Know-it-alls.
With the world’s knowledge in your pocket is your opinion suddenly more important?
Whenever I am asked “what do you think?”
I always wonder “what does it matter?”
It could be that I suffer from a deep rooted self-esteem deficiency, however if that is the case it would be major news to me. Instead, I like to think my initial thought — my opinion is trival—makes perfect, logical sense.
Why should my opinion matter?
opin·ion noun \ə-ˈpin-yən\
a : belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge
We live in a world in which billions of opinions and (arguably much more importantly) billions of facts are in our pockets waiting to be downloaded with minimal effort.
So, if you are looking for a “belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge” why not take advantage of countless resources from which you can gather popular- aggregated- opinion? Certainly that will best serve your curiosity. Assuming, of course, you are craving opinion because fact is not available. You would want fact before you would want opinion, no?
It used to be that people longed to know things.
It used to be that you sought out others who would have the expertise to teach you those things; and that you would then be eager to share with others.
Now everyone (potentially) knows everything.
We long to know what each other thinks of everything we know.
What an interesting curiousity.
Of course there are a plethora of topics on which we have only opinion. These topics are the “great conversation starters”- the politics, religions, predictions, hypotheses, creative arts — but these discussions only ever result in one fact:
You really only care what you think. Well, that is until you decide you’ve meet someone who knows better than you.
See:
You really only crave the oppertunity to impress or be impressed, persuade or be persuaded, bother or be bothered, validate or be validated. Opinion offers little else. After all, what can one learn from just an opinion- except what you think? Which is either a belief others will share or not- nothing more.
Your opinion is fundamentally worthless to everyone but you…