Tags: #dough Here's a pretty common scenario. I'm in conversation with a friend or family member. Maybe there's a group with us, or maybe it's just the two of us. The friend/family member goes off on a tirade or impassioned argument or even just a musing about something, then asks me my opinion. My opinion? I don't know. I don't know enough about the topic. I just heard your side of the argument now. I would need to do way more reading and research to come to an informed opinion. And I'm not going to do reading and research because I don't think that this topic is important enough to have an informed opinion about. Even with important things--governance, religion, economy. Everything is so nuanced. How easily could I say "the government is wildly inefficient and a third of my income goes to taxes for no reason"? "Religion is just believing in a mythical sky daddy because it's too difficult to cope with reality" It's just...complicated. And there's only so much time in life to do the work of crafting fully nuanced opinions. Better pick things that are actually important to you. Then you go down the rabbit hole of the privilege involved in not caring about politics. I don't know though. People say that, but do they really care about politics? What do they do to lobby their position? How does it help to know all the ins and outs of national immigration policy if you are personally powerless to effect change in any way? It seems to me like most people interested in governance should get more heavily involved in local governance. Know the nuances of your community's history and local politics. But for me. What do I have the power to do? Make friends. Get good at my work. Do my best to gather capital to pursue my interests. Start a family. Protect them. Feels like it makes sense to have strong opinions on that stuff. Although now I'm going down this rabbit hole, perhaps the value in having some semblance of opinion on the myriad topics that people bring up at dinners and parties, is so that you can play the social game. So you can have those conversations, build rapport, make connections. But perhaps we can turn the conversation toward more interesting topics. :) Created: November 04, 2021 Last Modified: November 04, 2021