Another Day in the Country
Forming an opinion
Contributing writer
I’ve been thinking about how our opinions in life are formed. From the cradle, our earliest impressions mold our opinions and help form our decisions all through life — unless we challenge our assumptions and get information that is more accurate.
Meanwhile, our brain, that mechanism that uses information, forms habits, and creates patterns, is awash in a flurry of words and feelings — out of which we very literally create our worldview. And when an opinion allowing a choice is formed, what makes us change?
My grandfather, born and raised in Berlin until he was in grade school, immigrated to America with his family in the late 1800s. He was always a verbal and opinionated man. He loved debate, although my mother called it argument since there was often a lot of emotion involved.
That’s how we form our opinions, you know — often emotion is the deciding element not facts or even truth. Many times, we’re not even aware of what moves us to “feel strongly” about some subject, because we have not stepped back and examined it thoughtfully. We’re just angry like what’s happening in the news and we want it to be different without the first clue about the complications or how to solve the problems.
Grandpa arrived on the Ramona scene in the early 1900s. I’m sure I’ve written about how this man in his late 20s saw a young girl in her teens, fell in love, and married her. You can bet that people in the area had opinions about her choice, his choice, and their age differences; but it didn’t stop them.
A few years later when Grandpa found himself with three beautiful — and those Schubert girls were good looking — teenage daughters, he had some very strong opinions about who in the neighborhood should be eligible to pursue them. He formed his opinions by looking at their families: Did they pay their bills? Did they drink too much? Were they German? What was their religious belief? Several of the boys were “run off,” as my mother told the story.
By the time it came my mother’s turn to run the marriage gauntlet; my Grandpa had mellowed with experience. Experience does that to our opinions, if we’re at all intelligent.
My Grandpa actually said, “As you feather your nest, you have to sit in it.”
Rather good advice, since there was no welfare system or aid to dependent children.
About this same time in world history, Adolph Hitler began to emerge as a leader in Germany. Grandpa listened for news from his homeland and said to himself, “Finally Germany has a charismatic leader — maybe he can do something good for the country.”
It didn’t take long before there was troubling news from Europe and my opinionated, argumentative grandpa got very quiet on the subject of Hitler. He’d obviously formed his opinion on limited information. Hitler had no track record; he was turning out to be all talk and would you believe it, he was leading Germany into another war? Grandpa was embarrassed even ashamed that he’d ever voiced support of Hitler.
Our family didn’t talk about Grandpa’s early opinion of Hitler. I heard the story after Grandpa died — and then it was whispered. Actually, I was proud that Grandpa could form an opinion, get new information, and then change his mind — it’s the mark of intelligence. He was not a wishy-washy man.
In forming or changing an opinion, it is crucial to factor in the source of our information. Tobacco companies told us all kinds of things about their product for years — it was smart, cool, invigorating, relaxing — even after they realized it was a killer. My uncles smoked, turning the living room blue as they played cards and argued politics, until the scientific community blew the whistle on tobacco. Sadly, until recently in Kansas, people weren’t paying attention to “second-hand smoke.”
A well-informed opinion is the beginning of wisdom — as is curiosity, a search for truth, and a weighing of fact. Choices aren’t always easy. Freedom isn’t free. My prayer is that on any given day in the country, “We the People” are weighing in with informed opinions, common sense, and not just emotional rhetoric.