The Age of the Uninformed Opinion

 The Age of the Uninformed Opinion

 

 

There was a time when opinion was a structure built upon a foundation of fact. It required effort: reading, debate, and the hard work of seeking credible sources. An opinion was informed, a conclusion reached after engaging with the world, not before. It was a testament to one’s engagement with reality.

Then came the great flattening. Social media did not just connect us; it rewired us. It inverted the process. Now, perception is not shaped by facts; facts are selected—or invented—to serve perception. We no longer seek truth; we seek validation. Algorithms, those insidious architects of our modern consciousness, feed us a steady diet of what we already believe, reinforcing our biases until they harden into unassailable dogma.

In this new ecosystem, facts have become negotiable, even inconvenient. They are dismissed as the tools of some hidden opposition, relics of a corrupt “system.” What matters is not what is true, but what feels true to our tribe. Bias is no longer a flaw to be checked; it is the very lens through which all information is filtered and deemed acceptable.

Most tragically, history—our collective story, the source of our hardest-won lessons—has been reduced to a mere narrative. It is no longer a complex, challenging record to be understood, but a tool to be wielded. It is stripped of its nuance, its contradictions, and its uncomfortable truths, and is repackaged as a simple fable: one of pure heroes and absolute villains, tailored to justify the present.

We now live in a post-debate society. You cannot argue with a bias. You cannot reason with a narrative. The very mechanisms for building a shared reality have been dismantled, leaving us isolated in our own curated echo chambers, shouting past each other, armed not with knowledge but with conviction.

The greatest casualty is not polite discourse, but truth itself. And without a common truth, a society cannot function. It cannot justice, it cannot progress, and it cannot long endure.

Just check out the whipped up debate on the Flag of St. George. Another manufactured outrage, another fake debate.

The St. George's Cross is flown with pride by millions of us at football matches, on national days, and in our communities. It is a symbol of English pride, plain and simple.

But for a long time, a tiny minority of extremists have tried to steal it. They wave it not as a symbol of pride, but as a weapon to tell others they do not belong. They want to change what it means.

And what is the response? Too often, social media amplifies their poison and creates a false argument, as if the flag itself is the problem. It is not.

Let us be clear: Rioters are not patriots. They are rioters.

We cannot let a violent fringe define a national symbol for the rest of us. The answer is not to shy away from our flag for fear of being mislabelled. The answer is to reclaim it.

Say it louder: This is our flag. It belongs to everyone who calls England home. Do not let them conflate the two.

#StGeorgesFlag #ReclaimTheFlag #English