Opinions

Okay, there's something that's been bothering me a bit over the last little while. Not really a large or significant issue, but frustrating. Sandpaper thoughts that grade on my sanity, as one lyric says.

I hate opinions. I don't know if I can describe it well, or even at all. I'll try to keep it short, I can see this as being something I could get carried away with. But let me clarify - I don't hate the opinions of other people. I mean, yeah - there are some cases where someone is just so utterly nuts, that you hate them and their ideas. Hitler hated Jews. There's no possible way I can look at that and not say "Oh well, it's one man's opinion, let's move on." (And yes, I just Godwin'd myself - feel free to use that as a convenient excuse to abandon the remainder of this post, before it gets oh-so-wonderfully convoluted and/or poorly structured)

I forget where I read it (it may have been a comment on Digg, of all places), but someone said that part of being in a free country/society involves living with or close to people who don't do things the way you would. I believe it was put more elegantly than that, but I really appreciate the sentiment. I'd like to think I'm a pretty tolerant guy - everyone's entitled to live their life as they see fit, so long as it doesn't negatively interfere with anyone else.

So when someone comes up to me and says that they vote Liberal, enjoy commuting every day in their 3 ton pickup, and can't understand why people would waste time on video games... I'm okay with that. Consciously, that is. I think to myself, "well, nowhere out there does it say that people need to think and live the way I do", and let them go about their business.

But deep in the back of my head, there's this blaring alarm going off. How could someone possibly live like that? How could they be so wrong? AH-HA! There it is! See, in the front of my mind I know that none of it possibly matters. In the back of my mind, I can't wrap around the concept that someone is doing something that is so incredibly flawed. And somewhere in the middle, between those two areas... Are where my own opinions and thoughts are stored.

So is that all how it works? My entire outlook is dependent on my own fickle conclusions for every single subject I've encountered? And no, I'm not completely crazy - I don't get worked up over anything and everything. Most of the things people do or think I simply couldn't care less about. While others... Absolutely make my blood boil. But none of it matters. They aren't hurting anyone or thing. They're just going about it differently than the way I think it should be approached.

I'm running in circles here, aren't I? Let me try and move into some sort of conclusion. I don't hate other people or their opinions. I hate the fact that I feel so passionately entitled to my own. I don't understand why I need to feel like I'm right about something so obviously subjective. I know it's that way for some very basic reason - some essential step in our evolution and design dictates that those wires in our brains need to be hooked up just so. But to what end? Who says what I think is more valuable than the person next to me? What's with the deep rooted sense of entitlement to be "right" about something? It doesn't make sense, I'm not so sure I want it.



I am not special. I am not a beautiful or unique snowflake. I'm the same decaying organic matter as everything else. I'm not my job. I'm not how much money I have in the bank. I'm not the car I drive. I'm not the contents of my wallet. I'm not my f*cking khakis. I'm the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.
-Cril

I talk of freedom
You talk of the flag
I talk of revolution
You'd much rather brag
And as the decibels of this disenchanting discourse
Continue to dampen the day

The coin flips again and again, and again,
And again as our sanity walks away

All this discussion
Though politically correct
Is dead beyond destruction

Live - White, Discussion