Where do our opinions come from?

In order to advance as an intelligent, functioning society, we need to cherish our strongly held personal worldviews and be prepared and able to shout them from the rooftops if need be - but always with a touch of radical doubt, knowing that there is no chance we alone can have got it right. It is lack of humility that leads so many to absolutist positions and general intolerance of others.

There is a second blind spot too. While chance may determine what we think, gender seems to be the critical factor that spells out intensity of opinion - that is, whether diversity of opinion remains harmonious or becomes destructive.

A survey of national media shows that dominant opinion writers/commentators are almost exclusively male. Andrew Bolt, Piers Ackerman, Phillip Adams, John Pilger, John Laws, and so forth. So too the bulk of respondents to opinion forums such as On Line Opinion.

We can’t ignore the obvious - virtually all warfare has men at the helm on both sides. Like all carnivorous mammals, humans are driven by natural aggression. And testosterone seems to be the major factor deciding how tolerant we are of cultural diversity. It is the gender factor, more than anything else, that drives us to deride, put down, hate, or conquer those whose worldviews appear, at face value, to be contrary to our own.

Earnest menfolk are the ideological campaigners who, in the absence of antlers, use words in a head butting warfare as they champion one ideology over another. By contrast, women tend to volunteer opinions when asked, but are much less driven to persuade the rest of society to follow suit. I very much doubt if Mother Theresa, if swapped with Hitler at birth, would have taken up his belligerent role.

Our national attempts to define a set of criteria (common values) that all Australians should accept can be an exercise in maturity, but only so long as it generates a better reflection on what drives our destructiveness.

The bottom line for a viable, sane society has to include just a handful of obvious agreements, such as the need for planetary survival and law and order that is not broken down - the things that would be certain to gain close to 100 per cent consensus of opinion.

Beyond that we need a national culture that does not merely tolerate, but cherishes and maximises democratic participation. One that enjoys its internal contrasts and protects its harmless minorities. Lastly, one that makes generous allowances for conscientious objectors to be respected (so long as that respect goes both ways), these people, rather than being despised, being highly valued as an ever-present social conscience.

It remains to be seen if we humans, by over-riding our instincts, are able to rise to such a level of maturity. That is the challenge regardless.