept by short-minded people). Instead I want to shake a bit the concept of opinion and see what happens: are opinions of any value? Why are they considered a right? Why are all so eager to provide our own, to the point that we tend to ignore others’?

Let’s go.

Belief

When we express our opinion we are exerting our right to believe. Believing is a tricky activity. As homo sapiens we are capable of a wonderful process: eidetic imagery, which is psychologists’ way to say imagine someone that is simply not true.

We can envision possible futures, invent gods, devise consequences and formulate hypothesis. I’m not aware of scientific evidence that other species are capable of eidetic thinking and I can speculate about it being present in other apes (some chimps are known to use rocks as rudimentary tools which may require a bit of cause-effect projection), but for sure the sole human species left to be investigated developed this skill as its primary success factor.

Invention is so inherent to humans that we can’t even consciously do away with it. Instead, we rely on it to interact with the world around us on a daily basis.
From an evolutionary point of view, our (so called) superior intellect means nothing more that tiger’s teeth or magnolia’s leaves: it is just an effective way to thrive in a competitive environment.

But it’s not just the ability to imagine that makes us so effective. In his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Harari speculates that sapiens managed to wipe away all other homo from the earth by their ability to believe in their inventions.

Beliefs made our species stand out of other hominids unable to such a feat, allowing us to setup large coalitions, held together by a common set of values.
While Neanderthals or Heidelbergs could elaborate, form strategies and hold people together only by mean of trust relations based on direct acquaintances, their Sapiens cousins may have convinced hundreds (or even thousands) of blokes to fight for an ideal. Despite this being in the field of hypothesis it must be said that no other species ever managed to find its way through the pacific ocean, up to abysmally small volcanic islands, on junks — just to mention one among many incredible deeds man performed.

Now, if we accept belief has its place at a building block of our humanity (evolutionary speaking) and if we accept that as long as each of us is entitled to keep her own belief (until proven otherwise), then expressing one’s opinion is a direct expression of our humanity.

On this we can state expressing opinions is a human right.

Is opinions a right?

Fun enough, the concept of right is another wonderful product of our eidetic imagery.
Think about it for a moment: what place in nature do human rights have?
Where are them to be found? Is evolution somehow aware of the very concept?

Not at all. Human rights are another invention of our hypertrophic frontal lobes; a conceptual device apt to sustain specific aspects of our society that we don’t want to get rid of.

For example, in most modern western cultures, which in the last century has been heavily influenced by the USA, freedom is among the most important aspects of society.
Freedom is what we are granted with by democracies. We seldom want to question our freedom and are the firsts in line to condemn those social structures that suppress freedom by means of inequality, violence, fear or religious subjugation.

So, to sustain democracies, we work in strict hierarchical structures (that makes us factually unequal), following public and private rules against which we can by judged (something we fear) and to respect which we can be coerced (even by violence).

Put that way, it doesn’t sound like freedom at all. Still western cultures generally accept this as the price of a structured social framework that keeps us fed, warm and able to freely engage in non-sustaining activities like art, music, sports and passive entertainment.
That very sustainability is reached by acting in what we call a free market, which is known to be competitive and mainly founded on accountability of players but is not really free and totally emergent as we like to believe.

Put it the way you want, it is only in this always-contradictory framework that we enjoy freedom. Or better said a set of “boxed” freedoms, that allow us to pursue happiness and satisfaction.

In this light those fundamental right that appeared to be a law of nature — or if you prefer a design feature of human being — appears more like a well defined social construct.

Sad news ahead: the same is true for all other human rights (the right to pursue happiness, or the right to be considered equals): they are nowhere to be found in nature. They are real because as long as enough people believe in them, our society may endure and thrive, gifting (some of) us with the boons of wealth, satisfaction of basic needs and resources to dedicate to non-sustaining activities.

At this point saying that opinion is a human right seems mostly like a circular reference: human rights are a component of our belief system, while opinions are mostly things in which we believe and systems of belief are sustained by opinions. Heck!

Still, there is an objective truth about opinions: nobody can prevent you having one. Its expression may be hindered or suppressed, while opinions may be (actually many are) induced, fed or even forced. Still, once you have one, nobody can just take it away.

This may be why, in a world of boxed freedoms, expression of one’s beliefs is seen as the most intimate and important display of liberty.

