Between Our Opinions & Our Arrogance

People argue that opinions can’t be wrong (nor can they be right) and that’s true.

But sometimes, I think that we use our opinions as as way to take the easy way out when it comes to defending what we feel or believe about any given topic (or even our faith).

But I’m of the opinion that this is a dangerous place to be.

How Making Vision Stick Stuck With Me

In an earlier post, Andrew mentioned that the team recently completed reading Andy’s Making Vision Stick. In the book, Andy writes:

When he heard that I couldn’t get my vehicle started one morning, he was all over that. I won’t even start on my PC friends who think my Mac is a toy. And that’s how it should be. If you say you believe in something, live it out. And live it out in a way that the people around you can see it. That’s not arrogant. That’s liberating. It frees others to join without reservation and without suspicion.

Personally, I think that the culture of the Internet fosters the notion of having an opinion and sharing it. Never before have we been able to broadcast our thoughts to such a wide audience of people and then engage with them directly.

It’s great, right?

As with anything, I think it’s incredibly important to constantly evaluate our stance on the things to which we’re devoted. It’s all too easy for us to become such fans of the tools, ideas, and methods that we use in our daily lives that we forget exactly why we’re fans of them.

… So the Problem Is?

The problem is that just as the culture of the Internet supports the broadcasting and discussion of our opinions, it also makes it easy to broadcast them with no true justification as to why we feel the way we do. And simply blindly supporting something and then living it out is arrogant.

Obviously there are boundaries around this. For example, I don’t think that our innate preferences – such as our favorite foods, colors, etc. – require  justification as to why we prefer them. After all, they’re natural.

However, I do think it’s worth knowing why we’re heavily invested in a particular tool, idea, or method. After all, knowing why we feel the way we do about a given utility allows us to evaluate other options against it to determine whether or not they’d be truly advantageous.

I’d also argue that knowing where you stand on something allows you to evangelize something – anything – more effectively.

What’s your opinion (and why)?

Tom

I write both code and content for this team and I love every minute of it.