Having an Opinion is Overrated
Lately I’ve been on a mission to drastically cut back my social media use, (and tech in general).
There are countless benefits to quitting/reducing social media use — Better mental health, improved focus, more free time, increased creativity — but one of the benefits I learned really got me thinking.
I heard it from Cal Newport, who’s well known for speaking on this topic. He’s an MIT professor, and author of multiple books including Deep Work and Digital Minimalism (go figure).
Anyway, in a recent episode of his podcast he gave a list of compelling reasons to quit or reduce social media use, but you know which one struck me the most?
“It reduces your sense of self-importance”
That’s right.
He went on to explain that reducing your social media use moves you away from the idea that you have a legion of people waiting to see your next post, or hear you chime in on every issue going on in the world.
And that’s exactly what I want to focus on…
We don’t need to have an opinion on everything that goes on in the world
… but social media convinces us we do… and it’s exhausting.
The result is people shouting (virtually anyway) their opinion on every issue that arises.
Whether it’s politics, health, parenting, war, or even the lives of celebrities…
Everyone thinks they need to voice their unique opinion on an issue, and what ends up happening is a lot of nonsense being spewed left and right.
Look, there’s no inherent problem with having an opinion. I’d argue it’s essential for us to express opinions and have discourse. It’s how we learn and improve.
But it becomes a problem when the majority of people do not have an educated opinion.
Not because they’re dumb, but because there are simply too many things going on to be educated on all of them.
People are posting about things online that they haven’t spent a single day educating themselves about, and all they’re really doing is regurgitating what they’ve skimmed in headlines, or what they’ve heard from someone else.
How many people read books, studies, or really learn about a topic in-depth before voicing their opinion on it?
Not many.
Which is why Ward Farnsworth says in his book, The Socratic Method, that “Nothing is more common than intellectual obesity”.
He means that many people do not exercise their mind. They don’t critically challenge their beliefs, or scrutinize them half as hard as they scrutinize the people they disagree with.
And just as bad, they feed their mind junk (social media, the news, click-baity and biased articles), instead of nourishing it with deep and contemplative material.
So I challenge you to avoid the social media pressure to have an opinion on every hot button issue.
Sometimes the best answers to “What are your thoughts on _____?” are:
“I don’t know much about it, I’d have to do more research”
Or
“I don’t really follow politics”
Or my personal favorite,
“Honestly I don’t know anything about that, so I don’t have an opinion on it.”
It’s perfectly acceptable, (even preferable), to admit that you don’t know something.
It’s like the famous Socrates quote “I know that I know nothing”.
Socrates was the wisest man of his time, and it was because he was never afraid to admit the limitations of his knowledge (and never hesitated to go and learn more!).
And if the wisest man alive was humble enough to admit his ignorance… we should be too.
Blindly forming opinions isn’t just foolish… it can be dangerous.
We’re much better off learning deeply about the few topics we really care about, critically examining our beliefs,
And only after that rigorous work, do we voice those opinions.
Otherwise our opinions are just the echoes of what’s popular, and not truly ours at all.