There's a saying that the strength of any idea/person/place/thing will lead directly to its weakness...

One of the strengths of living in America is our freedom of speech (although, that freedom is slowly but surely be stripped from our hands...but that's a conversation for another day).

The weakness in this system is that, while we can all have opinions about ideas, not all opinions are worth listening to.

Humans have a natural tendency to follow the ideas of people of "prestige".

Today, if a person has 1 million followers, we think of them as having "prestige", or if they're on a popular talk show, we think of them as having "prestige".

The reality is, most of these people have little actual knowledge about many of the topics they discuss...what they do have are opinions about the topics...but an opinion is much different than the facts surrounding the idea.

Only irresponsible, egotistical people talk about their opinions as facts.

ACTION:

The next time you hear a "prestigious" person say something as a matter of fact, ask yourself (or them, if you can) how they know that opinion to be a fact...ask yourself the same question before unconsciously blurting out your own thoughts.