What is an Opinion?

The birth of personal opinion

Opinions are born in the past (even 10 minutes ago), generated by life experience, and heavily influenced from childhood by those around us. They’re a mix up of different ideas from parents, siblings, wider family, teachers, then our own life experience. Everything from your attitude to life, others, the planet, and especially politics, derives from this area. We often think our reactions are truth, without realising that they were never our truth in the first place.

Why does this matter?

Because we fight over it. No matter who you are you will find it uncomfortable if something that you’re strongly convinced of is challenged by others. I’m an extremely flexible person, not given to believing I’m right, and yet I can be triggered if an opinion is vastly different from my own. Especially on subjects of violence towards anyone or any animal. I will fight my corner like a hungry tigress protecting her cubs and desperate for that steak!

Sometimes our defences are right, but not always, and I put my hand up to that.

And the point is…?

Not to run amok in the world spouting opinions that you haven’t given much thought to; also to think about what is truly important. Such as does my opinion make this world a better or worse place? Even the smallest pebble dropped in the biggest lake resonates further than we think.

For example, I’m Conservative (not), you’re Labour, so I’m right and you’re wrong. If you stop and think about it, they all play the same game and tell the same lies. The question from above might be, “forget the party – who is the most honourable choice?” Politician/honourable? We might all ask with a smirk. Yet actually there have been extremely honourable politicians in my lifetime who told the truth and weren’t voted in because of it.

A prime example is Lord Paddy Ashdown. He told the general public that if they wanted an effective health service going forward they needed to pay for that. He asked for one penny in the pound, to be ring-fenced for the NHS, and the British public said no twice! Now we have a rather ropey health service, that still performs quite remarkably all things considered, because most people in Britain said no to that single penny.

I think of him every time I hear complaints about the NHS. He was honest, he said he would charge us and how much. Ever since they’ve gone along the miracle route, no need to pay more we can do it all, increased stealth taxes all over the place, and failed to ring-fence the money, and basically let it crumble. We have hospitals that are falling down around patients!

There are other examples, but that’s a good one about why you choose what you choose, to save money or to have someone honest in power? Of course the big problem there is that politics has a terrible reputation and few people believe that decency is real when they meet it. That I know for a fact. People are always trying to find a far more complex explanation of me than actually exists. I am what you see.

In many areas we hold on to our beliefs, turn them into opinions, and after a while become fixed in our ways and forget to question whether what we believe is right.

Why does this need to change?

It’s important because we live in a world of conflict. We need harmony. We need to understand that someone else’s skin colour, religion, gender, are not our business. They’re not even important. What is important is how we treat each other.

In my experience there are so many things that matter far more than those which we clutch close to our chests and defend with all our might, now nuclear might. What is the point?

From Ukraine to Gaza via any number of countries in the world, people are dying for no reason whatsoever, except that in the opinion of someone else they have no right to exist. A belief/opinion that is wrong!

No child in Gaza was responsible for the horrible October attack, yet die they did in their thousands. Russia is trading and existing quite happily in this world without suddenly invading a former member of the Soviet Union. Just why? Just why did two people pick up guns and mow people down on Bondi Beach in Australia because they were Jews who had nothing to do with anything that’s happened recently? Ditto the London attack. The opinions that drove these things are wrong. Too often the wrong becomes an acceptable fact that requires defending.

More personally and locally, we fall out with family, friends, work colleagues, because they think differently or are different. The question begs, why are we so scared? Why do we need to defend what needs no defending. People are putting up England flags in our country to make a point, I’ve sat with my hands on the earth of England and I can tell you that it doesn’t give a toss, England is fine. Ask the Scots, Welsh, or Irish earth and it will tell you the same thing.

This and so much more is just about beliefs that create opinions that cement themselves as facts. Once some have a definite fact in their minds, whether it be right or wrong, it needs to be defended no matter what it takes. There is no amount of destruction that is enough.

I put these ideas forward for us all to think about, after all, they are only my beliefs and may be wrong in your eyes. Or not. Or uninteresting. Or naïve. There are so many ways to read this blog.

Best love

Amorah – Deb

One thing I am certain of though, is that I do want to be a loving light for all, and that feels like a thing no higher power would question. Probably.