My opinion about opinions

Part of my disillusionment with being a social media commentor on matters of national importance had to do with the relationship we start having with reality. People start expecting you to have an opinion on things you are still processing emotionally, or even things you just can’t have an opinion on because you lack information.

It’s a bit like all those news reporters who shove a mic down the throat of someone who has just emerged from a burning building after watching several human beings die horrible deaths and asking, “How are you feeling?”

Some time back, there was a gruesome assault and murder and it was being talked about everywhere in the media. I used to be more regular on social media then and one question that often perplexed me was “what is your opinion on this ghastly and horrible crime?”.

Are you new here? Do you expect me to say, “Actually, come to think of it, that was quite nice, wasn’t it”?

What opinion can anyone have about a mind-shattering tragedy involving the deaths of innocents?

In some cases, as I wrote in the beginning, the opinions they seek cannot be formed at all because there is a lack of information. Within minutes of a bomb going off somewhere, a horde of people will descend on you, asking what your opinion is about the tragic deaths of people.

I think the great aspiration we all should have as communicators of ideas is to make people realise that they don’t need opinions. They already have opinions. And if they are half-decent human beings, there opinion is the same as that of any other reasonable person.

What they need is information, because that is exactly what is being overshadowed by this incessant social media quest for opinion. It is information that will help them form an educated and valuable opinion. Without it, all we have in the name of opinion is half-baked reactions fuelled by emotion and pre-conceived biases.