Opinions!

"De gustibus non est disputandum" 1

There is no denying someone saying, "My favorite opinion is mine," just cause there is no comparative metric for what is a good or a bad 'opinion'. It is akin to matters of taste.

Our (and most necessarily mine) understanding of good or bad derives so much from external influences that our native (and not innate) sense of it is often lost. This affects everything from liking chocolate over pistachio ice cream to liking Murakami over Llosa's writing (I am partial to the latter in both instances). Of course, our belief systems are not eternal reified structures but are constantly updated to include an ever-increasing diversity of experiences and priors. But are these ever-expanding external stimuli drowning out our own understanding of our own lived experiences? As much as it sounds ironic or rhetorical, it does lead one to ask, what does that balance (even if it is precarious) between expanding consciousness and preserving our individuality and criticality look like? 

In the decades past, when people lived narrowly (by which I mean when they spent their whole lives moored to one place or anchored to one job and the like), they confronted fewer priors. Sure, there was less exposure, but the upside was more opportunity to find one's inner beliefs and interrogate one's assumptions and presumptions about all things big and small. People were critical because they had the time and had fewer things they could critique.

Now, we no longer have the luxury of time to be critical, paradoxically, because everything needs critiquing, and this universe of everything is ever expanding and our cognitive capacity is not (at least not at the rate we can keep up). Our lives are busy, and we constantly learn so much about the world that we forget to learn to be introspective and self-informed with our own criticisms. Now, we take shortcuts. In many instances, people adopt the critical positions and convictions derived from the exegeses of anyone as long as they think it is accessible to them but not to others. In simpler words, they think that if they understand one person who no one else does, it helps them feel informed, and they become devoted to them without even thinking about whether they agree with their premises and explanations at all. They do not want to put in that extra work (I mean, who has the time!). 

But one can argue that people can be very persuasive, and haven't we all been victims of this persuasion (for example, who has not bought winter coats for a trip to Thar desert!)?  I concede that this is the way of words, in that words can help create, distort, or suspend reality. I also agree that we also understand our world through language, and if our very medium of understanding reality is deceptive, how can one ever understand reality? So, we are not an unthinking generation whose metacognition is in decay, but simply a difficult reality we must live with. 

But with the last part, I emphatically disagree. I think this has been a 'forever' issue that we homo sapiens have lived with, and yet, for most of our existence, we have been intelligent enough to have our own voices within, so why this excuse now?

"I like criticism, but it must be my way." Mark Twain 2

Date: 16th September 2024