THE MAN ON THE other side of the table was absolutely certain. He knew how the Iran war would end, he knew why it started and he knew how it could have been avoided. He was not offering an opinion - what he presented was the truth; not his version of the truth, mind you, but THE truth. He knew he was right.
I didn’t spend much time thinking about what he was saying - I’d have to do a lot of research before I could agree or disagree, and even then I might not come to a conclusion - but I wondered for days afterwards why he was saying it in such an absolutist way.
And then three questions began to form in my head: why do people have opinions in the first place, why do they feel the need to broadcast them and what happens if you simply choose not to have an opinion at all?
Opinions come unbidden to the human mind: this food is good, that man is scary, she’s pretty … and they’re helpful cognitive shortcuts for survival and decision making. They also tend to be emotional - rapid responses to how something or someone makes us feel. We are an emotional species.
We are also a tribal species, and opinions help us determine which tribes we belong to. Imagine two teenage girls sitting on a bench in a park. The taller one says, out of nowhere: “That Tracy … I never liked her.” The shorter one replies: “Me, neither.” And in this way they create a bond: the tribe of those who dislike Tracy. Real friendship often starts with exchanges - even negative exchanges - just like this one.
Consider also the man who posts an attack on ‘Rachel from accounts’ over the current Chancellor’s handling of the UK economy. The language he uses suggests frustration and even anger (perhaps over what he perceives to be a loss of agency and control). There is little in the way of hard fact in his post - it’s an emotional pitch. The reward is the fleeting creation of a like-minded community and a partial validation of the author’s views, which delivers a sufficiently satisfying dopamine hit to encourage repetition in the following days. Emotion - especially negative emotion - fuels social media.
Opinions exist on a very broad spectrum from the clinically rational to the profoundly irrational, and everything in between. And they differ because no two people have had the same lives. We are all products of our values, beliefs and experiences - and they’re all different, which is one reason why being a member of a community with similar values and beliefs is important to us: it provides companionship and security. We trade opinions to find out who is with us, and who is against us - and in that search we are subject to our own beliefs and cognitive biases. Hard facts can actually get in the way, and are likely to be dismissed if they don’t support the currently owned opinion. That dismissal is so common it has a name - confirmation bias.
So far, so good. Opinions help us make quick decisions based on our beliefs, values and experience, and voicing opinions can help us find a community of like-minded others to provide validation, companionship and security (a process made easier by social media, which specialises in the creation of tribes, or ‘echo-chambers’ to use a more pejorative term).
But is there any value in not having an opinion? The Stoic Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius certainly thought so. In his Meditations (book six, section two) he writes: “You always have the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.”
That phrase ‘to trouble your soul’ hints at the downside to holding and sharing opinions: it can cause stress, especially when you don’t agree with the person or persons ‘forcing their opinions on you’, to use a now archaic phrase. Disagreement often leads to conflict. And even the expectation that you should have an opinion can be a cause of stress.
True, saying ‘I don’t know’ can lead to more vigorous attempts to convince, which is why I often say ‘I’d have to do a lot of research before I could agree or disagree, it’s a complex and rapidly-changing issue’.
In a long career, I have often interviewed people whose views I disagreed with. As a rule, I kept my peace, and didn’t argue. It was their interview, not mine, and my task was to accurately record what they were saying, not to try and change their minds.
In many cases, my lack of disagreement led the interviewee to the conclusion that I must therefore agree with them, which was interesting and occasionally useful. And, yes, I sometimes became friends with those whose opinions I did not share because, at heart, they were good people. You don’t have to go tribal - us against them - it’s a choice.
The core to having fewer opinions lies in the recognition that not everything needs to be judged by you; not every statement requires a response. One can merely observe. This isn’t ‘sitting on the fence’, which is usually a sign of indecision: it’s an active decision not to participate. Of course, there will be some issues about which we are passionate, and we do have a right to our opinion and sometimes even to act on it - but when it’s an issue over which one has no control, it’s often a lot more relaxing to simply sit back and watch.
And that’s precisely what I did with the man across the table. His certainty was interesting even if his views were at odds with the published opinions of most analysts and leader writers, but I didn’t think it required a response from me. I took Marcus Aurelius’s advice and left it alone.
