Here is a simple two-step exercise to try the next time you are in a space where people are offered the opportunity to share their opinions on something.
First, ask someone to share their position on a subject. Listen fully, without interruption. Pay attention not only to what they say, but also to how they say it: their tone, confidence, body language and gestures.
Then ask them a second question: Why? Ask them to walk you through the reason, or reasons, for their stance. Give them the space to bring you into their world—to explain how they arrived at that position in the first place. Do this often enough and you may notice something interesting. For some people, the second part becomes much harder than the first. There may be a pause, a stutter, some fumbling, or even a clear shift in tone and body language.
What this reveals is how many of us walk around with borrowed opinions. By borrowed, I do not necessarily mean false. An opinion can be completely true and still be borrowed. I mean positions we have adopted without properly reasoning through them ourselves. And sometimes, this happens almost subconsciously.
From family, friends, church groups and communities, to music, politics, social media and the wider media, most of us have bought into ideas and opinions that we now hold very dearly, sometimes without ever properly thinking through why we hold those positions in the first place.
And if you do not yet see how much of a big deal this is—not only to the individual in question, but to the society and world we are collectively building—then stay with me. Ideas matter. Ideas, opinions and thoughts do not stay in our heads. They shape the social world we build: our laws, institutions, customs, expectations and even our understanding of what is normal.
When enough people within a society come to accept an idea, that idea can eventually become the norm. It can shape what we think a normal life should look like, what a normal education should look like, what marriage should look like, what success should look like, what work should look like, and what morality should look like. Regardless of what was considered normal before. Regardless of whether the new is right or wrong.
A lot of what qualifies as social change begins this way: an idea is introduced, argued, resisted, repeated, accepted by more people, and eventually becomes part of how society understands itself. Think about women being allowed to vote. There was a time, in many societies, when the idea that women should have the same political right to vote as men was not treated as obvious. It was debated, resisted, protested for and fought over. What is now considered normal in many parts of the world once existed as an idea that challenged what society had already accepted as normal. That is the power of ideas.
But thinking for yourself does not mean disagreeing with everyone. You can question something your parents taught you and eventually conclude that they were right. You can properly examine something you learnt from your faith, your culture, your friends or even social media and still arrive at the same conclusion. The issue is not that other people believe what you believe. The issue is whether you know why you believe it.
So perhaps we should make it a rule of thumb in our lives that, before we adopt an idea strongly enough to defend it, repeat it or pass it on to someone else, we should first do the work of understanding why we hold it. That does not mean becoming an expert on everything before having an opinion. It does not mean being able to win every debate either. It means being able to explain the grounds of what you believe and being willing to seriously consider reasonable objections to it.
Start by questioning the very opinions you hold so dearly and would happily defend: ideas about work, marriage, faith, money, sex, success, education, politics, relationships, life and so much more. Ask yourself: Why do I believe this? Where did this idea come from? What have I actually considered before arriving at this position? Would I still believe this if the people around me believed something different?
Develop the discipline to build informed opinions, especially in the world we live in now. Because without that discipline, we risk becoming people who simply move with ideas as and when they come. And worse, we place ourselves in the hands of those who are best able to spread, repeat and popularise the ideas they want society to accept.
If enough people stop doing the work of thinking for themselves, then whoever becomes best at shaping what people see, hear and repeat gains an enormous amount of influence over what eventually becomes normal. And that should concern all of us. So think for yourself. Not because everyone else is wrong. But because if you are going to carry an idea, defend it, live by it and pass it on, you should at least know how it became yours.