Have a Correct Halloween

Speaking of tolerance, as I did last time, along comes news of offensive Halloween costumes.  They are not offensive in themselves, but have been declared offensive by various groups of teachers and other authorities.

As we learn here, “From first-graders to college seniors, schools are cracking down on a wide swath of Halloween costumes.”  The list of banned costumes is long and varied.  Anything considered controversial is disallowed.  Some elementary schools have cancelled Halloween in favor of an “orange and black” celebration with no costumes involved.

The schools are walking on eggshells prohibiting any dress that can be considered racist by anyone!  Superhero costumes are discouraged for violence or carrying pretend weapons.  “Tufts University last year threatened investigations by campus police against any student whose costume was deemed offensive, especially if the outfit is thought to be culturally appropriated or ‘relating to tragedy, controversy, or acts of violence.’”  Imagine being detained or arrested for your choice of costume based on one administrator's hypersensitivity!

Halloween is a big holiday.  Last year spending on candy, costumes and decorations was projected to be $9.1 billion in 2017.  But maybe the fun is coming to an end.

The only fun left seems to be trying to guess what is acceptable and what will get you sent home, or worse.  Based on the vague guidelines one writer opined that students are “presumably restricted from dressing up as samurais, hombres, geishas, belly dancers, Vikings, ninjas, rajas, French maids, Bollywood dancers, Rastafarians, Pocahontas, Aladdin, Zorro, or Thor.”  The list goes on.  It reminds me of the story about magician Penn Jillette going to his daughter’s preschool party dressed as a ghost and suddenly realizing he might be mistaken for a Klansman.

“The company HalloweenCostumes.com recently pulled an outfit of Holocaust victim Anne Frank from its website after it was hit with a slew of criticism.”  Personally, I wouldn’t recognize an Anne Frank costume if I saw it, but someone objected.  Clowns are out, because of recent creepy-clown incidents.  A hobo was a favorite years ago, but it could be interpreted as disrespecting the homeless.

Remember from last time:  It’s more acceptable to say, “I’m offended” than to admit, “I’m intolerant,” but it boils down to the same thing.  What one person thinks is cute or funny, can be banned by a single complaint.  What’s worse is that the “injured party” is free to go on social media to try to exact revenge by destroying a reputation or a business or even indirectly calling for violence.

The reaction to this by schools is understandable.  They too are required to guess what a single person might find objectionable and do “everything possible” to avoid it.  (These are the institutions with zero tolerance policies.)

Think of how well off one has to be, how unconcerned with survival, how sheltered from conflict, to let someone else’s choice of a Halloween costume for a day out of the year cause such upset as to drive that person to complain!  But being offended and complaining is the new national pastime.  Some are so needy that they will be offended on behalf of a group they don’t even belong to.  Where is the perspective?  Where does the insanity end?

Compassion and Tolerance (continued)

Last time I wrote about how the terms compassion and tolerance are often used, even in academic circles, without sufficient regard for clear definitions.  It’s the old “I know it when I see it” approach.  I explained how compassion is a tricky concept.  Just seeing someone with difficulty and automatically lending assistance may provide satisfaction to the helper while being a disservice to the one with the problem.

Now I will look at tolerance the same way.  Again, it’s impossible to see into the mind, so the only evidence we have of another’s tolerance is observed behaviors that fit a clear definition.  Tolerance is usually defined as a willingness to tolerate opinions or behaviors one does not necessarily agree with.

Ideally, everyone would be tolerant of any opinion or action that does not cause a direct threat to one’s personal safety and wellbeing.  Let speakers speak on any subject to anyone interested in listening.  Let demonstrators demonstrate peacefully without disrupting the lives of others.  Let people marry anyone they want to.  Let people take the drugs to cure disease or just to feel better, e.g. pain relievers, caffeine, heroin.

The only exception should be for direct responsibility:  parents for children, teachers for students, military leaders for their troops, etc.  But this gets tricky in a couple of ways.  In a society where everyone’s medical costs become everyone else’s responsibility because of insurance, perhaps your health habits should be everyone else’s business.  But in this area we tend to pick and choose.  Smokers are shunned, but to scorn or shame the overweight is seen as rude and insensitive.  Alcohol is acceptable in moderation, but recreational drugs are illegal.

Also, for Christians, Jews and even Muslims there is that pesky chapter in the Old Testament book of Ezekiel where the Lord orders everyone to step in to keep your neighbor from sinning or you will suffer the same punishment.  It concludes in Chapter 3, verse 21:  “But if you do warn the righteous person not to sin and they do not sin, they will surely live because they took warning, and you will have saved yourself.”  Based on that premise, some opposed to same-sex marriage, for example, are not haters at all.  They genuinely care about the salvation of others and themselves.  (I warned it would get tricky.)

It seems tolerance must be narrowed down to make any sense.  A reasonable starting place is the current commotion over freedom of speech where college students and others on both political extremes heckle, shout down and even riot to keep speakers from delivering their message.  It’s a safe bet that these people have not been inspired by reading Ezekiel nor are they doing it out of concern about their health insurance premiums.  Instead they seem to feel that allowing contrary opinions is immoral, dangerous, or offensive.  They imply by their actions that everyone else is too stupid or ignorant to resist the lure of a faulty or insidious argument, so they must step in to silence the messenger.  Apparently, the alternative of answering ideas with ideas is passé.  The default becomes shouting accusations of being evil – either fascist or communist.  If anyone needs an example of a critical thinking disaster, this is it.

