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On Opinion and Respect

People think that when they start to speak their thoughts out, they deserve respect. Respect should never be a default reaction especially when one refuses to engage in meaningful and truthful discourse. More so, such is cowardice and evidence of intellectual immaturity when they hide behind the veil of a pretentious plea for respect and freedom of expression. The freedom to express and respect are supposedly anchored on truth because civil society would disintegrate when lies become the currency of public discourse.

People think that opinions are harmless, and they see those who are prepared to question them as annoying. This is because that they never see or refuse to see how opinions spill to the “practical” world. They think that arguments and conversations are the mere exchanges of mere utterances, when in fact, these are the processes to shape and dictate reality’s course. When unchecked opinions dominate the public discourse, then it would be fine to blow up statues of historical worth or be genocidal because a specific group of people drained the lifeblood of the nation. (The former is about the Taliban and the latter is about the Nazis.) Respecting such opinions would be a problem. Opinions, again, can spill to the practical world and can bring real harm.

Opinions can lead to truth or falsehood, and such depends on the manner of construction and the presence of facts. When fallacies dominate the form of expression with the absence, twisting, and denying of facts plus an incorrigible individual, such is still farfetched from being worthy of respect. Respect should be a disposition among those who are conversing when both are in commitment to the truth. The point is not to deceive but to build a shared reality with truth as the currency.

This attitude of wanting and defaulting respect when an opinion is raised is reflective in the education sector. Teachers act as informational tyrants (even when they are already presenting shaky and baseless content) to students with the effect that students simply accept what is given without careful deliberation. When students start to ask the teacher, the teacher becomes defensive and worse, assert the role he or she is in and nullify the question as a nuisance. More so, when the teacher is already attempting to inject opinion on the subject matter, it is as if his or her opinion is canon. (I am referring to subjects that encourage discourse such as the humanities and social sciences.) This is already enabling a culture and shaping the student’s minds that discourse can never be possible. However, if the teacher knows how to listen to questions, formulate opinions, and even entertain opinions in class in a manner that aims to address formal (logical) construction and evidence building, then students can see that not all opinions are worthy of respect because some have questionable foundations especially when there is insistence on fact denial. Opinion building is a and must be a rigorous process.

I had a beautiful experience in managing my Ethics classes before. (I am limiting the teaching experience to my latter days in swu because it is there and then, I think I have perfected my methodology.) My ethics classes were all about everyday debates with the emphasis that the students can tell me that I am wrong. (I also intentionally make wrong statements and arguments mixed with valid ones, and their task is to prove the lapses in my arguments.) My students were always tasked to base their arguments on sound laws and evidence, and to spot the errors in my arguments. (Engaging discourse starts first with an opinion. And opinions used to prove points have now become arguments.) I pretended to be a bad doctor, a bad lawyer, and even a Nazi scientist just to constantly train my students to spot erroneous opinions and arguments because if they do not, patients and even entire races will not have the justice they deserve if they simply nodded to me playing devil’s advocate. Honestly, I did tell them at the beginning of the semester that this will be the aura of the class in order for them to break the cultural hesitation on telling someone in authority wrong (in this case me as the teacher) because right and wrong should be anchored on truth and evidence and not because of a presumed authority figure. Furthermore, research was emphasized because students are needed to cite and quote principles and laws from UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights), Declaration of Helsinki, and many others. Citing was not enough; even careful interpretation and correlation of facts must be followed as well. Students also have to discuss among themselves as a group to formulate founding opinions (turned to truth and arguments) because I already set the stage that I will be a tough devil’s advocate. This I can say in retrospect, that the learning experience in the classroom was more into building thoughts to opinion to argument and spilling to the practical world (in our case judgement and justice). Sad to say that some of these students were only for the grade and are problematic in their standing now amidst historical revisionism and distortion.

Opinion building is not easy, and an opinion itself should not be the end of the discourse. If one invokes the “respect my opinion” slogan without opening oneself to proper discourse, then that person carries the danger to civil society because that is the germ for authoritarian tendencies. There is also a different hell for those people who argue for the sake of confusion (not in simulated reality like in the classrooms but in the real world with real consequences) because that is not a commitment to truth especially when consequences are present. More so, if one does not even at least undergo what my ethics students did go through (in opinion and argument building), then that person becomes a problem to public discourse as his or her opinion is simply public noise in public discourse. Civil society needs public discourse grounded on truth and well-constructed opinion that adheres to facts. When such is the disposition, then respect becomes an outcome. Respect my opinion? Not yet. 

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