But when freedom is intended as the pillar of our social order, expressing opinions stops to be a right and becomes more of a duty.

True, right and opinion

We daily use the terms right and wrong in our common speech. Both terms are used in may occasions but where they really shine is education.

You did it right, you are wrong, this is the right response… we are often evaluated in terms of black and white, good or bad, right or wrong.

Sounds totally OK: saying that Alabama is on the moon is blatantly wrong.
Assessing that 2+2=4 is right instead. Well, as long as you are doing arithmetic and not rhetoric.

There are objective realities: things we as humans can sense or measure and on which measures all individuals easily build a massive agreement. Alabama is not on the moon, the earth is not flat, we all agree that there are stars in the sky. Let’s call these facts.

There are subjective realities: things we are sure about for ourselves but can’t be assumed equally sure for others.
Mint tastes good, leaving home brings sadness, Primer is a great movie. Let’s call these opinions.

There are then inter-subjective realities: these are those tricky things on which different people may agree upon, even if they are indeed subjective. On scale large groups of people such as a nations, companies or churches may assume those kind of realities true for everybody even if no measurable fact sustains them. In other words, those things may be treated as facts even if they form like opinions. Children have to be protected from harm, women are inferior, God created humankind to rule over the world, the Earth is flat, law is just. Let’s call these elements of culture.

I’m pretty sure some, even the more rationals of you, cringed at some items in my last example. I did it on purpose and sadly I had to invent nothing.

Being able to convince ourselves en masse, forming inter-subjective realities is exactly the feature we talked about earlier. As sapiens, we are able to spread opinions to such extent that we won’t discuss them anymore and accept them as facts.

Axiomatic inter-subjective realities are the building blocks of our many and different systems of belief and possibly, the most dangerous weapons man ever invented.

Systems of belief really need axioms as foundations of their existence: basic, indisputable truths on which to set the whole building.
Often those axioms are painted in black and white, true and false, right or wrong. But we should beware the power of such words: deeming something true or false is a thing, saying it’s right or wrong is different business. Still an astonishingly amount of educated people can’t spot the trap and fall into the fallacy of discerning right or wrong from status of truth.

It’s in this kind of confusion that lies the root of the vast majority of debates. Let’s dig deeper into this.

A double-edged sword

For each non metric discipline there is an argument around “the right way”.

Good music, errors in movies direction, bad writing.

Sometimes non-metric qualities can be placed on a scale thanks to common-sense. Funny enough, in Italian (my mother tongue) the expression for common-sense is buon senso, which directly translates as good sense, with an implication that what’s not common is not even good — he!

Let’s take “bad acting” as an example. Actors are supposed to play their characters in the most natural and believable way, thus bad acting may be a shortcut to express a non-convincing performance, something that disrupts our suspension of disbelief. Bad acting means casting us away from the drama, back on our couch gropping at the remote to change program.

But is the very premise to be taken for granted? Does “being a good actor” always resolve to “be credible”?

Jim Carrey’s Ace Ventura and The mask are both far from this definition of “good acting”. Still both movies had their share at the box; and Carrey proved in many other occasions to be worth a prize.

What we discussed with acting may be extended to all fields of expressions. Without jazz, frowned upon by classical performers we wouldn’t have Quincy Jones, and without him we wouldn’t have Micheal Jackson who was probably noise to the old generation, raised to the notes of Blue Moon. But Jackson wouldn’t have probably dressed as a wannabe thug for Bad clip, if it wasn’t for the noisy and immoral hair metal bands topping hit charts in the 80s, who in turn was the byproduct, formatted for the large public by savvy producers, of more “sincere” european and american efforts to express themselves with loud cacophonies that stretch the boundaries of musical ontology.

Many writers we must study in schools was considered bad writers at their time, while we now say “ahead of their time”.

In conclusion, there is no clear relation between “critics” (and I mean “professional opinions” by educated people) and success. Indeed, often the most criticized phenomena become the most popularly acclaimed.

And again in visual arts, writing, self-expression, high fashion… all the fields that may incur in common sense judgement but can’t be metrically defined are stormed by arguments about right and wrong, black and white, nay or say.

Why?

The most I think of it, the more the culprit appears to be skills.

