Soloman Square
I was reading the other day about a kid who had been expelled from school for bringing in nail clippers. Apparently the school has a “zero-tolerance” policy regarding certain items and as these clippers had a two inch blade, they qualified. What has always struck me as fundamentally wrong about zero-tolerance policies is that they are incredibly childish.
Now I don’t mean childish as in silly, but as in formed from a child-like perspective where the world actually exists in a black-and-white reality. When you are a child, you believe that if you don’t do the right thing, you won’t go to heaven. And right versus wrong is a brightline. You believe in Santa Claus. And for me I believed in God.
But at some point, I began to question my belief in God – or to be more accurate, I began to question my belief in a religion’s view of God and the ultimate. I hit that devastating point of realization that not all I was told was necessarily true. I think it may have started when I saw the movie Gremilins as a kid. It was in that film that I found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real. And, it hurt. But the true hurt came from the understanding that I tale I had been told was not real. I had been lead to believe that it was, but it was not. And everyone was in on the secret except for me.
And I began to wonder about the other “true” tales that I had been told. And one question lead to another. And the answers I found erased a part of my world for me.
But I have always been a little jealous of the true believers. Their lives seem to be so much easier to deal with at time. Fundamentalists (of any variety) have no need to question their motives or to question the purpose behind a specific viewpoint, it is just that way. There is no grey area. There is no trying to understand the other side. There is no relativity. There is only zero-tolerance.
And that is why zero-tolerance policies are so distasteful to me. They are a way of avoiding having to make any determination, any evaluation, any investigation. A set of events fits into a specific laid out pattern of facts – guilty. And it is this child-like view of “if the show fits” that disturbs me the most. When did the idea of the wise old Solomon suddenly become such a foreign concept?
A nair clipper may have a blade but it is not a knife. Just as a square is a rectangle but a rentangle is not always a square. But if you bring down an edict that you can't even consider the other, suddenly everything with four sides is a square and we lose that all too valuable human qualities of consideration, deliberation and evaluation.
Now I don’t mean childish as in silly, but as in formed from a child-like perspective where the world actually exists in a black-and-white reality. When you are a child, you believe that if you don’t do the right thing, you won’t go to heaven. And right versus wrong is a brightline. You believe in Santa Claus. And for me I believed in God.
But at some point, I began to question my belief in God – or to be more accurate, I began to question my belief in a religion’s view of God and the ultimate. I hit that devastating point of realization that not all I was told was necessarily true. I think it may have started when I saw the movie Gremilins as a kid. It was in that film that I found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real. And, it hurt. But the true hurt came from the understanding that I tale I had been told was not real. I had been lead to believe that it was, but it was not. And everyone was in on the secret except for me.
And I began to wonder about the other “true” tales that I had been told. And one question lead to another. And the answers I found erased a part of my world for me.
But I have always been a little jealous of the true believers. Their lives seem to be so much easier to deal with at time. Fundamentalists (of any variety) have no need to question their motives or to question the purpose behind a specific viewpoint, it is just that way. There is no grey area. There is no trying to understand the other side. There is no relativity. There is only zero-tolerance.
And that is why zero-tolerance policies are so distasteful to me. They are a way of avoiding having to make any determination, any evaluation, any investigation. A set of events fits into a specific laid out pattern of facts – guilty. And it is this child-like view of “if the show fits” that disturbs me the most. When did the idea of the wise old Solomon suddenly become such a foreign concept?
A nair clipper may have a blade but it is not a knife. Just as a square is a rectangle but a rentangle is not always a square. But if you bring down an edict that you can't even consider the other, suddenly everything with four sides is a square and we lose that all too valuable human qualities of consideration, deliberation and evaluation.
posted by Rye at 12:58 p.m.
3 Comments:
Wow - brilliant post. I agreed with you on most points, except for being jealous of fundamentalists.
It would be nice to not have to think and to be able to rely solely on a book or a preacher for all of my wordly wisdom. That is, so long as I never had to wake up and realize that it is just as easy for preachers and books to spin tall tales as it is for anyone else. I think we had similar childhood experiences except instead of gizmo it was my neighbor who I tricked into telling me about santa claus. From then on, things were not the same.
Interesting post. I recalled just the other day the first time I ever heard anyone say they didn't believe in God (I was probably 8 years old). Back then it was a shocking thing to hear. These days I have my own ideas about God. As for those true believers, they're often so hypocritical they ain't worth worrying about
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