On Opinion

When the evolutionary volcano spewed its genetic lava thousands of feet into the air for no apparent reason, a certain hunk of cooling molten rock gathered itself together into a vaguely human-like shape and splashed down in a gentle mountain stream that imbued it with the majesty of conscious thought. The original thoughts and ambitions of our ancestors were simple; all arose in the single root of a trickling creek. The pure and unencumbered mountain spring breathed into our igneous pores the desire for food, shelter, warmth, and each other. And that’s all we had; we weren’t scathed by urges for pride or splendor, politics or style, purification or sanctity. We simply wanted to make it from one day to the next. But, as time passed, even the tame flow of the stream eroded our impermanent stone to six billion bits of dust, and the dust began to get stirred up and float randomly within the water that protected it, and it joined the stream in its continuance down the mountainside.

As the stream passed through its scenery, the particles of dust did not forget their initial desires, and as they traveled in generally the same direction they tended to agree upon the methods by which these desires could be sated. However, as a stream proceeds downward, it is unlikely that it will travel straight until it reaches the ocean. It is far more probable that it will do as this particular stream did and split into tributaries every once in a while. And so, as forks in the downward path opened up, some of the little bits of dust went one way and some went the other way; they still kept the same desires, but their methods of achieving these began to differ. Some took to hunting, some preferred gathering; some built houses of sticks, some slept in caves; some created their own fires, some borrowed the fires of others; some lived in families, some lived in societies. And such, out of this first fork in the stream of methodological evolution, opinion was born.

As time moseyed on, the stream split over and over again and the ideas of the people in this world began to stray far from one another; some of the stream’s branches became full with followers and others waned to merely stifled exhalations of diehard fans trickling down the mountainside. However, as each path diverged from all of the others, the little bits of dust floating within it tended to forget that not only had they originated at the same root spring, but also that they were all heading downwards to the same ocean. By the time the opinions of the world had become those of today, by the time ideas such as liberalism and conservatism and capitalism and communism had arisen, it became almost infeasible to see that the underlying goals of each ideology were still essentially the same. Still we yearn for food, shelter, warmth, and each other, and very little more. From this perspective, the nature of opinion is not overtly complicated. But of course, at times our opinions are so different from others that oftentimes the only intuitive conclusion seems to be that they originated from entirely separate streams of thought, perhaps even atop different mountains. Unfortunately this has created a nonsensical cloud that nowadays obscures the vital connections between opinions that at first appear so distinct. However, because opinions evolve as such, it logically follows that each pair of opinions indeed share a common ancestor, just as do any two species of organism. This, I believe, ought to underscore the nature of argument and debate. Rather than concentrating solely on what distinguishes two ideas, we ought first to acknowledge their similar motivations. By tracing their paths down the mountain stream in this manner, we can determine almost precisely where their trajectories diverge and therefore avoid the unconscious misunderstandings about underlying motivations that are commonplace amid argument and debate.

Opinion is one of the most powerful capabilities of the human mind. However, it can destroy just as easily as it can create. Opinion ought be used only to illuminate ideas, never to push them into shadow. Every pair of “opposing” ideologies share similar motivations on at least some level, for they were once part of that same mountain stream. We should therefore focus on the harmonies among opinions first and later analyze their discordances. A reasonable compromise to any controversy comes by studying not where two opinions finally end up, but instead where they initially diverge. We should not abuse the power of opinion, but instead use to progress, for the ability to have conscious thoughts and recognize their variations is a gift to be cherished.