Address to The Adult Discussion Group

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Gainesville FL

Sunday, March 16, 2008—9:30 AM

 

Bev Asbury and I met in the Fellowship door one Sunday in mid January. With his charming smile, Bev said, “I want you to talk to the adult discussion group on the topic ‘An Opinionated Woman.’”  “Opinionated---woman?” Huh--m!  I want to speak to those words, share a context, then, we will discuss whatever you care to say related to what you hear me say.

An opinionated woman-- La femme avec l’opinion. Note the placement--first or last. Woman—la femme.

I’ve had a lifelong fascination with words. If I’d known about linguistics, that might have been my career.  According to my parents, when I was almost four I brought the morning paper from the porch. I spread the paper on the floor, knelt, put my face in my hands and perused it.

Daddy said, “Look at her pretending she can read.”

 I said, “I can read.”

 He said, “So read.”

 I read the caption in the balloon over the head of a carton character on the lower left corner of page one.  I like to say that Daddy dropped his grits and bacon...

There was no kindergarten in the local school system.  Mother asked, I guess, and a family friend, who taught first grade, said I could come to her class as long as I could sit still.

I am intrigued by the derivation--the etymology--of words; sadly so, as I observe the mangling—the dumbing-down-- in communication from pronunciation to grammar to meaning.   “1984” was no surprise to me.       

The linguistic root of opinion is “opine” meaning to think, to suppose

Its origin is opinari{L}; opinioun {OFr}-- to think

Opiner-one who thinks or holds an opinion

The notion of “thinking” deteriorated into “opinionated”-- holding unreasonably to one’s own opinion—stubborn, dogmatic, prejudiced, undue fondness, obstinate--Webster’s Unabridged has:

(1) A belief not based in absolute certainty or positive knowledge, but on what seems true, valid or probable to one’s own mind. What one thinks; judgment.

(2.) An evaluation, impression or estimation of a quality or worth of a person or thing.

(3.) Formal judgment of an expert or a matter in which advice is sought

(4.) In law, a formal statement by a judge, etc., of the law bearing on a case.

(5.) Opinionatedness, conceitedness.

Synonyms—notion, sentiment, conception, idea, estimation, belief, believe, advise, mental attitude.

How can people communicate when words we use daily are comprehended so differently? We use an evaluative—judging –scale, negative to positive. Our words are never neutral.

When I write or speak, I work to choose words that will not interfere with my intent, concept and meaning. I try to “tone down” emotionally hazardous words and phrases.  No such luck!  I, finally, learned that "HazMat" on those trucks means "hazardous material.” I avoided the trucks, because they’re large and ugly. (Re:watching TV--What is the reason to change “National Geographic” to “Nat Geo?” Or why “Art and Entertainment” is now “The art OF entertainment”)

No matter how hard I try to express and convey thought, idea and information, the percentage of comprehension is diminished. This is not my opinion. Recent research finds that 98% of what we want to think of as rational, conscious thought is actually unconscious and emotion. This is less than reassuring—for both sender and receiver.

We are reluctant to accept that we have emotional responses to what we see, hear or read. We try to avoid emotion. UUs take pride in our objectivity—the power of scientific, rational thought. According to research, scant “objectivity” actually exists.

Now, let us consider OPINION.  I suggest that there is uninformed opinion and informed opinion. It is ALL thought processing. I am of the “opinion”—in the original meaning of the word, “to think”-- that everything humans say and do is opinion, originating in the brain-mind process. Whether art, science, reverie, dream, fear, love or hate, we engage an origin and evolution that results in decision—in opinion.

“The moon is made of green cheese.” The earth is flat.” “The atom is the smallest unit of energy.” At one time each of these statements has been fact-real. No schooled person thinks or believes these “truths” today—except the "flat earthers," moon landing debunkers and developers of the “Creation Museum.”

Those “once-fact “opinions are now in the realm of fantasy, a former ignorance.  (Ignorance means  not knowing. There need be no judgment of the word.)  I am ignorant of what an ipod does. Think about this? “The electromagnetic expenditure of a cell phone is infinitesimal. It poses no health risk?” Will research change that statement from “fact” to “flat earth?”

I am persuaded that “frame of reference’—perceptual orientation is what forms our notion and acceptance of reality. Out of this formulation we create, adopt and embrace values, whether we are focused from the neurological right parallel (now) or left serial (past and future) hemispheres. Humans are “valuing” creatures, despite the reactionary-conservative movement’s “mad rush” to capture the word as uniquely theirs.  Opinion arises from valuing—democrat, republican, socialist, religion, beauty and taste. Whether the heart pumps when seeing the Stars and Strips, the Crescent, the Chalice or the stars and bars, opinion is the result.

How does one become opinionated?   My attitudes, world-view and expressive style originated in a family where grandfather, a Presbyterian minister, and his eldest son, my father, initiated my road to ruin. In family gatherings, talk-discussion-argument was the norm. Grandfather was, also, a singing teacher, grandmother, a teacher and pianist. Their children and grandchildren were expected to bring home “A”s and be musical. Stage-presence subjugated stage-fright—or else.

