Philosophy and Its Effect on My Ability to Opine

As my blog has continued to grow in traffic and readers I have noticed, on several occasions, a certain sort of comment being made on some of my posts. In short, the gist of this sort of comment is “I like the way you present things but why don’t you voice your opinion?” Similar sentiments came from several sites that reviewed my blog (BlogAdvance and ITalk2Much). So I started taking a look at my posts, seeing if this was the case. Surely it shouldn’t be, I have long been one to voice my opinion and stick to it, and I have always loved a good argument. But alas, I think those days have passed.

As I started looking for reasons as to why or how this “loss of opinion” came about, I traced the beginnings back to the time at which I took up an interest in philosophy. Originally I was loathe to let my opinions go, I read only those philosophers that I knew would only help strengthen my existing thoughts. Once I entered college, however, this was no longer the case. I encountered tons of ideas that were way off my radar (imagine me, a Republican, taking an Environmental Philosophy class), and in the process greatly improved my critical thinking skills, my ability to analyze arguments. These abilities helped me to see the other side (for me the left), especially in reference to political issues, in a way I had never seen it before. I still didn’t think those on the left were right, or that my existing views were wrong; rather I saw the problems with both, saw the likely objections, etc. This became increasingly apparent during my sophomore year as I found my papers riddled with parenthetical asides designed solely to preempt the foreseeable objections, something that some found annoying and unnecessary.

So where has all of this left me? Well, going to a liberal arts college and studying philosophy and international relations hasn’t turned me to the left, despite, perhaps, the wishes of certain professors. But it certainly hasn’t strengthened my belief in the right. In fact I believe that I am now what could perhaps be called (and I dread to use this word) apathetic. It’s not that I don’t care about the issues, or that they don’t interest me. Instead it is that I know neither side is fool-proof, and thus would feel guilty to throw myself all the way behind one or the other. What interests me now is watching things play out, analyzing what has occurred and, of course, showing the errors in other arguments (both sides). Perhaps this is better, perhaps worse. Often there are times when I wish I could bang out a blog entry (or rant) that, even though it presented a one-sided view of the issue and was full of holes, I could actually stand behind with total confidence. It seems like that is what most people want to read anyway. Unfortunately, I can’t. So I’ll keep trudging along, hoping that one day I might chance upon the “right” path.