To Hell With Your Standard

Sunday, July 15, 2007

[Thanks Mr. Lewis]

Ever heard someone arguing? How did it sound? Unpleasantly annoying? Funny?

These remarks especially from children are truly something we can learn from. Do you remember the kind of arguments you had as a child? I have a four year old so my memory has been refreshed. The types of arguments typically center around whats fair, whats right and whats wrong.

"Give me a piece of your candy, i gave you a piece of mine. Come on, you promised."

or

"thats my seat, i was there first, so what if i had to get up for minute" (or the alternative when i was growing up was "i called shotgun, i get the front seat.").

Now, whats interesting about such remarks isnt so much whats said but that one person is usually appealing to some kind of standard of behavior that he expects the other person to know about and rarely does the other person say to hell with your standard.

The other person may argue that he was not really going against the standard or that if he was he had some kind of acceptable special excuse.

Both parties it would seem have in mind some kind of sense of fair play or morality, whatever the case.

Arguing your case means you are trying to show the other person is wrong. Why would you try to prove something to be right unless there is an accepted sense of whats right and whats wrong?

Taking the human race as a whole the thought of decent behavior is fairly obvious to everyone. Everyone's sense of right and wrong varies a little, but world wide its pretty common amongst people groups to not steal or kill or lie or the like. Everyone (all the major religions regardless of how different) basically follow something resembling the golden rule.

If there wasnt a sense of right and wrong, then we could have no more blamed homocidal murderers or Nazis or whoever for what they did wrong anymore than we could blame them for the color of their hair.

Its funny when in the rare event you run into a person who doesnt believe in a real right or wrong, they are appealing to that same standard as soon as it suits them. He may break his promise to you, but as soon as you break your promise to him, he is screaming "its not fair" faster than you can say Hulk Hogan.

How well then do any of us keep to this standard? By and large we all believe it, unless we are lying to ourselves (and sooner than later, people believe their own lies), but unfortunately like children we are good at keeping to this standard when it suits us and making excuses when we fail at it because we cannot bear to face it and try to shift the responsibility to someone or something else.

Its never our fault, is it?

Next some objections and thanks again Mr. Lewis, you are the best. Thanks for your comments, friends.