GOOGLE IT

“Google It” it’s a phrase we have ALL heard, *if not* on a daily basis. It’s a comment that doesn't discriminate between age, gender, or even the tech savvy vs the technologically impaired. We all say it. We all do it. We all google it. But why? In my experience, I “google it” when I'm unsure of something, when I want the truth. Have you ever had to google a recipe? A song lyric to a song you have stuck in your head? Directions on a map? More than often when I’ve had to “google it”, it’s because I’m in a heated discussion with someone with the opposite opinion; therefore “google” becomes my “calvary” or sometimes (rarely haha) it is my downfall. Generally this is how it plays out: when I have no more facts or opinions in my argumentative arsenal, when we’ve tossed, tussled, and thrown our thoughts at each other, and we STILL can’t agree on a specific person or argument that seems correct/ or *more* correct- that's when we “google it”, it's our “hail mary” lobbing our unresolved disagreement into the online world to see who the best man actually is, to see who was right.

What are opinions? What are facts? What is truth? What's the difference between them all? And are they even important? Last Semester in one of my writing classes we learned about a play, Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare. In that play there is a character named Ophelia, long story short: She dies, she dies because she’s torn between the opinions, desires, and wants of others. She doesn't know what to think, feel, or act, this internal struggle ultimately ended with her death. Believe it or not, this is a serious problem, a common problem, in Shakespeare's day as well as our’s nowadays. After dissecting the play Hamlet, Thomas G. Plummer, a former professor of the University of Minnesota and Brigham Young University wrote the lecture, “Diagnosing and Treating the Ophelia Syndrome”. In this lecture Professor Plummer goes further labeling Ophelia’s problem and internal crisis as the “Ophelia Syndrome'' being defined as anytime a person is being naively influenced by the opinions of others instead of relying upon their own intuition. Plummer warns that this behavior is crippling to learning and further growth as a society. 

Alexander Hamilton once said, “When you stand for nothing, you fall for everything.” There are so many, millions upon billions of opinions in this world, we are bombarded, introduced, and exposed to them everyday when we open Facebook, when we converse with those around us, legit in everything we do we will be confronted with differences on all faces. Opinions aside, I think we can all agree there are universal truths, lol the Google reference. There are laws to life, concrete principles that actually affect us whether or not we agree with them. 

In our life we all grow up having traditions, opinions. It's what makes us so beautifully different; however these beliefs can be affected by truth. For example we may grow up with the habit of running everyday, the truth that correlates with this is that daily exercise makes us stronger. Another example is if I jaywalk on the busy streets of Vietnam, I increase my possibility of dying early. Results take time though, so it is very important to be open minded, humble, and realize that sometimes the consequences (good/ bad) to our actions will come. So when it comes to controversial subjects, we must put bias, emotion, and preconceived notions aside and look for absolute truths backed by research and proven facts.