Fears

When I was a child, growing up in New York during the 70’s and 80’s, I remember my father saying that “opinions can get a person in more trouble that statements made in haste”, this was a concept that I could not understand, until recent events have shown me otherwise.  Our ability to communicate has its inherent flaw, miss-communication.

Statements made in haste, in the past, were often disregarded as the ranting of a person that is disenfranchised or feels separated from a social way of thinking, often passed of as idle chatter, however, now opinions are being thought of as undeniable fact and we, as a people are starting to take opinion as a way of thinking.

Opinions, that’s what most people have when it comes to how they truly feel about what is going on in our world today. A person’s opinion is often thought of as a well conceived series of thoughts, and can influence how and what others think. I would subscribe to the thought that an opinion is more of a view of what people have rationalized within their own minds, in order to deal with a particular situation and are not “thoughts” that all people should take as verbatim and be prescribed to. 

Now, you may ask “why is he going on about this”, well this brings me to the “meat and potatoes” of what this article is about. 

If you frequent the various coffee houses that are becoming the staple of social activity, you will often hear people talking about everything from their personal matters to the present economic and political issues of our times. Blaming it on employment issues, social issues, other religious groups or races, these people speak to each other without regard to who may be “listening” to their opinions, and these eavesdroppers will take what is said to heart and will either agree or disagree.

I am finding that the people that disagree will interject or make statements to the contrary of the opinions and engage in a “battle of wits”, often unarmed, and you should never engage in a battle of wits unarmed. This enforce personal opinion as fact is causing a backlash of social separations; we are starting to see a new class versus status occurring that is going to cause the drawing of lines between people, those that consider the facts of a conversation and those that will take what they hear as fact without thinking.