Opinions have become a kind of tag or label, a way to identify an individual, categorize them and then file them away under that tag or identifier. Opinions allow us to separate, or to use a word that should cause us to pause, opinions allow us to segregate each other. They allow us to put labels and handles on each other in some form of control of a conversation or worse, have a predetermined opinion about someone based on a few tidbits, hearsay or social media posts. Many are beginning conversations with a bias before they get two sentences into a conversation. We're all pre-judged or will be the minute we open our mouths.
This is a zero-sum approach, there are no winners. Given the serious nature of the things we are facing, no one wins with this type of approach. We will lose if we take this approach, in truth we are already losing. We're losing the one thing we cannot afford to lose, Our Humanity.
Opinions make assumptions, and sometimes huge leaps Evel Knievel wouldn't attempt. They're often based on a self-perceived notion of truth. "I know the real truth about what's happening and why". We have become the sole arbiter of truth, at least as we see the world. No one knows the whole truth and most likely we'll never fully know the whole truth. We are unable to know the truth on our own. What does it matter if we don't? I assume I've lost some readers at that last statement, "How can you be so naive?!" Or, dare I say it, I may be called a "sheeple". That last term is used to identify one as someone who blindly goes along with things or worse, it indicates someone who's blindly going to their own slaughter giving up all freedoms.
Yet here we are, posturing, postulating, and pontificating. Conversations aren't open, they're closed before they begin. No one is listening or hearing anyone else and everyone is talking at once. There's plenty of yelling, so much yelling that everyone looks like they're pantomiming, silently voicing their opinions amidst all the noise. A lot of noise and little doing.
We've reached a point where having an opinion about these great many things is a prerequisite to entering a conversation, even with neighbors. Voicing your opinion in this current milieu will result in you being categorized in such a way that your relationships will be adversely affected, so you might as well go in with guns blazing!
Opinions have become a battleground, one of total annihilation. This is largely due to a self-destructive attitude connected to a zero-sum game approach: If you agree with me, you are an ally. If you disagree with me, I will not "agree to disagree" I will destroy you, your life, and everything you hold dear and will totally wipe the earth of your putrid existence. You are the problem and I/we will fix that problem. There is little hope for a society that cannot talk without inflicting harm on itself.
Are we at the point of no return? Not yet. So what's the answer? The answer is both simple and complicated, difficult, selfless, and infuriating: Talk and listen to each other, without prejudice or bias. Then talk and listen some more, take a break, talk and listen some more.
You can still have an opinion about a great many things! "Walk a mile in someone else's shoes" was sound advice from my parents. That advice is dangerous, it will humanize those you disagree with, you've been warned. The result of not taking the time to talk, to have a coherent conversation as a society is the worst a society and its citizenry can commit, dehumanizing each other.
This is not naive, communication is incredibly difficult. Communicating to understand someone else is the most difficult of all since you will have to at some point, see the person across from you as human, equal to the treatment you believe you deserve. It may just change your opinion of someone. Crazy I know.
So, Talk to each other and then listen to each other. Rinse and repeat for as long as necessary.
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