Philosophy
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A Good Precept?

No one possesses the secret of happiness except God—if He exists. But I think it’s possible to discover a number of ways of becoming less unhappy, which is logically equivalent to increasing one’s enjoyment of life. Of these, perhaps the single most important way is also the easiest to state and defend: Never insist on your opinion. The belief that the moon is not made of green cheese is not an opinion. The belief that elderly people sometimes fall is not an opinion. Nor is the belief that millions of Jews and Ukrainians were deliberately gassed by Hitler or starved to death by Stalin.

The hallmark of an opinion is when large numbers of people, many of whom are to all appearances honest, intelligent and well-informed, disagree with it. Convictions about controversial issues pertaining to politics, economics, morals or metaphysics are all matters of opinion. Two recent controversies spring to mind. Hundreds of millions of people thought that vaccine mandates were wise and hundreds of millions thought they were unwise. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that hundreds of millions of people were wrong. The second controversy has to do with the Ukraine/Russia/NATO war. The prevailing opinion in the West is that the villains chiefly responsible for this tragedy are Putin and his cronies. The prevailing opinion in the rest of the world is that the U.S. and its (sometimes reluctant) NATO allies are the chief villains. One of those opinions must be wrong. Perhaps the most fundamental and enduring controversy is a metaphysical one. Hundreds of millions of people believe that Nature comprises all of reality, and hundreds of millions of even more people believe that Nature is only part of reality. Once again, hundreds of millions of people are wrong.

There are two reasons why one should never insist on one’s opinion. First: being wrong is the most natural and commonplace thing in the world, a self-evident fact if ever there was one. Often there’s no shame in being wrong because reason, unlike logic, is error-prone. This is because most of the inferences employed by reason are non-demonstrative. Unlike logical or deductive inferences, non-demonstrative inferences are not necessarily valid, which in turn means that they can be challenged. Second: When you insist on the rightness of your opinion, notwithstanding the fact that huge numbers of sane people hold a contrary opinion, you are in effect claiming intellectual and perhaps even moral superiority. And there’s nothing that riles human nature more than a claim to moral superiority.

Sometimes, in the case of a serious disagreement where no compromise is possible, it may be necessary to break a friendship, leave a marriage, or go to war. But even then it’s usually possible to avoid insisting on your opinion. Often you can still convey to your adversary the attitude that while you believe you’re right, and strongly feel that you are right, you nevertheless realize that no one’s judgement is infallible and that you may in fact be wrong. I would say that the ability to convey such an attitude is the real test of tolerance and that the failure to convey it leaves one open to the dictionary definition of bigotry. I say ‘the dictionary definition’ because the word “bigotry” has many ugly connotations, such as racial bigotry, segregation, lynching, Southern red necks, George Wallace, Ian Paisley in the case of religious bigotry, and so on. But the dictionary definition of bigotry is rather bland compared with many of the word’s connotations: intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself.

According to this definition, very few people haven’t been guilty of bigotry at one time or another. Click HERE for a few historical illustrations.

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