Opinionated excellence

I must have said this before that I very seldom like having opinions about anything unless I need to have one to decide on a course of action. Like, say, vote for someone or some such. Opinions are things that you form when you have insufficient facts to conclusively prove what is right. Who wants to go through the pain of muddling through a misty dark and come to a conclusion when you have no need to do so? Well, everybody apparently...going by how the world in general acts these days.

Before the advent of Social Media, though, I had assumed that there were the opinionated and there were the non-opinionated. I had no clue how many strata of excellence existed among the opinionated.

You first have the common garden variety of opinionated chaps. The guys who will offer an opinion on any subject first up when there are no contradictory opinions floating around. The meekest of this lot will just remain silent if there exists comments already which contradict his own position till he finds others who support his view expressing themselves. His opinions ARE written in stone but he doesn't want to expose them to the harsh glare of criticism.

The guys one step up WILL offer their opinion even when contradictory views are already expressed. They, of course, do take care to see that inconvenient facts will not pop up to show them up. Which, essentially, means that they rush in where the opinions are primarily emotion-driven and not logic-driven. You know, like 'The Indian Cricket team is the best in the world', 'Amitabh was a better actor than Dilip Kumar' and the likes, where both sides can argue till the cows come home without being able to conclusively prove their point.

Then you get to the elite. They care two hoots about who they are contradicting and what they are contradicting. The hoi polloi version of the opinionated, before contradicting a statement of fact, will at least bother to google for the facts OR check out the person who is stating them but the elite...that is infra dig. They can tell off Stephen Hawking for his lack of knowledge of Physics and teach batting to Sachin Tendulkar. Not for nothing are they the elite among the opinionated.

But there is greater still. The GOATs. People who can MANUFACTURE the facts to underpin their opinions. Now THAT is the pinnacle of being opinionated, to discard and tailor the facts to suit your opinions!

Alas, I can only look on and wonder from the foot of this ladder. What is the point in aspiring to such excellence when I refuse to even form an opinion, leave alone stick to it?