Not Every Opinion Deserves Respect

We are constantly told that everyone is entitled to an opinion.

This is true.

Everyone is also entitled to wear Crocs to a wedding, put pineapple on pizza (which I don't mind at all, if I wasn't loading it up with a nosebleed five factor of chilli) and spend their retirement savings on commemorative plates. Entitlement does not automatically make something wise, attractive or worthy of respect.

Somewhere along the way, we confused a person’s right to express an opinion with everyone else’s obligation to treat that opinion as valuable.

They are not the same thing.

You are perfectly entitled to believe that the Earth is flat, vaccines contain tracking devices, climate change was invented by people selling reusable shopping bags, or that a crystal placed beside your bed will repair your liver while you sleep.

You may say it loudly. You may make a video about it. You may add dramatic music, capital letters and several red arrows pointing towards absolutely nothing.

But I am equally entitled to think your opinion is ridiculous. That it was, in fact, made by a dick.

This apparently comes as a shock.

People now present their opinions as though they are newborn babies that must be admired and protected. The moment anyone questions them, they become offended.

“That’s my opinion!”

Yes. I know. That is precisely the problem.

An opinion isn’t a magical shield against facts. It doesn’t become intelligent simply because it belongs to you. If you announce that gravity is a government conspiracy and then walk off a roof, gravity won’t pause halfway down because it respects your personal truth.

We used to understand that opinions had to earn credibility. You formed them after reading, listening, learning and occasionally accepting the deeply unpleasant possibility that you might be wrong.

Now, forming an opinion seems to require nothing more than a Facebook account and the ability to type “DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH” beneath an article you haven’t read.

Research once involved books, evidence, experts and perhaps several years at university. Today, it means watching three videos while sitting on the toilet.

The internet has made everyone feel qualified to speak with authority on everything. A person can spend twenty minutes online and emerge ready to correct doctors, scientists, economists, historians and anyone else foolish enough to have dedicated their life to understanding the subject.

Apparently, expertise is elitist now.

Of course, experts can be wrong. Governments can lie. Scientists can disagree. Doctors can make mistakes. Questioning authority is healthy and necessary.

But questioning something is not the same as inventing an answer you like better.

And disagreement is not censorship.

If you post your opinion publicly and someone tells you it makes no sense, your freedom of speech has not been taken away. It has been successfully exercised. You spoke—and then somebody else did.

That is how the arrangement works.

Freedom of speech does not include freedom from embarrassment, correction, contradiction or somebody asking where on Earth you got that idea.

We should respect people. We should allow them dignity, safety and the right to speak. But we do not have to respect every thought that wanders out of their head wearing a little hat marked “opinion.”

Some opinions are thoughtful.

Some are informed.

Some are based on experience.

And some are complete bollocks.

Pretending they all deserve equal respect doesn’t make us tolerant. It makes us intellectually lazy. It allows nonsense to sit beside knowledge as though the two are merely different flavours of the same thing.

They aren’t.

You can have your opinion.

You can share it.

You can defend it.

But once you release it into the world, the rest of us are allowed to examine it, challenge it and, if necessary, laugh at it.

Because everyone is entitled to an opinion.

They just aren’t entitled to have it admired.

My Body Has Opened a Phlegm Factory

Day thirteen of being sick, and apparently my body has abandoned any ambition of recovery and moved into full-scale mucus production.

At first, I assumed I had a cold. A few days coughing, a bit of sniffling, perhaps an afternoon under the doona feeling sorry for myself. That seemed reasonable.

Instead, my lungs appear to have opened a factory.

Production continues around the clock. There are no staff shortages, supply-chain problems or public holidays. Great lobs of phlegm are being manufactured with an efficiency rarely seen in Australian industry.

I don’t know where it all comes from. I’m not eating it. I’m certainly not ordering it. Yet every few minutes, another delivery arrives.

Meanwhile, I’m taking Vitamin D, preparing for B12 injections and waiting for liver scans, because apparently my body is no longer a functioning human organism. It is a project with several trades already booked and more damage being discovered every time somebody removes a wall.

I’ve been dieting. I go to strength class. I have made an effort.

My body’s response has been to produce green sludge.

At this point, I don’t need a doctor. I need a building inspector, an industrial vacuum and possibly a demolition permit.

However, I will go back to the doctor—just as soon as I’ve published this. I may be falling apart, but I still have professional standards. 😁

A Renovator’s Delight

After yesterday’s visit to the doctor, I have decided that I don’t need treatment. I need a restoration team.

