Walking around campus without headphones can be a dangerous undertaking if you are trying to limit your ear’s daily intake of vapid, verbal diarrhea. Not all conversation on campus is without substance, but when you hear nothing but sexploits and hurried opinions without substantiation, things can begin to seem that way.
We have forgotten the proverb that has been attributed to Confucius, Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln, which states, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” Regardless of who said it, they’re correct: stop talking unless you know what you’re talking about.
Why do we feel the need to fill the silences around us?
We spend so much of our time talking and talking and thinking about what to say next. We’re like little bobble-wobble-heads, nodding and speaking, but empty with substance. We form baseless opinions almost impulsively — just to have something to say.
If you don’t really have an opinion on something, don’t say you do. If you have an opinion founded on thought-out and well-researched ideas, then share it when a situation calls for it. Try not to bring your vast knowledge of the Kama Sutra into a discussion about baby clothes. If we’re talking about baby making, then your opinion and knowledge will seem more logical to share.
We need to learn how to form better opinions because we act on opinion, we judge on opinion and we base decisions on opinion. In order to bring our opinions closer to truth, we must make greater efforts to be well informed and willing to admit when we’re wrong, which includes paying attention to experts and being aware of our own natural biases and the biases we consume from the media and the people around us. And perhaps most importantly, we must begin to see the world in varying shades of gray and refuse to let extreme, black-and-white worldviews dominate our line of vision.
We do not live in a world of polar opposites. We live in a world that is not binary. It is complex, beautiful, though sometimes difficult.
Opinions are a lot like the world they exist in. They are complicated, but valuable when understood properly. Remember that opinions can, and probably should, change. One of the best ways that we can improve not only ourselves, but also the world around us, is to remember what Greek philosopher Epictetus said, “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
The more we talk, the more we should listen. Not to our iPods — but to each other.
We are a diverse campus full of people from all walks of life, and as diverse as our huge university is, there is an even larger world out there. A world that we will never know unless we can listen to it, be silent from time to time, and make our words matter instead of our word counts.
Reach the columnist at Alexandria.tippings@asu.edu or follow her at @Lexij41
