Opinions Are No Longer Optional, They Are Required

And must take the form of declaring a side.

Photo by Pop & Zebra on Unsplash

We are in the midst of a highly conflicted time in the history of public discourse. Never before has every individual had access to so much information, spanning every continent and topic, and yet the dominant form of engagement between people is declarations of ‘for’ or ‘against’. At a point when nuance and diversity should be at an unprecedented high, they are spiraling towards all-time lows. We must either be a supporter of A or a supporter of B. Nothing in between, no room for shades or degrees of compromise or qualification.

Over the past century, our connection to the world around us has expanded both geographically and ideologically. It has given us access to ever increasing amounts of information making us feel a part of everything happening everywhere. A simultaneously exhilarating and overwhelming experience. Our instinctive reaction to overwhelming complication is to crave simplicity. We want everything and everyone to fit into clear, simple, and definitive categories. Column A or column B. Sadly, things in life are rarely that simple.

Forming opinions about ourselves and our surrounding environment based on the information we have accumulated to date is a core component of how we interact with the various aspects of our lives, as well a key component…