Armchair warriors do more harm than good
“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding.”
Ironically, given my public penchant for sharing opinions, this extract from a Bill Bullard quote struck me hard last week.
Someone shared it on Facebook, prettied up in poster format.
I shared it and noticed it had been shared a gazillion times already.
Somewhere inside the busyness of our cluttered, egocentric societal mindset, many of us saw the truth in the statement.
Until quite recently, I found it difficult to feel thorough fuzziness and security with friends whose opinions on important, globally relevant topics differed from mine.
In the old days, avoiding politics and religion around dining tables was de rigueur.
Now, because we are saturated by so much — much of which means so little — our capacity for finding ourselves on different sides of a fence has been amplified tenfold.
The current #trending topic is the coronavirus, with social media and WhatsApp groups aflame with conflicting information about whether to stock up on toilet paper, cancel overseas trips, wear face masks, generally panic or wait for Nando’s to bring out a funny advertisement.
You may think everybody is on the same page, considered it’s a global issue, but they’re not.
The ease with which we’re able to foist our thoughts on others has chipped away at the considered, roundtable approach in which we were forced to look each other in the eye, face-to-face, sometimes over coffee or a notebook, and actually engage in dialogue.
I’m finding that our capacity for being armchair warriors has done more harm than good.
On the face of it, access to knowledge has never been more democratic (if you have internet and a computer) — but the road to wisdom has become choked as a result.
It’s the last part of the quote that kicks me into gear, every time I read it.
“The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world.”
I can’t think of a better way to live.