Don’t Meet Me Halfway
By Brendan Woods, Contributing Columnist
Published on Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Last week I saw something strange while waiting for my morning omelette at Collis Cafe. After the lady asked the obligatory “egg-white or regular?” the student in front of me answered that he wanted half of each.
Now I’ve heard of half-marinara, half-alfredo on pasta, and I won’t deny that Thai peanut and medium sauce is a delicious stir-fry combination. But there was something odd about the omelette order. Was he only 50 percent worried about his cholesterol intake? Had he stumbled upon the perfect combination of fat and protein for a morning meal? Was an omelette with both the nutritional drawbacks of traditional eggs and the blandness of egg whites somehow actually very tasty? More likely, I saw it as a symptom of a common Dartmouth problem. When confronted with conflict and decision, we equivocate. We are afraid of having to choose.
These compromises are not confined to the omelette line at Collis. We insist on modified majors to combine sometimes disparate areas of interest, and as a whole our campus politics lie squarely in the middle.
But these sorts of halfway agreements are innocent compared to our equivocations in the realm of ideas. Consider a common formula that I’ve noticed in many of the introductory classes I have taken here: someone will make a point, and then someone else will either agree with their statement or say something like, “Well, I agree with this part of that argument, but…” It is as if we are afraid to challenge the status quo with contradictory thoughts.
Tactful compromise is good for U.S. senators. On a college campus, however, the consequence of this is that we close ourselves off from debate. When compromise becomes the norm, we are less open to new and challenging ideas.
Last week I attended a performance of “The Vagina Monologues,” driven mostly by a nagging curiosity about the controversial play. Not surprisingly, when I got there I noticed a conspicuous lack of men. If you discount the guys who were cajoled into going by their girlfriends, the ratio was at best 20 to one (men, a tip for next year — going to the play is well worth the admiration girls will express for how sensitive and understanding you are). This is reasonable. The play was written for women and many of the themes were ones men could not fully relate to. Still, my hope would be that there is a curiosity, or maybe just a zest for controversy that would have impelled more men to attend. I’m not saying one has to agree with the “Monologues;” I, for one, did not appreciate the lack of positive male characters, and I think it may have actually furthered some of the more harmful male stereotypes. But I appreciated the chance to hear what a certain group of women thought about important issues.
The discussions I had after the play were more disappointing. I found that those who were involved in the play’s production got defensive when people brought up faults with the play’s message. Likewise, I found that many men resorted to cracking jokes and categorically dismissing the play instead of actually engaging with and considering its ideas. When I tried to engage them in conversation, I fount that these people were simply not used to having their assumptions confronted and argued.
At a place like Dartmouth I think we can do better than hiding behind jokes or taking exaggerated offense. In their idealized form, universities have a very distinct purpose in society: to debate, research and discover the truth. We have all proven our curiosity and intellectual capabilities by virtue of having been accepted here. Why, then, are we so afraid of debate? Why can we not have honest conversations about a play? Why must we compromise on everything from our pasta sauces to our classroom discussion?
Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” I think it is reasonable to assume that we all share a commitment to rationality and truth, even if that means some discomfort for us. If our world view is shot down, we all have the capability to either defend it or find a new one to build up again. Surrounded by people committed, at least in part, to finding the truth in academics, philosophy and life, we should not be afraid to debate uncomfortable ideas.
If anyone disagrees, I am open to discussion.
By this time in your lives as students, you have been told lots of things by lots of people, parents, teachers, coaches, friends, TV, radio, movies, political people, philosophies and parties and you have read books, presumably from various eras by people with agendas and now you are at a top flight college reading and being told new or different things by more people who may not be neutral in their presentations either. Try as they might or not, politics leaks into everything and a good 90% of the faculty or more are leftists as well as at least the top officials of the Administration. To find what is true as the good column advocates in the words of Thoreau, you have to trust your own mind and to realize that your life is not at the service of others who want you to think that it is for their own purposes and power. Your lives are your own and not the means to anyone else’s ends. Suggested reading, “The Road To Serfdom,” by F. A. Hayek. Good luck to all and don’t expect anyone to turn the light on for you as far as the truth is concerned, you have to earn it and then you have to make it yours. Good luck on this greatest work of your lives.
Again, great column.By Brandon Lachner on Mar 9 | 2:10 pm
Hey, you said you were open to discussion, so here’s something I’d like to point out: 1. a commitment to “rationality and truth” is part of the problem. Because so many different people have different ideas about what is “rational” and “truthful” it’s impossible to have certain conversations. Take the debate on abortion. Someone who believes that life begins at conception is not going to have a conversation with someone who believes that a fetus is not a person because they are operating on different planes of “truth and rationality”. It’s NOT safe to assume that we all value truth and rationality if we cannot agree on the definitions of either. 2. There are many people on this campus who are open to debating and discussing their ideas and are willing to listen to others, but we all have our bad moments, so perhaps its wrong to generalize. I suspect that if engaged in a serious discussion about the V. Monologues (not just the superficial one they had after the show) in a classroom forum, you would probably come across to some as closed-minded in certain ways (for instance, the idea that there should be more “positive portrayals of men” in the V Monologues is laughable to many people who study theories about gender and society; the whole point is to expose the abuse that many women suffer at the hands of (some) men; there are MANY positive stereotypes about men in our society, many more than there are about women. Your argument is the equivalent to someone watching the TV show about slavery, “Roots”, and complaining that there were not enough positive portrayals of white people; not ALL white people in the 1800s were slave masters, but the point of the show is to cast light on the bad behavior of some people in a dark time of American history)
I do agree with you that it often seems like there is a stunning lack of intellectual curiosity on this campus, and I applaud you for stepping outside your own comfort zone and attempting to experience something new.
By dartmouth ugrad on Mar 10 | 4:28 pm
brendan woods obviously isn’t aware that a half egg-white half regular omelet has nothing to with nutrition. it simply has the best consistency and texture.
points for creativity in coming up with a reason to write your Op Ed though.
By Anon on Mar 10 | 7:53 pm