Let’s lower the volume – it might lead to better world

By David Levin

Sorry, But I Have No Opinion About That…

 There are approximately 4.5 billion people worldwide between the ages of 15 and 64 years old. If each of them had just 5 fewer opinions, that would add up to roughly 22 billion fewer opinions or, looked at differently, 22 billion fewer opportunities for disagreement. Or, 22 billion fewer opportunities for anger and conflict. Even violence.

I made a really big life decision recently. A real game changer. One of those watershed declarations that, if I can stick to it, should help ease my post-election anxiety enough that I can actually stop checking Twitter 100 times a day for fear I may miss something important, like the president’s latest tweet or what Lena Dunham just said about why she hates men so much.

But it also might help to fix the world and make it a nicer place too. A bold proclamation, I know. But we have to start somewhere.

You are probably wondering what I am talking about.

Here’s what I am saying. There are way too many voices, most of them intellectually neutered, upchucking their brilliance all over the internet thanks to Twitter, Facebook and the rest of social media. So, I have decided to no longer have an opinion about every damn thing that happens anymore. I don’t care who says what, how smart they are, what they’ve done, where they’ve been, or how many followers they have.

A mouthful for sure. But, frankly, so is the world these days.
To partially quantify it, there are roughly 500 million tweets tweeted each day, or 200 billion tweets per year. And most of them are passing judgement on everything from Donald Trump’s hair color, to Hillary Clinton’s missing emails, gender identification, climate change, or what kind of dog food is best for your overweight rottweiler.

It’s not that we never had opinions before. Of course, we have. Lots of them. But we’ve never had a distribution channel quite like the internet either. Now, millions of people from San Diego to Johannesburg can hear your ramblings in mere seconds. And it’s safe because you’re nothing more than a disembodied voice that resides, in some cases, anonymously, behind a laptop screen. You can say things on social media that you’d never have the nerve to say to someone’s face for fear of getting your nose broken or a few teeth knocked out.

Maybe it’s a function of age, but I just don’t want to hear it anymore. I’m tired of the never-ending, daily onslaught of news – real or imagined – and the thousands of all-knowing, modern-day experts that inevitably come along with it. I just don’t want to participate in this digital theatre of the absurd anymore. Not full time anyway. I’m pulling up stakes.

So, I’m no longer going to write about things like the president’s on-going verbal sparring match with every other human-being on the planet, friend and foe alike. Or that giant North Korean toddler with the anger issues and nuclear weapons. He doesn’t frighten me. And I’m tuning out people like Elon Musk, as he proclaims that the human race is at risk of being taken over by artificial intelligence. Fine with me. Then I won’t have to think or do anything anymore. And let’s not forget some of our other geniuses either, like Stephen Hawking, who says he now fears that aliens are out there flying all around the universe and could be potentially hostile to us. Whatever you say, Stephen. I’ll activate my force field to deflect the photon torpedoes.

Of course, I’ll still write and opine on a handful of issues, but that’s about it. For the most part though, I’m going to be on the sidelines. I just hope Twitter doesn’t cancel my account due to inactivity, or worse yet, penalize me for social dullness due to aging.

I know, it all sounds kind of crazy, right? And frankly, I have to wonder if I can even pull this whole “going silent” thing off to begin with. Or will I eventually succumb to the desire to bloviate again?
Will I feel the pressure to harmonize once more with the ever-growing chorus of digital public opinion?
Well, I’m going to do everything I can to resist. There’s way too much noise out there already and it’s getting louder by the day.
But therein lies the quandary. What I am contemplating goes against our new, post-baby boomer, social norms and constructs. What I’m suggesting may even get me de-friended or un-followed. Worse yet, maybe even deleted. I could, very possibly, wind up with no friends at all.

The problem for me, and I suspect others my age, is that with our constantly reoccurring, 24-hour news cycles, sometimes there’s so much to digest, I actually lose track of exactly what my opinion was in the first place. For a while there, I couldn’t remember if I actually liked Donald Trump or I didn’t. Oddly enough though, I did remember that I detest sushi and McDonald’s.

But I’ve had enough. Because now, at age 60, it finally occurred to me that most of our opinions, especially those on social media, are nothing more than hot air anyway. More often, they are not so much points of view, but rather, the juvenile rants of grown men and women. We’ve become a sad collection of flaming sound bites, venomous 140-character tweets, and compromising, 20-second Snap Chat video-clips.
Suffice it to say, we’re a little short on substance these days.

So, I want to do my part to lower the volume. Somebody needs to be the first one to stop talking and I’m going to volunteer and hope that others will follow my lead.

I realize that a lot of my friends and colleagues will start whispering “what the hell happened to Levin? He was always such an opinionated, bag of wind. And doesn’t he write those op-ed pieces? He’s supposed to have opinions on everything. That’s his job. Now he just shrugs his shoulders when you ask him what he thinks about something.”

“So, Dave, what do you think about transgender people serving in the military?”

“Nothing really.”

“OK then, how about Donald Trump?”

“You mean the real estate guy?”

“What about Israel and the Palestinians?”

“Sorry, nothing there either.”

“Kim and Kanye?”

“Well, I might have an opinion on them… wait, no… never mind.”

“What about Putin and the Russians?”

“I’ve always said, there’s nothing like a good shot of vodka every now and then…”

Yup, that’s the new me. Feels kind of nice, actually. I pretty much have nothing to say. You should try it. Nobody can verbally swing back at you if I don’t give them the reason to. I’m tired of “weighing-in” on things. Now, I’m weighing-out.

The other day, I got to thinking, what if we all reduced our “opinion count” by just 5 issues each. Doesn’t seem like that much, does it? Choose to not care about them. Let them go. Let them flitter away like a spark escaping from a bonfire.
There are approximately 4.5 billion people worldwide between the ages of 15 and 64 years old. If each of them had just 5 fewer opinions, that would add up to roughly 22 billion fewer opinions or, looked at differently, 22 billion fewer opportunities for disagreement. Or, 22 billion fewer opportunities for anger and conflict. Even violence. I just can’t see how that would be bad.

So maybe it would be a good idea if we all just tone it down a few notches because the national dialogue has spiraled out of control. Decorum and civility have been relegated to the dust-bins of history. So, just for a minute, consider what you are going to start to care about less. Think about what you are going to stop talking about. Which opinions you are going keep to yourself. And then just pick a few of them and start to turn down the volume.

Because if enough of us do it, in the end, the world just might be a better place for it.

David S. Levin is the Managing Partner of Nexus Capital Markets, LLC