The great philosopher, Plato, founded the Academy of Athens which was the first higher learning institution within the Western World. Plato placed so much importance on knowledge and facts. He also stated, “Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.”
You know what I am absolutely sick of? People confusing opinions with facts.
We as individuals within a society have the tendency to focus on ourselves. The “I am #1” mentality. Which is completely understandable. I mean, we have to look out what’s best for ourselves.
However, we are a part of a collective body of people. A society. A state. A country. Through being a part of this collective body, we are given certain rights. The one that I am talking about today is our right as Americans to have freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech is a great right. It is necessary and beneficial and powerful. However, it also starts some of the biggest fights.
Take a look at Facebook right now in the midst of this election year. For means of example only, since I’m a fan of neither, I’ll talk about Trump supporters and Clinton supports due to their popularity. In the minds of Trump supporters, those who don’t like (or despise) the Donald are automatically “Hillary loving, democrat supporting morons.” Why is this? There is no factual evidence to this. Maybe they are a Democrat, but they don’t like Hillary either. There is a mix up between opinion and fact here.
Also, while we’re on the subject of the Donald, if anyone expresses their disagreement with his plans or his speeches or his walls, they are automatically deemed as being wrong. I’m talking “passive aggressive Facebook status or comment” wrong. They’re not wrong. You’re not right. Everyone has their own opinion, neither of which are facts.
That’s where I’m going with this. I’m not trying to bash Trump or his supporters. I may or may not like him, but who am I to say who should or should not like him? We are all entitled to our own opinions. However, shoving our opinions down the throats of others while mislabeling them as facts is something that we are not entitled to. This does nothing beneficial for the collective body of people or ourselves, who we are ultimately looking out for.
We have to learn to agree to disagree. You would think that after being told this throughout at least 13 years of school, that it would have been forever placed in our minds as adults. However, the fights that I see between adults, over things such as politics, are worse than the petty arguments that you see online between teenagers.
We aren’t always going to agree. There are too many separate individuals with their own means of thinking for all of us to think the same. (How fun would that really be anyways?) However, it has to be recognized that we are not always right. There is no absolute truth to the opinions that we share, and we have to always remember that they are not facts. We don’t have to agree, but we don’t have to make it known that we don’t agree. And, if we choose to make it known, then we need to handle it in a way that is civil and acknowledges that our opinions are not always wanted, needed, or the all-out most vital answer to whatever is being discussed.
