This week has been perhaps the most dramatic in recent history. Or so it must seem for those loyal readers of The D's opinion section.
For the rest of you, see if you can guess what the following articles in this week's opinion section were about. If you heard that we had discussed "the most pressing intellectual and moral issue of our day," what would you figure that article was about? Stopping genocide and dictatorship? Ending world hunger? Chi Gam being forbidden to lecture publicly about the erogenous zones?
Boy, you people lack imagination. This article by John Stern, titled "Reasonable Religious Faith" (Feb. 22), was about the refusal of science departments to teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution. See? The hell with the tired, the poor and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, America -- some evolutionary biologists don't have a good knowledge of cosmology!
Now think about all the problems facing this country. Try to match the one Jon Wisniewski describes as "a nauseating perversion of the liberal representative democracy for which we would all be proud to die" ("Dissecting the Dichotomy," Feb. 21). Here's a clue, it leads to "the majority understanding of our current political system [being] terribly, sickeningly twisted."
The answer is probably worse than anything you imagined: most people don't understand the complexities of the historical origins of ideologies that vaguely and dubitably underpin our two dominant political parties! Sometimes people who don't realize this make uninformed statements! Sign me up to proudly die for this right away.
My point here is not to dismiss or make enemies of Mssrs. Stern or Wisniewski (admittedly, making fun of them is probably a poor way of doing this). Whether or not I agree with them, creating dialogue about the public's ignorance of their country's political machinery is important. So is criticizing anti-religious thinkers who too often hide unscientific and unsound claims under the shield of scientific credibility. These gentlemen have big things on their mind, and I salute them for that. I, on the other hand, can't stop thinking about what it would be like to have a water fight in zero gravity.
My point here is that we don't get anywhere by acting or speaking unreasonably. I used to try convincing my sister of how awesome my ideas were by stealing her toys and hitting her in the face with stuff. In retrospect, this was neither reasonable nor an appropriate way for me to frame my claim that we should, say, play Frisbee in the park instead of watching TV. She was never convinced, and one time she hit me in the head with a knife. True story. Similarly, the dramatic language folks here seem to use when talking about even fairly mundane issues makes us all look wild-eyed. You can get my attention by screaming, but you keep my attention by giving me new, clear information. The world will not stand or fall because some kids think evolution is right or wrong.
To make matters worse, from elementary school we are reminded that exciting verbiage and scintillating diction can make or break an argument. A proper command of active, vivid verbs can mean the difference between inspiring someone and murdering them with monotony. See the effective use of the word murdering?
Nonetheless, I think it's time for us to drop the faade of self-importance we layer on top of the arrogance we presume when we start writing down our opinions for the public (or for a professor, or for anyone). A lot of students have some really important points to make. Let's not lose them in trying to make them really important ones. This column, for instance, is about clear and appropriate writing -- a minute and, to a lot of people, highly unimportant topic. The world will most definitely not fall apart if this issue is overlooked, and I recognize that. If I were perfectly honest, I might have said this in the first paragraph, but hey -- nobody's perfect.
