My opinion of thing is this because reasons.
Isn’t that how an opinion works?
You think about a specific topic and make a value judgment based on certain arbitrary criteria.
For example: My favorite football team is the Oakland Raiders. This is because my first-grade teacher hated the Oakland Raiders, and I like to be a contrarian.
Actually, before that time, I loved the Denver Broncos (if you’re not up on your NFL rivalries, Denver-Oakland is one of the more inexplicably violent ones).
I even had a Denver Broncos sweatshirt (with the old logo, the one where the horse is reared up like in Gericault’s “The Charging Chasseur” and shooting a laser beam out of its mouth) that I used to wear around.
But just because of one little, tiny reason, my whole opinion did a 360-and-a-half.
So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that opinions are very personal.
In many ways opinions are the most personal thing we have: They’re deeply influenced by our upbringings, our environments and the people we associate with.
That’s probably why so many people defend their opinions even when they’re about ridiculous things (the episode in “Gulliver’s Travels” about the war that started over which side to break an egg on or whatever comes to mind).
Opinions are our strongest ties to the things we care about the most.
Every time you tell someone that your favorite movie is “Aladdin,” you’re subconsciously remembering all the awesome times you’ve had watching “Aladdin,” quoting “Aladdin,” mocking the terribly bad “Aladdin 2” (the search for more money), talking about “Aladdin” to your family and friends, etc.
(What I’m trying to say is “Aladdin” is the best movie ever, and if anyone has a DVD copy I can borrow, I would love it because my VHS copy wore out a long time ago, and I don’t have any money.)
My opinion of “Aladdin” is derived from all of my interactions with the idea of “Aladdin” throughout my life. My prolonged exposure to it has strengthened the mental connection between “Aladdin” and dopamine receptors or whatever it is in my brain that releases really good feelings whenever I think about “Aladdin.”
You may be thinking, “God, will this guy ever stop talking about ‘Aladdin’ and get to his point?”
This is where that happens.
Because my point is that, in my opinion, almost everything is a matter of opinion. Obviously there are a few laws of physics we can’t really just disbelieve away. But one of my favorites to argue about is grammar.
My old roommate and I used to argue for hours on end about whether misusing grammar is bad and wrong, or just a necessary and accounted-for by-product of the way actual language works. At least, I think that’s what it was about. We talked about a lot of different stuff, but it was under the umbrella of this one weirdly theoretical linguistic discussion.
My wildly unpopular opinion is that the purpose of language is not to be correct, it is to be understood. Therefore, as long as your communicative act results in comprehension, it is successful, and you don’t need someone making a transcendental judgment about it based on some absurdly complicated and illogical system made up by a bunch of stupid British guys a long time ago.
This is almost definitely derived from the fact that the only class I failed in high school was freshman English, and I failed it because I bombed a grammar test. Personally, I think that the only good that comes out of a strict system of grammatical rules is the ability to create an aesthetic effect by subverting it.
But that’s just my opinion!
The great thing about opinions is that no matter what mine is, or yours is, or Obama’s is or some guy on the Internet’s is, no one gets hurt by them (directly)!
Opinions are like blood cells: Everybody’s got a bunch of them, and they’re all awesome!
Dallin Kelson is an English senior at UF. His column usually appears on Mondays.
