The women who live across the hall from me have a saying posted on their door. It's ripped out from one of those advice-a-day calendars. "September 29th: Don't be so open-minded that your brains fall out." I would frame this one.
A blend of "open-mindedness" and political correctness has taken this society by storm. The line between right and wrong, good and bad, better and worse has been blurred to the point of near non-existence. We have taken the concept so far, we have become moral weaklings.
Sometimes it seems that under the guise of open-mindedness we have spent too much time teaching understanding and too little time teaching judgment. Even at Dartmouth, I find it difficult to get a person to say that being a scientist is better than being a hamburger flipper. I doubt many of us are aiming for jobs at McDonalds, yet few are willing to state the seemingly obvious. Value judgment stops at the declaration that murder and rape are bad; it seems entirely contained by the ten commandments.
In classrooms and the media, in the front lines of the battle over political correctness, we have preached leniency. We advocated judging relatively instead of judging absolutely. We compared people against their personal best, not the best a person can do.
Everyone is special. Some are special learners, some are gifted, some are challenged, some disadvantaged. And increasingly it is our shortcomings that make us special, not our strengths. Around every corner is a victim of society, a victim of God, a victim of fate. We're all special victims.
But as we are all victims, non of us are perpetrators. We have convinced ourselves that nothing is really our fault. Like a feather blowing in the wind, we are powerless to control our destiny. Criminals are victims of their upbringing, as are sexual abusers and rapists. Women are victims of men. Drug addicts have fallen prey to drugs. Higher standards "force" kids to drop out of school.
Victimization is a direct result of our superhuman efforts to make sure no one feels bad about themselves. We have tried so hard, that unfortunately we've succeeded. The problems in our society can not be wished away, but their causes can be relegated to some abstract plane that won't really fault anyone (i.e. the government) or at least passed on to someone else who will once again deflect it. Take the abominable quality of elementary and secondary school education in this country. Are substandard teachers to blame? Definitely not, they're doing the best they can and aren't getting paid enough. Are lazy kids to blame? No, the schools are overcrowded and besides, you can't expect kids to work too hard -- you're robbing them of their childhood. What about parents? Do they not care about their children's education enough? That's not it, schools are under-funded. Is lack of funding really to blame? The version I prefer would be: Parents don't care, teacher's can't, and kids would rather watch TV. In the meanwhile, let's debate the curriculum.
Such is the merry-go-round of victimization and blame. It's costing us much more than a few quarters and it'll only stop when we we'll be bold enough to judge, unfavorably if we must. Before it's too late, it's time to reflect and see what we have lost besides the uncomfortable reality of unkind comparisons. We have lost excellence and lapsed into mediocrity. We have lost "talent" and instead gained "luck." We have lost responsibility and we have won blame. We have lost judgment and in the process, we have lost reality.
It is time to regain our judgment. Instead of being so open minded that our brains fall out, we should demand excellence and personal responsibility. We should call the shots as we see them. I wish we wouldn't hesitate to call people lazy, stupid, or just plain bad.
When we stop looking at society with a critical eye, we trade growth for comfort. Without a clear distinction between right and wrong, our society will not progress in the right direction. In the end that will bad for all of us -- and it'll be our fault.
