In it for the Money: For Economy of Opinion
Editor’s note: This column appears regularly in The Chronicle, roughly around the third Wednesday of the month.
David Erik Nelson
Listen: Today I’m hoping to convince you that our opinions are largely a cost with no corresponding benefit, and that the vast bulk of these opinions are unaffordably expensive.
We’re in Ann Arbor, where any two folks seem to have at least three opinions on a given topic, so I don’t imagine this is going to go super well, but hear me through.
Before you rush to the comments, I wish to assure you that I am indeed aware of the irony of writing an opinion column about how opinions are maybe something that we shouldn’t reflexively whip out like Glocks in a cop film.
And, if that lil proviso doesn’t give you pause, maybe this should: The opinions I share today are the result of about 18 months of meditating on the underlying costs and benefits of sounding off; if you’ve likewise spent a year-and-a-half working through this, then please chime in.
If you’re jumping to the comments to put me in my place, I invite you to take a few minutes, maybe an hour, or maybe, I dunno, 550 days or so to stew on this before giving me a piece of your mind. I’m not coming to this lightly or flippantly, which is apropos, because it’s the way we rack up opinion debt with such spendthrift flippancy that’s costing us so dearly. [Full Story]