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Donkees

(31,075 posts)
Sat Feb 6, 2021, 09:51 AM Feb 2021

Having an opinion means you have the opinion. Being opinionated, the opinion has you instead.

Having an opinion means you have the opinion. Being opinionated reverses that subject-object relationship so that the opinion has you instead.

There are many ways to tell whether you are opinionated (i.e. possessed by the opinion). One way is to notice how you handle evidence related to your opinion. If you mainly seek out evidence with the intent to support your opinion and are soon offended by evidence which opposes it, then your mind is working in the maintenance and service of your opinion. So if you are mainly working FOR your opinion, then that likely means that your opinion has you. And if you are so opinionated that no evidence of any kind could have an effect on your opinion, then that means your opinion really has you.

Having an opinion is very different. Again, the handling of evidence is important. Having an opinion means that you can keep are lose it without that having much effect on your self-image. If you’re generally free from the feeling that your opinion has much to do with you, then you’re also free to consider evidence without loyalty or bias toward any particular conclusion.

That’s my opinion on the matter. But it’s not an absolute opinion, and not an absolute truth. This reminds me of another common symptom of being opinionated: it makes you confuse opinion and fact, so that you speak of your opinion with the same tone, the same gravity, as you would use when stating a fact. People often seem to find such a tone of certainty and authority to be charismatic. But I think that a more balanced and rational mind might be able to see that such certainty may be only a mask for the aforementioned confusion.

One last difference to mention about having an opinion vs. being opinionated: being opinionated inhibits your creativity. It takes an open mind to have an opinion without being possessed by it. If you’re really able to ride the wave of such openness, then you can have all kinds of opinions without your judgement being tainted by any of them. You can even deliberately be wrong, and then wake up from the dialectical dream to find that your erroneous beliefs have gathered to form a more profound order which is all the more pleasing because you can take neither responsibility nor credit for it.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-having-an-opinion-and-being-opinionated
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Having an opinion means you have the opinion. Being opinionated, the opinion has you instead. (Original Post) Donkees Feb 2021 OP
Kicked and recommended. Uncle Joe Feb 2021 #1
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