In a graduation commencement speech at the University of Western Australia, Tim Minchin said opinions are like ass-holes in that everyone has one.

“But I would add,” he goes on, “that opinions differ significantly from arse-holes, in that yours should be constantly and thoroughly examined.”

To qualify, opinions aren’t ideas or insights.

I realised that after many heated discussions. They may start out as such. But what is self-evident doesn’t need defending. So when I become dogmatic, I know I’ve turned an idea or insight into an opinion.

To discern the difference is hard. But you know you’re in the presence of an opinion when the person’s face becomes red and severe, without humour.

I’ve been thinking a lot about opinions recently, partly because as I grow older I’m often confounded by the extent to which two people can have such vastly different interpretations of the same happening. Or text. Or anything, really.

I guess that’s the premise of Life’s a Batch: the customer’s viewpoint compared with the barista. Is the cup actually cold? Does the coffee actually taste different to yesterdays?

I think what Minchin is gracefully suggesting here is that there’s a difference between how we see the world and the way the world actually is.

Res Interna vs Res Externa. Perception vs essence. That’s Descartes. He made that distinction, too.

I think this an important mark to make in the sand in today’s online, post-modern, politically volatile world. A world where every opinion has a stage, in other words.

Now there are so many angles from which to see things, discerning what has actual weight is harder than looking at a livestock paddock from out of space and picking the wolf in the sheep’s clothing.

I would like to take Minchin’s advice one step further and add that we should examine opinions, but not for whether they have weight or not.

We should examine the source from which opinions arise.

Opinions are about polarising stuff, creating division, not reconciliation. I’ve also found that out after many heated conversations.

Often I use them to reduce incomprehensively complex things into a right-and-wrong, victim-and-perpetrator synopsis.

I would say my opinions aren’t about genuine intellectual or moral reasoning. They’re about using these as tools to defend a black-and-white point of view which I don’t want to give up.

So maybe we need to look at why humans have opinions in the first place. Only then can we collectively arrive at the essence of things: res externa.

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