It’s OK Not to Have an Opinion

My house is built on a hill, oriented south with a view of a mountain range. These details are important because that’s how I learned I know very little about clouds.

Clouds are not a very polarizing topic. They are simply “there”. Everybody knows what they are and learned in school what they are made of. Clouds float all over and just do their thing.

Until living on the hill, I never noticed that they move in one direction - quite strictly west to east.

And yet the rain and fog almost always arrive from the south.

To make sense of these observations I brushed up on the Westerlies, Gulf Stream, mountain ridge orientation and atmospheric layers, barely scratching the surface. I may be able to speak semi-intelligently on the subject of clouds. I won’t feel comfortable engaging into deep discussions on how these patterns may impact local economics and agriculture.

I wondered - if it’s so easy to know so little about clouds, why are we so sure about everything else?

Open any social media feed and it’s clear that the world is full of experts on quite complex subjects, passionately defending their positions.

Once the information became readily available (compare searching for anything now vs trudging into the library, hoping to extract one pearl of wisdom from the pile of dusty books) - the valor of “knowing deeply” is replaced by “having an opinion on how to do everything correctly”.

The opinion must be strong enough to view the disagreeing groups with disdain. How could they possibly be so uneducated and lacking basic human integrity not to see the world through the same viewfinder?

The debate, a skill taught and polished, is therefore replaced by intimidation and dismissal. To debate, a certain depth of understanding is required. The high level facts gathered from the news headlines and fueled by the deep passion are never enough to convince anyone to change their position.

Getting others to see the different point is rarely the goal. The litany of stances on complex topics act as a quick tribal marker, providing a shortcut in evaluating strangers and groups and earning the attributes of the group that one agrees with.

I don’t think one can realistically gain enough knowledge to be an absolute expert on a few, leave alone multiple, topics. Even experts whose single job it is to be an expert, with decades of academic study and practice, often get things wrong.

I think it’s ok not have an opinion on everything. It’s ok to learn and observe rather than dismiss.

It’s ok to simply watch the clouds.