Waving Pop Tarts and Other Offenses

A seven year old, waving a pop tart and saying "bang bang" was a very serious matter to Maryland school officials who suspended the boy. This is a lesson in seriousness, the kind of seriousness brought about by school shootings or drugs in schools. When confronted with seriousness, we often throw out deliberation and good sense and substitute "zero tolerance" measures that get pop-tart-waving children or those with Tylenol in their backpacks expelled from school.

Zero tolerance measures may begin with good intentions -- after all, they are designed to counter drugs, guns and other dangerous things -- but we know what the road to hell is paved with. There is a kind of lazy relief in not confronting a problem, in not making a decision based on the "greatest good" for the situation. And there's risk in making decisions, "what if it doesn't work out and I get in trouble?" It's easier and less stressful to just follow verbatim some rigid policy.

True, computers operate that way, they follow their programming, their rules exactly. But our lazy relief at doing the same thing is a kind of apathy and every time an individual fails to act in a rational manner, the door opens for some new legislation to "solve" that new problem, and puts everyone under a structure that dictates what actions may or may not be taken under such and such conditions. We get frustrated at kids using drugs so any drug, even an aspirin gets a kid booted from school. We are so revolted at school shootings that we boot a 7 year old for waving around -- as his father termed it -- "a danish."

Human beings -- in spite of the success of our digital technologies that basically operate on yes/no switches -- can weigh intangibles in an analog fashion to come to a decision that sits somewhere on a scale between "a really bad idea" and "Nobel Prize-winner." A word to the kid that he should eat his pastry pistol or lose it would probably have sufficed. But no, suspension is the only choice because we've got a zero tolerance policy for guns -- and gun shaped pastry -- in schools. It only makes sense to a computer, or a legislator or somebody who is afraid to lose their job if they don't adhere to the policy.

Human beings make mistakes when they launch into making decisions on their own, and those mistakes become the motive for some really bad legislation. "Activist judges" don't follow the law and so more laws are passed to further restrict the decisions they can make. On and on, a gradual calcification, a smaller and smaller window of actual decision-making that can be left to individuals.

There is a decent purpose for laws and rules, however. They are the generally agreed-upon rules of conduct that a society has found to be useful in promoting survival, and so those laws and rules are enforced for the good of the society. That process -- justice -- is applied to members of the society who make personal choices that cause harm to themselves or others.

Ethics, however, has to do with those personal choices. Someone turns in a watch they found in the dressing room, not because they will be arrested if they don't, but because they feel it is the right thing to do. They take care of their families, pay their bills, tithe to their church, work hard, etc. They most often don't need justice, and are not motivated by fear of it. These are the people you never hear about in the news. "Man pays bills on time," is not a news item. "Couple married 50 years" is on the back pages, "Kid cleans up schoolyard," might be noted in passing. And there are millions upon millions of those "non-stories," every day in this country that are never reported. "Nothing Stolen During Street Fair," "Millions of Americans Never Arrested."

But if we get lazy and our ethical decisions flabby, plenty of people are willing to take the job of telling us what to do. "If it feels good, do it," was the mantra of a generation that went off the ethical rails with drugs and promiscuity and American society is still paying for it, still trying to solve the problems it created, 50 years later. Now, if you don't feel good, you need an anti-depressant, but shrinks and pharmacists are the dealers and it's all legal. The government even pays for it. And it's not your fault.

Our new mantra is: "It's not your fault, you have a chemical imbalance." In this society, you are seen as a sort of consuming computer, a stimulus-response machine driven by your chemicals, marketing and advertising, incapable of reasoning. You are seen as a product of your environment, an expression of your body's DNA, the effect of your parent's mistakes and the chemicals in your brain. You have no ability to make good decisions, and must be protected from yourself by a benevolent government that knows what's best. Protected against obesity, trans fats, soda, evil businesses, stress, sports injuries, accidents on and on. Everything is OK, you no longer have to take risks or make difficult decisions -- those create stress, which increase the drain on our national health system. So take a pill will you?

OK, way too serious! I do have some bad news however -- It is your fault! You are ultimately responsible for the good things and the bad that result from your actions. If your kid is suspended from school for waving a loaded pop tart, you can raise hell and should. If you feel stress, it's not your chemicals, it's something that you need to deal with and are avoiding. If you are obese it's not McDonald's fault for making stuff taste good, it's you being a pig. Go get some exercise like you know you should, and stop feeding your face. And if you feel like you really are a stimulus-response machine driven here and there by wind and chance, get religion. It's about you as a spiritual being, not a body full of chemicals and trans fats rolling downhill to the cemetery. That should cheer you up some.