Not Having an Opinion is OK
Rumaan Alam talks about what he terms the “ firehose of certainty ”: “Everyone on Twitter—everyone on the Internet—seems so damn certain.” That led him to wonder: “Is deciding what you like an instinct, a sense that arrives as swiftly as my autoimmune response to cat dander? Or is it the result of reasoned consideration, the way wine tasters swish pinot noir around in their mouths, spit it out, and reach for complex metaphors about chocolate and tobacco?” Alam himself can’t always make up his mind. That characteristic sticks out like a sore thumb on the Internet: “I am surrounded by confidence and all I feel is ambivalence. I am so cowed by how everyone else seems to know their own mind that it’s hard for me to exercise my own.” I think Alam need not worry. After all, isn’t Arthur Schopenhauer right when he wrote this on why just reading isn’t enough unless one reflects as well: “When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. It is th...