Is it easy to track the moments when our opinions change? Do our opinions mature, like our tastebuds?
I have an extremely vivid memory from early childhood of my father feeding me my first mushroom. I hated it! I can still see the view from my eyes as they squinted and watered over with my detestation. Now I can’t get enough of the fungi – raw, sautéed, souped, stuffed (mmm getting hungry).
There’s a school of thought suggesting we need to taste something around ten times for it to grow on us – perhaps why, having only dared to eat them about three times in my life, I still can’t stand brussels sprouts (I know, it’s such a cliché).
Does this theory hold true for our opinions? Do we need to be subjected to a certain opinion a certain number of times before it eventually becomes our own?
It’s a scary thought. Opinions come at us from every angle. Every day since we started this life, someone somewhere has been telling us “we must” this, and “we must not” that, what’s wrong, what’s right, what’s evil, what’s good. How are we meant to know what are our own opinions, and what are someone else’s?
As our knowledge grows, our opinions undoubtedly change. We start to gravitate towards people who hold opinions that mirror or compliment our own. These people may then go on to change more of our views on the world, and we let them, because we trust them. After all, to trust someone is to trust their opinion, is it not?
But what if this never happens? What if people still hold onto an outdated opinion because they rarely meet catalysts of change in their lives? Should they be blamed for that?
Exhibit A: two old men and an old lady – I would guess in their 60’s, maybe early 70’s if they were in good shape for their age, doddering through the local supermarket. I happened to overhear the lady puff up and proclaim: “They should never have gotten rid of the white australia policy” (no, that does not deserve capitals), whereupon the two men congratulated her with “hear hear” and “rightly said”, therefore justifying her opinion, which most would now agree is very outdated.
My knee-jerk response, had I allowed it to occur, would have been to open a dialogue started with very unsavoury words, and backed up with something along the lines of you racist hag, if I were you I would not be proclaiming that loudly and proudly, thinking strangers around you are going to bow down and marvel at your intelligence, for you only come across as an unintelligent bigot not worth the time of day, so shut your poisonous piehole and keep it to your bilious self.
Lucky I didn’t, and lucky for them I found the last packet of dark chocolate clinkers and spent the rest of the day in happy clinker-land.
Generation after generation have learned their opinions from their elders, the first being “respect your elders”. Well I aint respecting any elders that have those kinds of views. I don’t care how many wars they fought in, how many kidney stones they passed, or how far they had to walk to school when they were five, it’s just not called for, and not worth my respect.
I would like to thank the baby boomers, my generation’s predecessors, for being (or seeming to me to be) the first generation to take the opinions hammered into them from childhood, and dramatically alter them; for having the nerve to think for themselves, instead of adopting the opinions of their elders; for passing that gift onto their children, who I hope in turn will pass it onto theirs.
Perhaps then, the opinion-tastebuds on our collective consciousness might mature into opinions worth listening to in supermarkets.
As for the old dogs, it seems the new tricks have escaped them, so I’m going to let them be (-racist bigots bite tongue bite tongue).
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