As long as no talent is involved in performing an activity, everybody is socially allowed to try and fail without harming anyone’s ego. But if the average person wants to learn what Jimi Hendrix did from the top of his hat, that John Doe will have to codify Hendrix skills in a rational set, find a training path from zero to that set and sweat over the six strings for a long time.

When this investment is successful, then a rule is found. The word for what falls into codified rule sets is “canonical”.
Canons are the dogmas that sustain religions.
Religions are adopted systems of belief around eschatological topics.

The most effort we spend and the most successful we are, the more people may leverage our newfound method to meet their goals. And the most widespread the adherence to the method, the most indisputable the method becomes.

Again, this is the same mechanics that foster religions. That’s not to say that everybody studying Baker’s book for jazz guitar are zealots of a paranoid creed (only some). But way too many end up considering that “the right way” to play.
Our investment in learning and understanding form opinions. By these opinions we then judge the world from a self-referential (and self-involved) position.

This is the razor’s blade on which we constantly walk: we form opinions at a cost, then treat them as facts while they are basic components of our belief.

Coming full circle

To avoid ruinous pitfalls then we must always take into account that when we leave the easy path of factual, objective truths, we automatically step into the fuzzy territory of belief.

For sake of simplicity we can treat inter-subjective truths as facts as long as we remember that those so called “truths” are in fact widely adopted opinions (and I use adopted, not accepted for a reason).
Even a slight shift in culture, demography, generation or general context most probably invalidates the status of inter-subjectivity, reducing the item to a personal opinion.

Personal opinions are subjective truths and we are entitled to have one if and only if no fact invalidates it.

At this point, allow me a short digression.
Recently I’m awfully fed up of fights on totally disputable topics, where personal point of views rise to the factual status. I loved debate and learned a bit about how to make the most out of it. I used those skills to inflict more pain than I had the right to, in more then one occasion. Yet it wasn’t meant to be funny, not even during the controversy.
Then I met more and more people that seems to enjoy this activity for the sake of victory, and I fled back from the battlefield, not to return again.

This post actually started as a letter to myself after, exposing my personal opinion, I accidentally triggered a big flame. Probably I made my point with too much synthesis, making it appear like a sort of decree? Don’t know, but it always hurts.
Today, if you ask me, I’d eagerly live in a way less “opinionated” world…

But are opinions all that bad?

Opinion as a tool

Discussion on opinions should pass under the same lens.

As long as humans won’t develop a hive-mind, having an opinion will always be an objective freedom. The right to expressing it falls into inter-subjective beliefs instead, depending on cultural values.

To our western culture self-expression is a fundamental asset in perceiving our liberty. As long as everybody is entitled to speak her mind we are guaranteed to live in a democracy, sustained by the pillars of equality and respect for people. At least, we are guaranteed all of this as long as we keep believing in it, despite all the contradictions mentioned above.

On a more factual level though, sharing visions always proved a powerful propeller for every human society. Where ideas are the seeds, freedom of speech is the fertilizer.

But for what kind of crop? What do our society really harvest that would not grow without free speech?

Many would mention progress, development, growth, justice or some other word involving a desirable direction.
To me it all boils down to change.

Things change more rapidly when everybody can share inventions. And I venture into saying that opinions form the basis for all inventions: the ability to envision something that is not true. Yet.

Opinions also often come with instructions: constitutions, laws and education should help us remember how to make a good use of our opinions to foster common good.

Sadly, as every tool, entitlement to have and express own opinions may be abused, misinterpreted and may do harm. Widely adopted opinions wiped away entire cultures, subjugated, humiliated or killed people, sponged knowledge and fired wars.

But life, change and progress are not about individuals.
Should it be? Not really. In the face of the factual laws of nature, individuals are totally disposable.

Yet many modern cultures reject this in lieu of another take, more rewarding to our natural (thus factual) features: fear of death, feeding egos but also empathy and charity.

We can’t escape the slate on which nature paints its big picture. We can’t even break the boundaries of our humanity, that lead us to redraw the same patterns over and over, as history unfolds.
But we can shape the nuances of this depiction with different hues and brushes, leaving a distinct mark of our generational passage.

To this extent opinions, ideas and inventions are our brushes and pencils.

My laziness, my surrender to the cyclical nature of history, my feeling of being dust in the storm of the universe and my hate for conflict that often rise around opinions… all of this and much more make me say that the price is seldom worth the pain.

But this is just my opinion.