How to have good takes
Preface
I wrote this sometime last year after a particularly infuriating classroom discussion. So if it comes across as aggressive, it's because it is.
Despite what Reddit has told you, being level headed doesn't mean fence riding, and nuance doesn't require you to water down your opinion. The common trend I see in classrooms and greater public discourse is the flaying of strongly held beliefs. Tell me how many times you've heard this in school: Teacher: "Okay class, do you think X is correct or Y is correct?" Student: "Well really it's a mix of the two" Or "it's a spectrum" or "it depends" or "it's subjective."
I am tired of hearing this. I think the cause of this is the following:
Firstly,
Having a strong opinion is hard to defend. You need to be knowledgeable about the topic to argue for it. You need to spend time with it, see how it interacts with the rest of your belief system. In contrast, defending something totally abstract is much easier. How many moral arguments have you heard hiding behind the skirt of subjectivity? By arguing abstractly we're moving above the question rather than bisecting it, and attempting to find it's gooey core. The core is the only worthwhile part!
Second,
We are expected to have opinions on everything. You're expected to have thoughts on News articles that came out 20 minutes ago. We are simply not allowed to be quiet. Adding fluff nuance to hide the lack of an opinion seems like the path of least resistance. I'm sure you've seen this, it's just the hyper-sensationalized state of politics as it exists on social media. The problem is that it's boring, and not productive.
Look, it's bullshitting, I get it. I'm really good at bullshitting my way through something that I don't know. It's because I can see exactly how it's done that it irritates me so much. I feel like a dad watching my son hiding weed smell with cologne. Like dude, you're insulting my intelligence. In metaphysics it's often said that things are more defined by what they aren't than what they are. When everyone is fence riding, there's no real opposition to base your belief off of. The context of opinion is bland. As a rough example, very conservative parents somehow raise a liberal child. This is because the child knows exactly what they don't want to be.
To anyone listening, these non-opinions sound stupid. Someone who knows what they're talking about will always be able to tell when someone else does not. If you understand what you're talking about you're going to have a good opinion, simple as. So here's my advice to have good takes.
1) Think before you speak.
This is obvious, but seriously. Take is as an exercise to form a coherent sentence before trying to make it up on the spot. This will make you sound smart, and not dumb. I think that teachers should give a required 30 second to a minute of quiet thought after asking a question that requires it. The kids that are putting in the effort to come up with something fully formed are always going to be beaten out by the kids who say the first thing on their mind. Then that same student has to write essays to express their thoughts that they were forced to have!
2) Understand the purpose of your opinion
What are you really trying to say? What information do you want to be understood? What is your contribution *doing *to the state of the discourse? These are questions worth having answered before contributing.
3) Read the news, don't watch it.
You are ultimately going to form your opinions based off of the current environment. Your information about the environment is crucial to having a fully formed take. As I mentioned before, news as seen on social media is practically garbage. I would recommend setting up an RSS reader that concatenates many news sites into one app. This will allow you to consciously choose when you want to get up to date rather than having it spit at you. Also getting your news from many sources will allow you to have a more complete, unbiased view of current events.