The biggest outrage nowadays is to not have an opinion on anything

We are bombarded with media stories, all demanding our outrage, or at the least an opinion, writes Terry Prone

THIS column is not about abortion, nor about the repeal of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. It’s about the freedom to disengage. The right to have no opinion, on that or on any other proposition.

The other day, a radio vox pop was attacked by listeners who claimed that the people interviewed were in a large majority in favour of repeal.

The presenter checked with the reporter and came back to say the lack of apparent balance reflected the lack of actual balance. In other words, more people — a lot more people — had told her they were for repeal than had told her they wanted the Eighth Amendment kept in place.

“How could this be?”, you ask yourself, if you’re hoping the referendum is lost. Two reasons. First of all, people who have made up their minds to vote in what they perceive to be a way the pollster might not like are not going to tell him or her: this is the “Shy Tory” syndrome.

Secondly, some people might not have made up their minds. They might be conflicted and seeking for someone, or something, to sort out the contradictions in their thinking. Or they may not care one way or the other. They might not be undecided. They might be unengaged. Not so much “don’t know” as “don’t care”.

This is possible, despite the fact that so many people, on either side of this issue, would almost die for what they believe in and that those passionate advocates — again on both sides — would regard it as irresponsible and uncaring that anyone in Ireland would not have an opinion on the issue

. But an unmeasurable number don’t. The issue doesn’t affect them and they don’t see it affecting them in the future.

Those people are even ‘shyer Tories’ than the pro-lifers who don’t want to tell a pollster that they’re against removing the Eighth, because it’s bad enough to be on an unpopular side of a major issue, but to have no opinion at all is worse. That’s like announcing failure as a citizen.

It suggests you profit from membership of a democracy, but that you’re not prepared to drum up a decent opinion on a matter affecting that democracy. It establishes, beyond doubt, that you’d never live in Switzerland, where they ask for your opinion every second week, on almost everything other than brown eggs versus white.

Not that the unopinionated accept blame for their lack of interest, ignorance, and indecisiveness.

They have a ready excuse: Not enough information. This comes up in every referendum, as voters lay off the guilt on some unnamed somebody (probably within the government of the day) who should have caught the voter warmly by the throat and drummed the facts of the issue into them, instead of leaving them like lost, uninformed souls, wandering an Ireland where no useful data is to be found.

Of course, this recurring plea for more information is complete nonsense. Particularly in the current situation, where, on mainstream and social media, we’ve been inundated with information about the Eighth.

The mystery is why people feel so guilty about not having an opinion that they feel obligated to drum up an excuse. Any excuse. It’s clear that they feel out of step in a world filled with constantly expressed certainties.

That world is populated by the sort of person who is so entrenched in a view that they even text radio programmes, attacking people for saying things they haven’t said. For example, a contributor says that US President Donald Trump was quite endearing in admitting that he works like hell to cover up his bald spot.

That contributor is likely to find themselves speedily attacked by a text, condemning “yet more, liberal bias, fake news anti-Trumpism”. A great comfort lies in being tattooed with beliefs. It’s much less comfortable to be unconvinced, untutored.

Sometimes, however, being free of an opinion is no more than the legitimate passing of the baton. I encountered a young mother, last week, who was exercised about the concept of follow-on milk for babies.

This mother had breast fed her twins and was livid that the producers of follow-on milk had, in her view, invented a problem that didn’t need to be solved.

She was cross with me that I was not equally exercised, and she was not at all mollified when I pointed out that it was my generation who’d gone to war against the aggressive marketing of from-birth breastmilk substitutes, here and in the developing world, and that, maybe, her generation could tackle this one, without needing us to get outraged all over again.

All of us do instant, intellectual triage on outrage. Look at the possibilities just this weekend: Medics in Cork having to set up a field hospital to keep profoundly drunk teenagers alive and breathing; Catherine Nevin leaving moral lessons for the rest of us, before she died; A film star saying that suggesting she might have thrown a coat over her dress on a freezing day is anti-feminist; A journalist accused by a blogger of drugging and raping a sex-worker; Measles endangering life, because of anti-vaxxers.

It’s simply not possible to drum up more than shallow, transient, ritual outrage in response to all such news, yet we kind of feel we should.

Significantly, we also believe that drumming up outrage is ALL we should do. Taking action, other than verbal, does not seem required of us.

Undoubtedly, this disproportionate faith in, and determination to hold, opinions comes about because newspaper columnists (like me) are invited onto radio programmes and opine. Sometimes, their opining is force-grown, as shown by the truth-leakage that happens when panellists announce that they did a bit of research on the topic, once they were invited on the show.

In other words, they didn’t care until they were paid to care.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, in media terms, we had one day during which no opinions could be expressed on anything? It could be Good Friday, now that we’ve decided not to have that as a no-alcohol day.

We have days when broadcasters are not allowed to discuss politics, for example. The day on which we cast our votes in an election is a blackout day.

Nobody gets withdrawal symptoms or goes into a decline, because party political opinions are banned on that day. Everybody manages just fine. Wouldn’t it be marvelous, were we to extend that ban to all opinions on just one day, annually?

On this one day of the year, people would still be allowed to express utilitarian preferences. Yes/No choices would be fine. “Do you want Spam or venison?” “Spam, please.” Other than yes/no choices, that wonderful day would be filled with facts, music, and silence. Not to mention peace.

Because without opinions, we have no need for weapons, verbal or physical, and so it would be a day without rage.

There are two chances of that happening — slim and none. But it’s as good, if not better, a proposition than most of the sponsored days designated to some cause or other.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had one day during which no opinions could be expressed on anything?