Not one person with a stethoscope and a prescription pad. I need several tradespeople, scaffolding and one of those television programs where everyone walks around shaking their heads and saying, “This is much worse than we expected.”

I have been dieting. Not merely thinking about dieting while eating toast, either. I have actually been making an effort. I'm fasting for 17 hours a day, sometimes more. I have also started going to a strength class once a week, where I lift things, stretch things and discover muscles I had previously assumed were decorative.

Surely my body should be grateful.

It should be responding with renewed energy, improved strength and perhaps a slightly more streamlined silhouette. Instead, it continues to feel blah.

Not dramatically ill. Not interestingly unwell. Just blah—the physical equivalent of a grey cardigan.

This seems deeply unfair. If I am going to deny myself food I actually enjoy and voluntarily attend a class where someone tells me to do another ten repetitions, I expect results. I don’t necessarily need to emerge looking thirty years younger, but I would like to get out of a chair without making the sound of an elderly wardrobe being dragged across a floor.

Instead, I have liver scans to arrange, B12 injections to endure, Vitamin D to swallow and enough green mucus to supply a small special-effects department.

Apparently, my body is one of those old houses that looked perfectly charming from the street but once purchased, reveals rising damp, faulty plumbing and wiring installed by somebody’s uncle in 1974.

Every time the doctor investigates one thing, another problem appears behind it.

“While we’re here, we’ve noticed the foundations are shifting.”

Wonderful.

I am trying, though. I’m dieting. I’m strengthening. I’m taking the vitamins. I’m turning up to appointments. I am doing all the sensible things people tell you to do when you reach the age where your body starts issuing maintenance notices.

Perhaps the benefits are quietly happening somewhere I can’t see them. Maybe beneath the general blahness, my muscles are improving, my health is recovering and my body is slowly remembering how to behave.

Or perhaps I’m simply holding the whole structure together long enough for the next inspection.

Either way, I no longer want a makeover.

I want a full renovation, a generous budget and somebody else to manage the project.

Why Am I The Latest Restoration Project?

I went to the doctor today, which is always a mistake.

You can walk in feeling reasonably functional and walk out carrying several referrals, a list of vitamin deficiencies and the unsettling suspicion that your entire body has quietly resigned without bothering to tell you.

Apparently, I now need liver scans.

Nothing makes you feel quite as cheerful as hearing the words “liver scans.” I don’t know exactly what they’re looking for yet, but I assume my liver has finally lodged a formal complaint about the conditions under which it has been expected to operate.

Sheez! I only drink when someone comes to dinner these days. Probably stuffed it years ago when I used to guzzle...

Then there are the B12 injections.

I’m not entirely sure why I need those either, but evidently swallowing an ordinary vitamin is no longer sufficient. My body has reached the stage where nutrients must be injected directly into it because asking it to absorb them normally is apparently expecting too much.

Vitamin D also needs to be added to the list.

This seems particularly insulting. I live in Australia. We have so much sunlight that half the country spends its life trying not to get any on them. Yet somehow, despite living beneath a giant flaming ball in the sky, I have failed to collect enough Vitamin D.

And then there is the mucus.

I have become a mucus generator.

I don’t know where it is all coming from. There cannot possibly be this much spare space inside one human being. Yet my body continues producing great quantities of green sludge as though it has secured a government contract and must meet a monthly quota.

It is revolting.

I cough, blow my nose, clear my throat and briefly believe the supply must finally be exhausted. But no. Somewhere deep inside me, another shift starts work.

At this point, I don’t feel like a person. I feel like an ageing house discovered during a renovation. You pull up one floorboard and suddenly somebody is talking about damp, structural movement and whether the wiring is still legal.

Why is everything falling apart at once?

My brain has already required more repairs than most major highways. My legs have their own ideas about how walking should work. Now my liver wants professional photography, my vitamins have disappeared and my respiratory system is manufacturing industrial waste.

I went to the doctor with green mucus.

I came home as a restoration project.

My Greatest Literary Achievement Was Two Paragraphs About Mucus

I have written more than 500 blog posts, which means I have spent a significant portion of my life arranging words in the hope that somebody might read them.

And now, after all that effort, the internet has finally chosen my greatest literary achievement.

Sniffing.

It was two paragraphs long.

Apparently, I didn’t need talent, research or an opinion. I just needed mucus.