The hardest thing about being opinionated is having an opinion

War. Civil rights. Corporate corruption. Governmental scandals. Farts. These topics bombard… War. Civil rights. Corporate corruption. Governmental scandals. Farts. These topics bombard the mind of a typical American on a daily basis. There’s so much insanity going on in the world, and for every article written about something there are eight more telling you how somebody feels about it. And we, the information-hungry public, want to know how famous people feel about everything. It doesn’t even matter why they’re famous; if Martin Sheen, Fiona Apple or Chuckie Cheese has an opinion, we want to know about it.

Why? Sometimes because it’s easier to espouse someone else’s opinion than have to put the thought into forming one of our own. Or if we feel the same way Dave Matthews does about the environment and pot legislation, it gives us a spiffy subculture to join. But not all of us are lazy with bad taste in music.

I think the real problem is that it’s simply hard to form an opinion about certain things. We don’t want to fight a war in Iraq but we don’t want to allow a brutal regime to exist and we don’t want to seem unsupportive of our troops. The act of abortion itself seems wrong but so does the consequence of an unprepared young woman struggling to raise a child in desperate conditions.

We aren’t even sure if the information we hear that could impact our opinion is true or not. So much sensationalism has been infused into the media that it’s hard to tell whether you’re watching a story on a kidnapping in Utah or the coming attractions for Terminator 3.

Also, if you’re like me – a chronic sufferer of mild-mannered white guy syndrome – you say to yourself, “I’ve never been in that position before so I really don’t have a right to form an opinion about it.”

So things come to pass and estimations are made based on the opinion of a few. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve been reading Cosmo and seen some opinion poll that says something like 72 percent of U.S. men prefer their girlfriends to weigh less than a grape. Many people see these “results” and buy them at face value.

It’s a vicious cycle. Television networks and magazine companies survey from their pool of viewers and subscribers, then tell the world that their results reflect the feelings of the nation. If you factor in the type of people who actually went out of their way to fill out a survey like that and mail it in, then the reliability takes an even bigger nose dive.

But at least those people have opinions about something. Before I became a columnist for the esteemed Pitt News I thought I was a very opinionated person with a ton of things to say. Now that I’m supposed to give my opinion on a weekly basis, I realize that I spend more time thinking about Chinese food and getting booty than anything else. I was under the foolish assumption that perhaps I could make a difference, however slight, just by voicing my beliefs.

How young and naive I was. Trying to avoid sounding like a moralizer is not an easy task. Accepting that some of the things I thought I was so right about are completely foolish is even harder. And the biggest one – I have to accept that just because my ideas get published doesn’t mean that anyone has to care.

But enough self-pity. Opinions are some of the trickiest monsters we have to wrestle with, on a personal level and as a representative democracy. They are the basis of the decisions that effect our lives and millions of others. We’ve all got to be careful how we use them.

To not have any strong beliefs at all is hurtful to you. I give credit to anyone who voices his opinion, no matter how stupid I may think it is.

Opinions columnist writing about opinions – how lame could he possibly be? Give your estimates at ssteinbacher@pittnews.com.