Collegiate Times

It may seem a bit odd, or even just a bold-faced lie, to claim that I learned over an all-too-short spring break. Still, if you can take me at my word on that, it was actually a relatively illuminating week, especially considering most of it was spent in bed or on a tennis court. The first thing on my respite was that residents in an old-folks home get mildly suspicious when three guys carry their former resident’s belongings across the building to a U-Haul truck; I may as well have been carrying a scythe and wearing a black robe. (For the record, I don’t know if the woman is dead or not.)

I also learned a good lesson in prank playing. Specifically, it usually isn’t a good idea to pull a fast one on the guy who works on your car. Two weeks after sending my mechanic, who doubles as my uncle, to Subway with a gift-card that had no money on it, the “check engine” light promptly appeared on my dashboard. I always had impeccable timing.

After the obligatory chop-busting and grief-giving, he informed me that an oxygen sensor had gone bad. Bad news: A new one cost just less than what I made doing the aforementioned moving job. Good news: It wasn’t my catalytic converter, and my uncle thought I was still an OK guy, so labor was free — but next time I want to be a wise guy, I’d better go after my father.

My last revelation was a bit more serious (although from what I’m told, a new catalytic converter is no joke, either). Attempting to make small-talk with an old friend, I asked if he had seen the gold medal hockey match a few weeks ago. I received an apathetic “no.” Asking why, he told me that he refused to watch the Olympics because of the subjectivity in events like figure skating, and the 1972 Olympic Games, where the Soviet Union won a controversial gold medal basketball match over the United States. In fairness to my friend, he was alive when the game happened, and the game was incredibly controversial and reviewed along Cold War lines.

Still, him being a rational and intelligent person, I thought he would respond to my pointing out that the Cold War was over, the Black Sox Scandal in baseball, and the rampant “cheating” in football, such as when he called shenanigans on the 2002 Miami-Ohio State pass interference national championship game (apparently it was decided that it was the Big Ten’s turn to win the BCS). Instead, I was told that the ’72 games and subjectivity (also a factor in baseball) were good enough reasons and this was not something he had to justify to me.

I am not so arrogant to think everyone owes me a justification of their preferences, nor am I out to force everyone to go through a rigorous logical proof of why they enjoy football; the former is as pompous as the latter is pointless. Still, there is something to be said for understanding one’s preferences rather than relying merely on prejudices formed years ago. This may seem trivial when considering things like hockey or football games (especially ones involving Miami), but the potential for this to carry over into meaningful decisions has long been realized.

Edmund Burke, the so-called “Father of Conservativism,” wrote in the 1790s that France had made a grave error in removing its monarchy, saying of the queen, “surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision” and lamenting the loss of “that proud submission, that dignified obedience” in reference to the French crown. For Burke, prejudices were a good thing. It seemed only natural to assume one person is simply better than another by birth — to not question authority, or the prevailing opinions of the day.

Is this anything more than the justification of tyranny? Anything other than a well-worded defense of one man’s illegitimate claim of sovereignty over another? Or, more frighteningly, does it sound similar to the logic of white supremacists, who just “know” that white people are the “chosen ones.”

I am reminded of the writing of Bruce Ackerman, whose conception of justice was guided by what powers people can claim without claiming they are better than others or their conception of right and wrong is better. While I have a hard time applying his argument to a theory of social justice because of intellectual inequalities, it does make sense in an intra-personal decisions.

If we can learn tolerance for other points of view, the things that we can logically and rationally justify to ourselves will likely be wiser and lead to a better society. In the spirit of John Stuart Mill, an intellectual hero of mine, tolerance is one of, if not the most important, virtue humans are blessed with.

Once we learn to tolerate opposing viewpoints, we can combat evil ideas, such as the writings of Hitler and Mussolini, and rationally prove them wrong. In the process, tolerance and intelligence grow exponentially, all the while eradicating villainous radicals. After all, there would never be a United States if someone had not rejected the assumption that King George was always right and decided all men were created equal.

A version of this article appeared in the Mar 17 issue of the Collegiate Times.