"I think"

In high school, and possibly at other points in my formal schooling, I had a running argument with more than one instructor over my use of phrases such as "in my opinion" and "I believe" and especially "I think". It's always dangerous and extremely inaccurate to try to state the positions of those with whom you disagree, but I believe their objections were based upon the ideas that these phrases "weakened" your writing, and were unnecessary since anything YOU wrote was clearly YOUR opinion or YOUR belief or what YOU thought.

My opposition was based on the idea that sometimes a person writes their own opinions, beliefs, and thoughts, while other times they state facts -- and it is important to distinguish between the two, and it is important to acknowledge that each of us knows the difference. (I freely acknowledge that since we can be certain of NOTHING, including our own existence, the very idea that there ARE facts is open for debate. Still, I find "facts" to be a useful concept, given that we seem to exist among facts in a factual world -- whether or not we actually DO.)

Neither my instructors nor I ever backed down -- one of them wrote something like "I THINK you were a good student" in my high school yearbook -- and now that my writing is not regularly critiqued by them, I rarely have to face the issue directly. I believe, though, that the issue is becoming more important, as increasing numbers of people appear to be losing sight of the line between opinion and fact.

This is manifested in a number of ways. For one thing, we have a certain denial of facts. Many people take the position that if I believe one thing, and you believe something completely different, then we are both entitled to our beliefs, and they are both equally correct, including with regard to situations where these beliefs involve basic, provable facts, like whether the earth is flat or round.

Our society seems to be moving toward the belief that "facts" are determined by opinion polls and majority votes. If 52% of people BELIEVE something to be true, then it is true. This logic is actually ONLY correct in terms of speaking about what the majority believes to be true, and nothing else. For example, if 52% of Americans believe that Abraham Lincoln was our best President, then we can accurately state that the majority of Americans believe Abraham Lincoln was our best President. The fact that the majority BELIEVES he was the best President does not mean that he WAS the best President (actually determining the "best" President is impossible, since it will always involve personal opinion).

I suspect that some of the blame for this blurring of the line between opinion and fact falls on the increasing availability of information. Since we now have relatively easy access to great amounts of information about most topics, we are emboldened to consider our opinions to be just as valid as any other person's opinions. Millions of Americans feel free to pronounce an accused criminal "guilty" or "innocent" prior to any sort of trial. We become more and more politically polarized, as both sides are CERTAIN that THEIR side is correct -- and they use the outcome of polls and votes as "proof" that THEIR side is "right".

Perhaps this blurring of the line between opinion and fact is also the predictable outcome of people being taught since grammar school NOT to label their own pure opinions as opinions, but to state them as facts.