If You Don’t Want To Be Challenged, You Don’t Have An Opinion
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I’m the type of person who enjoys a heated debate. As a blogger, debating is a great skill to have, but it also irritates people when they don’t share my views. After being called a devil’s advocate, instigator, and dissenter by some of my closest friends and family (and worse by those who aren’t), I decided to tone down my debating nature and accept the fact that not everyone wants to explain or defend their thoughts in everyday conversation.So I stopped what people called “arguing” with them, and my popularity went up. At least in person. I still wrote about my ideas on my personal blog (before Web 2.0) and annoyed a lot of my friends, especially during election season. But for whatever reason, those same friends read my blog every day, and once in awhile someone would be brave enough to write a comment about how much I irritated them by forcing them to think.
With that said, let me force you to think a little. If you are a person who shies away from debates that challenge your point of view, it’s because you don’t have an opinion. Let me explain why…
The Process of Forming Opinions
When we form opinions, we take lots of information about a topic and decide on a “right” answer in our eyes. We know there isn’t a real right answer but we find one that works for us. It’s unbelievable how much information we use to reach our conclusions: past experiences, morals, ideas passed to us by people we trust, what we read, what we hear. Then, we assimilate all that information and form an opinion.
But opinions don’t stop there. They can’t, because we are constantly finding new information, new research, new books, new experiences, and new ideas from others about topics we have already formed opinions on. If we don’t reevaluate our opinions every time we receive new information, they stop being opinions and start becoming beliefs.
Opinions vs. Beliefs
Let’s look at the American Heritage Dictionary definitions of an opinion and a belief:
belief -
- The mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in another: My belief in you is as strong as ever.
- Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something: His explanation of what happened defies belief.
- Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons.
opinion -
- A belief or conclusion held with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or proof: “The world is not run by thought, nor by imagination, but by opinion” (Elizabeth Drew).
- A judgment based on special knowledge and given by an expert: a medical opinion.
- A judgment or estimation of the merit of a person or thing: has a low opinion of braggarts.
Do you see the difference? We use these two words interchangeably, but their definitions are full of nuance when compared.
A belief is acceptance of truth, while an opinion is judgement of truth.
If you do not allow your opinions to be challenged, you are choosing to believe you are right rather than judge the new information and come to another conclusion. That conclusion could be your opinion hasn’t changed the slightest because the new information either supports your opinion or is not persuasive enough to create a strong argument against your opinion, and that’s fine.
You could also find the new information is so convincing it completely blows your old opinion out of the water. When this happens, you’ve experienced personal growth and reached a new understanding of who you are and how you think. That’s what personal development is all about - finding out how little you know, finding out how wrong you are, and learning new thought processes. In order to get to that next level, you must be willing to debate and challenge your opinions over and over again.
To summarize, you must challenge your opinions or they become beliefs. Opinions are ongoing judgements of new information, while beliefs are acceptance of old information with disregard to new information. A key element to growing as a person is forming opinions, then challenging them.
So ask yourself these questions: Do you have opinions or beliefs? Are they affecting your ability to grow and develop into a better person? Then, join the debate by adding your thoughts in the comments section below.
Citations:
belief. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved January 04, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/belief
opinion. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved January 04, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/opinion
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Monica O'Brien is the founder of Twenty Set, a website about personal and professional growth and development for the Millennial generation. She has been a blogger since 1998 when blogging was still in its “Dear Diary” form and in May 2007 began blogging for personal branding and profit.
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I can definitely see why your friends, family may give you the title of devil’s advocate, instigator, dissenter, etc.
This entry packs a serious punch, but as a serious response…
I think that not every belief needs to be challenged - which mates to my feeling that having opinions just for the sake of having them is not worthwhile. I think of beliefs as personal truths, and I think of opinions as *just* opinions - things that are changeable if aptly challenged, and rightfully so.
It’s the combination of both - beliefs that ground us, and opinions (or changeable and changing judgments) to help us grow - that define a person as an individual.
If that’s skewed out of balance, than either we become so stubborn that we can’t see the forest for the trees, or we become so myopic that we lack genuine context for the opinions we profess to ascribe to.
Casey,
That’s a great perspective. I think you are right, but everyone’s balance between beliefs and opinions is different. I personally like when people challenge my opinions for the most part, but there are some things I just believe and don’t want to have to explain why I believe them. Religion and other basic morals I hold fall into this category. Everything else is up for challenging though
It is true that without challenging our opinions, we cannot refine them. One person alone, will plateau. I like to think of it like this:
Imagine you are standing against a flat wall, and you need to climb it. With one wall, you cannot get any higher than you are. If there was another wall opposite, you would be able to use the two walls to propel yourself up.
It’s just like opinions.
If you only have your own opinion to consider, than you will not have the chance to compare it with others, making it difficult to refine it, and take it to the next level.
If you believe that you don’t need to go higher, than you have only to look at the constant progress of mankind in realizing we can always refine our ideas to make them stronger.
Todd,
That’s a great analogy. I love it! Thanks for sharing.
Maybe the person just doesn’t like strife or perhaps debating turns into an argument when the person feels like their opinions are being attacked and that is why they shy away from debates that challenge their point of view? I think you touched upon on an important distinction. I generally would rather explain than defend my opinions, and if someone raises a point that undermines a fundamental assumption in the attempt to make my explanation better, then I am all for that. But sometimes there are people who attempt to poke holes in a combative manner that may irk some people. Haha, and that is not to suggest you do that, but I just wanted to present an alternate view about why some people may shy away from debates.
But to add seriousness to my post, I’d like to suggest that perhaps we should be re-evaluating our beliefs and not necessarily our opinions. I think opinions are more transitory in nature and easier to change than beliefs. To me, growth really occurs when we are comfortable challenging our beliefs and being able to accept that a belief we hold dear may in fact be wrong.
For example, if I were to hold the opinion that men are better suited for most tasks than women, I would probably be more likely to alter that opinion if given proof that my original opinion was not true. This rests on the assumption that my opinion was based on something not substantiated by anything. On the other hand, if I held a belief that men are better suited for most tasks than women, I would probably be less likely to alter my belief due to many of the reasons you have given (finding ways to dismiss evidence in the contrary and focusing on or seeking evidence that confirms my belief.
Basically, I’d like to say that I don’t think all beliefs necessarily arise out of opinions that are not challenged. So while it is important to challenge your opinions, I think it is just as important to challenge your beliefs every once in a while.
And I’d also like to disagree with both Casey and Todd. Belliefs need to be challenged (not necessarily attacked but re-evaluated) and people don’t necessarily plateau if alone(self-reflection). But I do appreciate their perspectives.
Tony,
My question is why don’t you have a blog? This would make a great post, and it’s about the right length.
I completely understand that some people hate getting their beliefs/opinions challenged. My husband is one of them and it drives me crazy sometimes, but I can’t expect everyone to be the same as me.
You are hitting on some interesting distinctions - for example, not all beliefs come from unchallenged opinions. It’s something interesting to explore… I might have to think about that one some more.
Thanks for the comment, and I’m serious about seeing a blog from you in the future =D
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Mar 13th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
[…] to this experiment. After running across TwentySet blogger Monica O’Brien’s post “If You Don’t Want to Be Challeneged, You Don’t Have An Opinion,” I’m looking at this offer of syndication as opportunity to have my opinions […]
May 8th, 2008 at 6:33 am
[…] traditional media online. But blogs are a platform for opinions (not facts or information); and if you don’t have an opinion there’s very little point to having a blog that people subscribe […]