Mother was a maverick, an agnostic, if not a closet atheist. A tomboy and an original flapper, she learned early the backlash of being “different.” Outside, my sister and I were called, “The girls who talk back to their parents." Our family had conversations, in a time when “children were seen and not heard.” Daddy  said, “Your mother and I don’t have much time with you, so we use what time we have to advantage.” Meals, assisting in the office and lab, trips were lessons. “Quality time” was not yet invented.

Evocative moments fueled the fires of my opinions. A favored uncle wrote to an adoring niece, “Notice all things well.” A relative, a Ph D student at the U of Chicago, had a library in his house—with the ladder on a track in a paneled study. Awesome!   He gave me “Margaret Mead’s “Coming of Age in Samoa” to read, the summer I was fourteen. I was blown away by the lives of kids my age that were TOTALLY different.  When I returned to school in the fall, Mrs. Perry, our Home Room and English teacher, asked what books we had read. I volunteered. The students tittered and laughed. Mrs. Perry blushed, “Well, now, I think that’s quite enough.”  I slunk to my seat without a clue as to my discomfort. She had asked. I was the only one who volunteered. I thought it interesting that teens in Samoa had a different attitude toward sex than we did. Daddy had taken me into his clinic, with permission of the parents--to witness his delivery of a baby the year before, when I was thirteen. What was the big deal? 

I was blessed to not realize that I was “less than” because I was female, until graduate school. Racial reality in Anderson, South Carolina and Houston, Texas was more than enough to confront and navigate. A prominent family was my buffer; attending a women’s college for two years, then, the university where two generations of family had graduated were, also, protection from reality. My self confidence was not undercut, UNTIL my first year of graduate school. My posted grade for “Research” was fourth on the list—an 88, a “B!!” I asked the professor who had made the higher grades. Learning that they were three males, and, in my OPINION only two deserved their “A,” I protested. Dr. Brice told a by- standing colleague, who happened to be my relative, “Tell this young lady that a “B” is a good grade in graduate school. I said, “I do not work for Bs and everything I’ve done in your class has been “A” quality.”---Hoo Boy--FOOLS and the naive intrude where the prudent fear.

Some teachers did not shut-me-down because I was a female with opinions. They encouraged and focused my energy. One was the political scientist and Quaker, Dr. George Watson at Roosevelt University, later a tri-partite president of Friend’s World College. He challenged us, insisting that competence is the measure of a person.  “Change agent” was the designation acquired in this setting. In another I was one among “bridgers,” individuals who operate with ease in their own and other cultures.

My opinions arise in curiosity about what makes people do what we do. Carl Gustav Jung, Buckminster Fuller and others followed Mead. I am attracted to leading-edge thought and scholars--those who "think outside the box." Why else would anyone become a UU?

Unconscious motivations, fears and factors determine our perspective and perception.  My designation is “Interdisciplinary Social Scientist.” I think in terms of “human science”—taking my definition from the root for science--scientia— meaning, “To seek to know,” and remembering educare the root for education, means “to bring forth.” I am intrigued by “stuff.”

The intent and focus, then, of this kind of “opinion”—opining-- is the interfacing and integration of the personal and the socio-cultural as attitude and action.

It is impossible to be totally aware of all aspects of all worlds. I admit and accept limitations of capability, interest and time. My opinion is filtered through the disciplines of the seven human sciences: anthropology-economics-geography-history-political science, psychology and sociology in their basic definitions, not getting lost in subterranean sub-divisions—fragmentation and segregation of recent scholarship. Inseparable –connected--is a dance of the humanities and sciences beyond parameters, becoming as informed as possible, striving to comprehend the ultimate that effects and affects us and existence.  This use of the body-mind was once called by that unholy term LIBERAL Arts. In my opinion, a flexible frame of orientation and reference makes “sense.” A UU minister called this way of being in the world—“organic.” Scholars are careful to say that their findings are “scientific opinion.” Do we hear both words?

Opinion, as thinking, demands an impossible balancing act. The covert, in the mind and psyche—is always in process.  Organic thinking may call upon the more so-called feminine brain aspects.

The female, biological and experiential, has unique synaptic connections. The male has its unique variations. These variations in thinking—opining-- are defining aspects within the whole—if allowed. My acupuncturist, a new father, said that, watching his wife with the baby, he was amazed by her ability to “multi-task.” In my experience, the interweaving of this frame of reference is not generally recognized. It has been hypothesized that the competitive world view is a result of devaluing cooperative opinion.

My questions—curiosities-- tend to revolve around PEOPLE and systems, body-emotion-mind-spirit-the unknown.  The shift from nationalistic imperialism to corporate imperialism for individual and communal culture is of great interest, including lack of awareness and respect, in current social-culture, for that old saw, "The life of the mind.”

This opinionated woman came to Unitarian Universalism because it has the first litany of principles to which she could say “Yes.”  I do, though, have my question on the “sources.” Opinion—yes.  Informed—I think so.