Opinion Overload
"The Stoics saw opinion as the source of most misery. It’s what takes objective situations and makes them good, bad, wrong, unfair, essential, deserved or outrageous. It’s also what takes things that have nothing to do with us and makes them problems for us." - Ryan Holiday
How often are you baited into discussing, debating, or otherwise caring about an issue that has no real-world impact on your personal or professional life?
If you are anything like me, I am assuming the answer is "fairly often." Our modern culture and the way our political discourse functions expect us to not only have an opinion on every news item or topic of the day but to passionately support or oppose whichever position is associated with our tribe.
I am not arguing to live nihilistically, apathetic to the current events unfolding in the world around you. However, I think a good argument can be made that none of us have the bandwidth to even care about a quarter of the things culture tells us to be outraged or concerned about, let alone properly understand the topic at a level sufficient to have a productive debate on it.
We flood ourselves with surface-deep levels of information on a wide range of issues so that we can feel informed enough to express an opinion about any issue that we could come across in conversation. We feel others will perceive us as ignorant or uneducated if we respond with "I don't know" or "I don't care," so we maintain the facade as if being informed was a civic duty that results in change and action.
To speak bluntly, I respect the intellect of an individual willing to admit that he or she doesn't know (or care) enough about a topic to have an educated opinion far more than an individual who stumbles their way into a surface level debate to display partisan or tribal fealty.
In reality, every additional opinion you regurgitate reduces the time and focus you can place on impacting change tangibly in regards to things that you actually care about. As stated by Herbert Simon: “Information consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
Much of this problem is systemic and deals with the way we approach politics and elections in America. Every issue under the sun is binarily divided into two buckets and is championed by one political party, while disdained by the other. As a result, our tribal instincts kick in and we fight for our party’s position or vigorously oppose our opponent's, even if it is on an issue that has no impact on our lives.
In practice, this constant combat on the most superficial of issues makes building bipartisan coalitions around even seemingly innocuous issues extremely difficult. People are unlikely to want to work with someone to advance any particular goal if in the past that person has burned a bridge with them by expressing a vehement, contrary opinion to an issue they care about. By constantly creating, defending, and sharing excess opinions of no real consequence to you, you run the risk of needlessly running your mouth about something that is important to those you may want to work with in the future.
It is important to remember that life is a never-ending game of building and spending capital. The trick to playing the game effectively is to save your capital for the expenditures you truly want or need. Finding yourself engaging in the superficial debates of the day and taking positions in support of or in opposition to whatever the outrage or news of the day might be, forces you to spend your capital for a terrible rate-of-return as you burn bridges you might need to cross in the future.
Your family and friends almost certainly know where you stand on the issues. If they don't, they will ask. Why create enemies over planting flags on issues of no consequence to you? Why be baited into wasting your limited bandwidth on something you don't care about? If your answer has to do with virtue signalling support for your tribe, it might be time to reassess how this strategy is impacting your success in advocating for public policy.
