Hinton: People have too many opinions

There is an epidemic of interest in the United States. Everyone cares too much. From foreign… There is an epidemic of interest in the United States. Everyone cares too much. From foreign wars to our neighbors’ lifestyles, we have lost the ability to restrain our interest. At every opportunity to form an opinion, we do so with reckless abandon. We need a return to our right to be disinterested.

Before I go any further, I would like to clarify ‘disinterested.’ Suffering a history of unfair abuse, the word’s meaning has waffled back and forth. Now, most use it to mean ‘uninterested.’ Why the English language would need a synonym for a word that looks almost exactly the same, I will never know. However, I am certain that ‘disinterested’ means ‘not having a stake in’ or ‘objectively disposed toward.’ ‘Uninterested’ means ‘bored.’

Much like we have forgotten what ‘disinterested’ means, we have forgotten that we are allowed to be it. A culture of punditry has convinced us that every social issue demands our judgment. As radio shows, Web 2.0 and a host of other bottom-up media seem to imply, every citizen should have a vehement opinion on everything from Birthright to birth control.

What this creates is something like a Facebook persona. We all have our sprawling lists of what we support: ‘Students against Fluorescent Lighting in Classrooms,’ ‘Cyclists in Support of Reaganomics,’ ‘Harry Potter Fans for the Liberation of Palestine.’ We all become gross dilettantes and our opinions lose their teeth as we become saturated with interest.

As technology shrinks the globe, we find ourselves convinced that every issue must affect our lives simply because we are more aware of it. Even the smallest cultural rumbling in China surely will radiate back to our lives: the social butterfly effect, if you will.

At first, this only seems like responsible citizenry. How could keeping abreast of world events possibly hurt us? There is a bold line, though, between awareness and opinion.

Consider what it would look like if we were pressed to justify that everything affects us as much as our impassioned interest would suggest: ‘Well, you see, I care because Obama’s tax plan will ignite the aristocrats to war against the middle class, who will be too busy trying to keep their children from running away because gay marriage has weakened family values. We will be powerless to resist because we have lost the ability to communicate after we banned couches on porches, thus disintegrating the fabric of social connectivity, this entire downward spiral started by too many people buying XBoxes instead of Playstations, those pillars of familial cohesion. Long live the MacBook Pro.’

No one actually thinks like this. However, one would hardly be able to tell we are not this ludicrous with the amount we protest, bemoan, write petitions, editorialize and argue with classmates.

It’s not that we need to turn a blind eye or care about each other less. Quite the opposite. We need to exert our right to be disinterested while still well-informed. We are allowed to not form opinions on whether some event, group, law, etc. is good or evil. We are scared, though, that if we do not wave the banner one way or the other, we might seem boring, unintelligent, or disconnected.

What would this right to disinterest look like? Take abortion. I am neither woman nor doctor. I am not a politician and have not been embryonic for some time. Arguably, I have very little stake in the matter and even less to say about it that has not been repeated tenfold before. Choosing neither echo chamber of pro-life or pro-choice, I simply abide. There is never an imperative to adjudicate on matters, no matter how important they are.

Far from being callous, the right to disinterest is a revival of humanism. By letting social conflict be fought by those who are interested in the outcome, we stop reducing vitally important dialogues — such as those on Israel, abortion, religion, etc. — to generic rhetoric contests. We put a face back on issues and escape the insulating effects of wholesale punditry, which promotes the pundit over the issue itself.

To those that object, ‘But we are interested in every issue just by being part of humanity,’ I agree. It is a question, however, of degree. Although we are not fully liberated from ties to any social phenomenon, we are liberated by means of reasonable proximity. It is only through selection of what is nearest to us to care about are we able to care in any real way at all. Otherwise, we just become blank advocates of lists or causes.

Imagine if, when we looked at the world, we refused to ever fix our eyes on anything because of fear of missing the rest of the world. We would shake our heads about like spasmodic owls. Instead, we all accept that, within reason, we must cut off part of the whole to see anything whatsoever. Why, then, should we behave any differently when choosing our causes?

Join Erik’s ‘Students for Disinterest’ at ech15@pitt.edu.

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