Opinions

Vanity Bricks

Opinions: Vanity bricks

Another way of stating this is that our beliefs (whether of the water-holding kind or not) in many ways define us. Clothe us. Adorn us. It also says: You try to remove one of those bricks at your own peril.

When it comes to handle-with-care opinions I often hark back to the wisdom of Montaigne when he stated, and with some emphasis, that “Opinions are not certainties and most human certainties are in fact opinions.”

Growing up amongst human adults (which seems to be the norm around here), you’re actually breathing a miasma of opinions that masquerade as facts, and since you have no effective filter or defense against them, you just take them in, label them “gospel” and move on; for when you hear a grownup, in this case my maternal grandmother, tell me, and with stern certainty, that the reason my legs ache (I had fairly constant growing paints from ages four through seven) is that I had worn rubble soles all day which prevented the earth’s electricity from entering my body through my feet and so upset my electrical balance with Mother Earth (rubber being a good insulator), you swallow this “fact” unchewed, for you have no logic to chew with, and so these often wild assumptions or opinions grown in a northern Sweden backwater become part of your mental makeup. And yes, to this day, at seventy-two, I am still, on some level, weary of rubber soled footwear, still on some weird level heeding my grandma’s sermon.

At that time, as a child now armed with this bit of grandma information, I stayed away from rubber boots and gym shoes as best I could for I “knew” that they would make my legs ache, and since my legs, especially at night, ached as a rule, they would naturally also ache after I had worn rubber boots — wet, rainy days, say — so, yes, grandma was right. Obviously.

And when it comes to northern Swedish backwaters, this was the same grandma that insisted that my mom, pregnant with me, have all her teeth pulled and replaced with dentures — which actually happened — because pregnant girls always have teeth trouble. Grandma had dentures, too, so I’m thinking she went through the same ordeal. Scary, that.

Hitting my twenties, or thereabouts, I should have taken the time to investigate this rubber-thing claim to see if it held water — at which point I would surely have discovered normal, run-of-the-mill growing pains as the cause — but I did not. Rather, I retained this “certainty” which was in fact sheer opinion, for the better part of a lifetime.

And it is so easy for such “facts” to slide in under the radar, unevaluated and unopposed, and park and file themselves as “certainties” to then remain as such until you go: “Now wait a minute, is that really true?” and take a closer look.

But especially these days, it seems, very few closer looks are taken — that is the problem.

Which brings to mind Joseph Joubert who once said that “Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.”

And once this opinion, filed as fact, has ensconced itself in memory, it has also, to some extent, defined you as a person — as the person who believes such and such to be true. Nice vanity brick.

Challenged, for whatever reason, few will look at the challenger, then at the ensconced fact, then back at the challenger and say, “You know, you have a very good point there.” and then, finally, take perhaps the very first look at this thing and then perhaps even laugh — but that’s crazy, you’re right.

Those few who can do that have a saint or two somewhere in their family tree. The rest of us just knee-jerk internally: who the hell does he think he is? And instead of actually taking an objective look at the “fact”, out come the weapons and defenses and the explanations and the reasons, logical or not, all in order to shore up this particular vanity brick which is going to stay right where it is, thank you very much.

We have all run into this vanity brick wall: no reason on earth will change his or her opinion once voiced, will dislodge the brick; admitting error would inflict a truly mortal wound — would cripple the ego, and since some egos are uncrippleable, and shall so remain, you find yourself in a fight.

Joseph Butler put this brilliantly: “An obstinate man does not hold opinions — they hold him.”

As did Smith Wigglesworth: “Common opinions often conflict with common sense; for reason in most minds is no match for prejudices, a hydra whose heads grow faster than they can be cut off.”

So, these “certainties”, in truth mere opinions, that seem to have infected our population, what percentage of widely held facts do they constitute? In other words, how much of general certainty is just plain nuts? I don’t know if a study has ever been made, and I have not undertaken one, but my opinion (see) would put the number of false truths at well over fifty.

And watch out for those “facts” that are very widely held as gospel; more than likely you’re staring at unvetted opinion, or as Thomas Carlyle put it, “Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.”

Our sarcastic Voltaire seems to agree: “The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.”

As does Josiah Gilber Holland: “Nothing so obstinately stands in the way of all sorts of progress as pride of opinion; while nothing is so foolish and baseless.”

And laconic Socrates: “Wind puffs up empty bladders; opinion, fools.”

I forget who said it, but he gave this as the reason wars start: Politicians lie to reporters (usually spouting opinions) then believe what they read in the papers or see on television.

And in light of recent years, might I not be excused for asking: Is truth, i.e., facts verified as such, now an endangered species?

You know, my opinion is: Very much so.

© Wolfstuff

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