This past Sunday, HBO’s arguably most popular series, Game of Thrones came to an end. It was a final season that alternated between shocking fans, boring them to tears, or simply stirring up righteous anger. Viewers complained about pacing, dialogue, character arcs, coffee cups, you name it. And yet when it came to the final episode, fans were evenly divided: they either loved it or hated it — and anyone who disagreed with them was stupid.
It’s interesting how people have learned to cling to their opinions as sacred, truly convincing themselves that their opinions are correct. Part of this phenomenon is due to humans’ tendency toward confirmation bias and self-justification: our survival genes need us to believe that our assessments are correct, else we perish at the jaws of a lion. But in the contemporary world, it just encourages people to hold tight to their opinions.
Add in a dollop of Western entitlement and you’ve got a society of people who insist that they are entitled to their opinions. As I’ve written before, many people assume that this entitlement means that their opinions have validity and deserve equal footing with those of experts, and thus we have experienced professionals sit on panels and “debate” kooks who printed out a degree that they made in MS Paint.
When it comes to art, however, no one opinion is valid over another. That’s the…