A more passive way to shut people up is to claim their opinions are offensive.  It’s more acceptable to say, “I’m offended” than to admit, “I’m intolerant,” but it boils down to the same thing.

If we can’t even agree on something as basic as freedom of speech, that tolerance we all seem to cherish ends up in practice being tolerance only for what we deem appropriate.  We have little tolerance for those intolerant people who don’t agree.

When concepts like compassion and tolerance are promoted as worthy goals, people tend to nod in agreement.  Deeper thought shows that the two are not as straightforward as they appear.  There is a lot of room for discussion and many instances for honest disagreement.  When clearly defined, compassion and tolerance are probably good things, but both require a degree of moderation and a less cavalier acceptance of vague, unexamined notions.

Whenever we try to peer into the minds of others to find compassion or tolerance, or for that matter, economic understanding, discipline, responsibility, critical thinking, and perspective, the only way to get there is through observation and interpretation of behavior based on clear definitions or examples.  That is why I have posted 670 (and counting) explanations and examples to foster agreement about what we are looking for in the five key dimensions and the dangerous consequences of not finding it.

Incongruities

Some things just don’t seem to make any sense.  The arguments are common asking:  why do professional athletes get paid more than teachers and firefighters?  Why is the highest paid person at any university more often than not the football coach?  It seems like Americans need to adjust our perspective, to separate the important from the trivial.

Here is another apparent incongruity that came to my attention on the same day last week.  The examples concern cadets at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and a fifth-grade boy from Ohio.

Each academy has its honor code, but the concept is very similar:  a cadet will not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do.  They consider these values crucial in the development of leaders for our military.  The honor code is taken very seriously, and violations are grounds for expulsion.  All academies have had instances of problems in the past and they invariably make the news due to the seriousness of the situation.

Recently the Air Force Academy began an investigation into whether 40 freshman cadets cheated in a chemistry class.  A spokesperson for the academy explained that automatic expulsion does not necessarily apply, that “freshmen violators no longer face mandatory expulsion and can instead be placed on honor probation.”  It does not explain whether this was a recent change, but this does seem surprisingly lenient.

Compare that story with this one from Ohio as reported by CNN.  A ten-year-old was suspended for three days for "making his fingers look like a gun, having the thumb up and the pointed finger sticking out."  His father attended a conference with the principal and reports that she told him that it violated a rule about “level 2 look alike firearm” and that “if it happened again the suspension would be longer, if not permanent.”

So cheating on a test in violation of the honor code by future Air Force officers may result in probation, but a second violation of making his fingers look like a gun could get a 10-year-old expelled.  Somebody’s perspective is out of whack.  What more can be said?

Hiding Behind a Policy

There is a difference between justice and fairness.  Fairness calls on us to treat everyone alike.  We award all the children trophies or medals for participation in a sport.  We recognize that they all tried hard and did their best.  We agonize over self-esteem issues.  This is fair, but is it just?  Try giving trophies to adult bowlers or softball players regardless of their scores or how they fared in the tournament.  They would see it as a sham and an insult.  Why would they bother to compete if everyone is treated the same.  This is not a reward for skill.  It is not justice.

Somehow we have gotten it into our heads that we must treat everyone the same and be fair, but especially in more complex situations than sporting events, the objective is to solve a problem in a way that treats everyone involved in the way they deserve to be treated.  Justice does not treat everyone the same.  Justice requires wisdom and leadership.

This is why the trend toward “zero tolerance” policies is disturbing.  They are designed to be fair, but not necessarily just.  They do not take individual situations into account.  They require no wisdom or leadership, only that the administrator follows the rules.  They require no thinking and insulate the administration or bureaucracy from blame.

So we end up with situations like this one, where two second graders were suspended for pointing pencils at each other while making shooting noises.  (The policy “also bans drawing a picture of a gun and pointing a finger in a threatening manner.”)  Earlier this year a seven-year-old in Maryland was disciplined for chewing a pop tart into the shape of a gun.  Are these examples of justice, leadership and wisdom that solve a problem, or one of teachers and principles hiding behind a policy to avoid conflicts in future situations?  Shouldn’t we expect more of public schools officials?

My 75-year-old friend told me that in his third grade class picture, one of the students was wearing a holster with his “pearl-handle” cap pistol.  Ah, but those were simpler times; today the world is more dangerous and frightening.  It makes me wonder, where did all those dangerous and frightening people come from?  Presumably they had parents.  Did we as a society let them drop the ball on being responsible parents?  The children today also have parents, parents who are ready to jump to the defense of their child before hearing all the evidence, ready to trust the word of a child over that of an adult, the teacher or principle.  Thus, public school officials are backed into a corner, forced to hide behind zero tolerance to avoid arguments or possible legal action.  Yes, it’s crazy, but we’ve made it that way by our past and continuing behavior.