And have you buried the carcass deep enough?
Today, we are at the crossroads once again. We are ensnared in our echo chambers where we hear comfortable voices and witness soothing reality that offers us false assurances
Mr Truth is dead, dearest sirs and ma’ams, and since he lacked the miraculous powers of resurrection, he perished forever. The death was not a natural one, it was a stabbing followed by years of paralysis. And finally Mr Truth, considered by many as immortal and eternal, gave up the ghost.
In the beginning many believed a shady pariah, Mr Lie committed the gruesome act, as two were perennial adversaries since time began. However, the evidence points in a totally different direction. A relatively new bloke in town did what was previously thought as impossible. Enter Mr Opinion, tall, mighty, easy to befriend and once befriended hard to bid farewell to. He slayed Mr Truth and took his throne.
Now that you have read the tale above and saw abstract notions in garb if humans, answer this: Have we lost our faculty to differentiate our hardened, cherished opinions from uncomfortable facts a.k.a. truths? And while at it, dare to ask a more dangerous question: Haven’t our opinions replaced truth for all times to come?
‘This is my opinion, you might have a different one,’ you must have heard this line during any and every conversation. Be it a brainstorming session before buying a pair of jeans or a table talk on what is the best form of government for Pakistan. ‘You are not entitled to your opinion, you are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant,’ someone aptly summed up prerequisites to be fulfilled before broadcasting an opinion.
Ours is the age of the individual. Individuals striving to possess an identity separate from family bonds and baggage of bygone ages. Individuals craving to make their mark and matter a bit more than their class fellows, batch mates and colleagues. ‘To be different’ has become the rallying cry of our age. And what better way to acquire uniqueness by angry, frustrated individuals than having an opinion on anything and everything under the sun. Those with similar opinions become comrades, those with a different one, rivals. For those hell bent to acquire ‘uniqueness’ and ‘righteousness’, instant gratification comes easily when they are either defending their opinion or countering someone’s else.
Make no mistake, there is nothing inherently wrong about holding an opinion. The question is on what base an opinion stands on. For example, there is this hypothetical lad who has never interacted with a single Jew all his life. He knows next to nothing about Jewish faith and way of life. But he holds this ‘opinion’ that Jews are the greatest menace to mankind. His opinion about Jews is based on sermons given by certain religious speakers, chatting with friends who hold similar views and countless Jew-bashing memes that appeared on his Facebook news feed. Now, his views are more than an opinion, to him, they are facts. And that is how earth transmogrifies itself into a hell.
Here enjoy a truism: Opinions, whether based on cock-and-bull stories or objective, verifiable facts, dictate our actions. Now, I’ll recount briefly how we form our opinions. Dearest sirs and ma’ams, we form our opinions from interactions we have, encounters we survive, information we receive, rumours and hearsay we digest, all the noise media makes, and even while gawking at the billboards.
On a serious note, if it is disastrous to hold an opinion sans information and exposure, it is deadly to hold one rooted in fear and anxiety. When sentiments and emotions not knowledge and observation govern decision making, world enters a post-truth phase where it has mowed down the truth and moved on. A world where fact, an impossibly hard word to define, is dead and gone. ‘What is a fact? Who cares? Who knows? May be something to be summoned out of thin air when needed,’ becomes the knee-jerk response of masses at large.
‘I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am,’ wrote a fine gentleman from France centuries back while ruminating on nature of knowledge. We humans achieved zenith through questioning ‘what is’, dreaming ‘what could be’ and finding a ‘way forward’. It wasn’t easy and the journey could hardly be termed a smooth sail. We had our fair share of wars that we lost to lies, we fought battles for truth that went in vain. Today, we are at the crossroads once again. We are ensnared in our echo chambers where we hear comfortable voices and witness soothing reality that offers us false assurances.
If it is impossible to resurrect the truth, it doesn’t mean we must give in to the tyranny of opinion. The way ahead is to rebel. To rebel against comfortable belief of being always right, to rebel by accepting difference of thought, and to break free from our comfortable, cozy echo chambers.
‘I rebel, therefore we exist’ said another fine French man a couple of decades back.