With quick wit and nimble finger, I have recently posted the following comment upon Mortimer Shy's blog: "It is better to have ideas than opinions. Ideas are exchanged but opinions start wars." How true that is, I thought, as I typed the words out; so I'm posting them here too.
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Reminds me of the quote, I think it was from Settembrini, in The Magin Mountain: "Opinions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them."
It is, of course, a matter of semantics, but I would posit that opinions are better than ideas because opinions you derive yourself, while ideas are things that come from the outside. Ideas drive ideologies, not opinions. You can change your opinion just as easily as you can drop an idea. Of course it all depends on what you call "ideas". If you mean idea like "Hey, I think we should film the cat sleeping on the TV and push him off and sell the tape to Bob Saget" than ideas are indeed safer than opinions. Although who says safe is better? But then you are indeed a Settembrini and I am condemned to be a Naptha.
Posted by: Misspent | September 19, 2005 at 17:15
Harumph! So that's YOUR opinion is it. I dismiss it as I would dismiss a personal bath attendent with a very bad and extremely visible case of herpes! Ha ha! So there! Ha ha!
... But here's an idea: I have always considered "ideas" to germinate and emanate from within, whereas "opinions" are the odious mind sets that cyphers and automatons generate from reading biased newspapers.
Posted by: stephenesque | September 19, 2005 at 17:55
"Original, but not Unique." That, sadly, sums up all my ideas. All that hard work and deep, deep thought, only to learn that some kraut with a silly name like Heidenburger thought it up hundreds of years ago, but wrote it in some pamphlet or other he dished out to his friends, saying "How smart I am", and not just because he can write in latin.
My opinion: Stephenesque and "Mortimer Shy" are one and the same. He's pulling a flanker, handing-out pamphlets to his erstwhile pals.
Posted by: Fcb | September 20, 2005 at 15:45
I'd like to dump the Opinion page of our local newspaper and switch to letters sharing Ideas.
Posted by: Amy | September 20, 2005 at 19:22
Dear F.C. Bearded
I emphatically deny that I am not my own person. Which is to say, I assert that I am Mortimer Shy. I am also the poet Lloyd Mintern, but he doesn't have a blog, yet. We all have unusual names, apparently--you for instance are probably not bearded, and anyone who reads my blog, The Lectures of Mortimer Shy, knows I am not shy. Nor is Stevenesque a knight. probably. In my view the world is such that none of us can help having original ideas, even if we just dumbly point. It isn't a matter of style, but the fact that we aren't living in the time of Heidenburger, anymore.
Posted by: Mortimer Shy | September 20, 2005 at 19:38
Listen, squire, you could be 'Arold bleedin' Pynchon too, for all we know? Doesn't mean you're not Stephenesque too.
A non-denial denial!
But... dangit, I was going to add that we've never seen the pair of you at the same place at the same time, have we? Except, well, Here you are.
Posted by: Fcb | September 20, 2005 at 20:48