O P I N I O N S   V E R S U S   B E L I E F S

"I have the right to my opinion as a citizen of these United States of America". And on a personal level, I have tried to extend that to everyone I know. I may not agree with someone's opinion, but I'm sure glad they have one! Life would be dull and boring without one.

Mmm, yes, but... not every statement is an opinion.

If I say, "The president is a crook," that's an opinion. (If I'm a lawyer in Little Rock or Washington, it might be more than that, but let's assume we're just private citizens talking here.) To support my opinion, I can offer salient facts and reasoning; if you disagree, you can counter with other facts and reasoning. There's nothing personal about this discussion, since we're dealing in facts. So by all means, any opinion should be welcome. (And, I might add, people who express such opinions in public don't have any business taking responses personally.)

If I say, "Those lousy Red Sox--they're bums, every last one of 'em!" that's an opinion, too. It's more subjective than an opinion about some matter of public record and public interest, but there's some objective facts involved here, so it's still an opinion. Sure, I care about what I'm saying, but who I am as a person isn't determined by whether or not I'm right--it's just an opinion. So a statement like this is fair game for heated discussion, too.

If I say, "I like my eggs scrambled, not runny," we've moved out of the realm of opinion and into personal tastes. Yes, it deals with an aspect of external reality--maybe scrambled eggs aren't as healthy as other preparations--so it might be possible to get into a discussion about this... but why bother? How you like your eggs is highly subjective; there's just no basis for insisting that "my opinion is better than yours" on such things.

Finally, if I say, "Once upon a time, this thing happened to me..." then that is totally not a matter of opinion. It is personal experience; it is completely subjective; it is not a proper subject for debate. If someone tries to use it as conclusive proof of some argument, then it's fair to reject it for that purpose (since other people may have different experiences). But in and of itself, it's pointless to try to refute personal experience, and rude even to attempt it.

So what I'm saying is this: the more subjective a statement, the less value or propriety there is in matching it with some equivalent statement of your own (and vice-versa). In other words, sure, sometimes it's fine to match opinion with opinion. But not all the time, because not every statement is an opinion.

But enough are, luckily, to keep life from being dull and boring. *grin*

Home

Heart	Body	Spirit	Mind
Art	Writing	Religion	Personality
Music	Travel	Politics	Computers
Genealogy	Work	History	Reasoning
Fiction	Games	Economics	Science