It was long overdue I commented on this. I guess we only write when we’re passionately misrepresented or misinterpreted by someone. I recently read a book called “The Difficulty of Being Good.” Unusually, after a long time did I love a book that was loved by so many other people. The single biggest reason I loved this book is because after Bernard Shaw, I found someone who wasn’t afraid to take sides, make judgements, express opinions. It is when I was expressing this, that I was asked, “Do you like to read biased books?”, and I decided to explain my position, and hope to inspire maybe another one person who may be afraid of opinions.
Art is inherently dependent on interpretation. There is no right or wrong interpretation, but rather my interpretation and your interpretation. I have commented ad nauseum on how so many people look for the correct interpretation based on a populist majority and then stick to it.
This blog is now about opinionated art - literature to be precise. I have always loved people who are opinionated. Others call them biased. I say everyone is biased, and if they’re not, they’ve got no reason to be living on this earth. Very few of those people have opinions though. This consequently translates into literature too. A large portion of populist books are non-judgemental and non-opinionated in nature. We have a tendency to call this unbiased or objective. It simply represents the high levels of cowardice in our social order. Objectivity, by definition is opinionated.
Let’s look at objectivity for a minute. Objectivity, quite literally (and trivially), means towards an objective. Objectivity is focussed and opinionated. Fairness does not mean neutrality. Objectivity is fair, not passifist. If I were to be made an objective judge of one person having stolen something from another person, then in all fairness, I would judge against the thief. Of course I am biased towards something – I am biased towards my definition of good which states stealing is bad. I am not biased towards either of the two actors involved in the crime, however I will label the act as a crime. I am opinionated, objective, and fair, and harshly biased against stealing. Someone who fails to express an opinion either way, is neither objective, nor fair, nor unbiased, but rather biased towards cowardice of maintaining their “good guy” image amongst both parties.
Let’s talk about opinions. During my days of work with open source I said this, and ever since I work for Microsoft, I keep saying it. I said it against the Church when they opposed Dan Brown’s book, and I say it against the Maharashtra Navanirman Sena when they threaten Sachin Tendulkar against his right to free speech. I am a person interested in opinions, because opinions tell me what people truly really are. Facts are easily verifiable. If the Church is threatened by a two-bit author who has little literary skill, then that just demonstrates their “faith” or whatever. It demonstrates that their followers are dumb imbeciles who would not take 10 minues to verify the facts written by Dan Brown. They are not objective and fair. Similarly, if Sachin Tendulkar saying something troubles MNS, it only indicates how weak and dumb they claim their followers are.
Opinions make people interesting. Opinions make people… well people! To suppress an opinion is to kill humanity. If we believe in aatma and crap, then to suppress an opinion is to simply allow the body to live while having killed a person’s soul.
I understand the value of fact. I’m also one of those people who at times will cut through people’s lengthy discussions and ask for cold, hard facts. I want facts because I want to form an opinion. So demands for facts make me all the more opinionated. It doesn’t mean I’m not objective as I explained above, it doesn’t mean I’m not fair, however, it does mean that I stick to what I believe is fair and don’t compromise. I’m not a coward who would prefix every statement with “maybe” or “perhaps”.
I hate it when people start books, conversations, blogs, articles with, “This is only my opinion…” Of course it’s your opinion, that’s why I’m here. Tell me what you want to tell me and I know I am listening to your opinion only. I don’t put any human on the same pedestal as God. Thereby I do not attribute to any human the previlidge of knowing The Universal Truth. Everything I hear and see is opinion.
I often like certain people’s opinions or claims which are controversial or unpopulist and if I ever said it, I am branded as their suporter. Even though we display a great deal of training, we fail to demonstrate much education. Language provides us with so many words with so many precise meanings and we fail to understand. There is a clear distinction between liking something and agreeing with it. I like many books that I don’t agree with – heck I love those books because they simply bring out my humanity in me. Every time I read them, I realise I am an individual, I am a human, I can read this book for the hundredth time and I shall still disagree with it. I positively love the book!
For all our grand historic crap and traditional shit, I find Indians a society filled with uneducated people. Even Mahabharat and Ramayan, and the Geeta, have instances of great characters admiring their enemies. They remained enemies till the end because they disagreed with each other. That doesn’t mean they didn’t admire the enemy’s opinion on something. I love opinions because they connect me with the rest of the world. They make me matter. Reading an opinion tells me there are other individuals like me who think and act. It gives me hope.
I read an interesting quote, and I can’t remember where, “The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference.” To hate something passionately also makes us feel good. It is an assertion of our humanity, of our right and free will to have opinions. It asserts our ability to make judgements. I fear that I may someday be indifferent to this world, or it may become indifferent to me. That is when I will have lost my humanity and my soul.
Let us now conclude with bias. What is bias? Bias to me, is a double-standard. Bias is when you apply a rule to one person, but relax that rule to another person. Bias is cowardly. Bias is the opposite of objective and opinionated. Bias is reserving to oneself powers over other individuals. That is the one thing which drives away any passion in me. So in conclusion, I will state that the last thing I would either read, like, or agree-with on the face of this earth, is anything that is biased. I hope that clarifies to everyone whether or not I like biased literature.
This doesn’t mean I hate bias - because that would still have stirred up a passion in me, prompting me to read biased books. I simply consider bias a waste of my already very short life afforded to me on earth. A biased person has no guts, has no courage. A biased person has no thought, no opinion. They will change the rules of the game anytime it is convenient to their narrative. It is purely nonsensical and irrelevant. A biased organism is not human.
