Dear Students of MVMS,
In light of the recent events at Mill Valley Middle School involving the writing of defamatory symbols there have been many discussions condemning this incident. Although, I do not believe these students acted with the malicious intentions that the symbols represent, but it is essential to realize there are many people out in the world that do.
This incident forces us to recognize that morality on a whole, is relative. Our society, our culture constructs the basis of our morality and our family and history fill in the blanks. In our society, we are given many liberties in what we choose to believe as guaranteed in our Constitution: freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of religion. With these freedoms, we must tolerate many opposing points of view and many different views on what is right and what is wrong. We learn from our schools, parents, and friends what is good and bad, and it is usually not a conscious decision. For example, imagine a kid whose family have always taught her that ice cream is extremely healthy- let’s say instead of vegetables. They fed her ice cream at every meal, telling her that the ice cream would make her stronger, make her smarter. It seems that she would believe that, for as an impressionable child she would have no other sources that she trusts more than her parents. However as she grows older, peers tell her ice cream is unhealthy for her, this shakes the foundation on which she’s grown up. Naturally, she disagrees with them, arguing back with her own beliefs..
I believe that similar patterns of ingrained, false beliefs are prevalent in most prejudices that pitt humans against each other. In Mill Valley, our majority liberal community, we tend to share a certain set of morals. The KKK and the Nazis go directly against these beliefs. Yet, those people grew up with an ingrained set of morals that aligns with KKK or Nazi beliefs and consequently believe they are correct and doing the right thing. In our perspective their moral compass is turned around. In most organized religions there is quite strong sense of right and wrong as a God mandated code, but truly our morals are a societal construction.
In this world there are people with unbelievably diverse morals and beliefs, some of which contribute to racism, anti semitism, homophobia, and sexism. They believe that this is morally correct and we cannot hush their voices. If this makes your recoil, I am with you. I am in no way saying that I believe that they are correct, being Jewish myself.
There has been a recent influx in hateful incidents in this country that remind us of the differing moralities. If I revert back to my ice cream example, this kid would tend to only read articles that back up the ice cream is healthy scenario and reject the rest. This is called confirmation bias, only seeing, reading and interpreting information as enforcing her belief. For example in our last Presidential election, many Democrats predicted a landslide for Hillary Clinton. I was also confident in this, exclusively reading The San Francisco Chronicle, The New Yorker, the New York Times etc. If I happened upon an article that was detrimental to my views I would write it off as ‘fake news’. This is an easy cycle to fall into, reading only what we want to believe and believing what we want to read. Conservatives only listened to conservatives and liberals only listened to liberals.
It’s important to remember that liberals are also vulnerable to confirmation bias. Dissenters to our political environment, especially in colleges and universities, have been protesting against people with different points of view. An excellent example of this recently is Middlebury College: Charles Murray was invited to speak at the college. Charles Murray, is a conservative political scientist, he had controversial ideas on intelligence. His work has him marked by some as racist and endorsing white nationalism. The private, liberal arts college students had a different set of beliefs and disagreed with Murray and what he represented. Protesters and agitators disrupted the lecture, yelling and chanting. They moved the interview to another location and the several masked protestors violently attacked them, the interviewer was injured. These students wouldn’t even listen to someone who didn’t share their viewpoints speak, in the process injuries occurred.
Another example of this occurred at UC Berkeley, a university known for the free speech movement, was set to host Milo Yiannopoulos, the editor of the conservative Breitbart News. A peaceful protest against this was ruptured by 150 masked dissidents who threw rocks and started fires causing 100,000 dollars worth of damages to UC Berkeley property. Administrators canceled the event before Yiannopoulos’s speech.
It is important to stand up for what we believe in, yet it is also important to listen to those whom we disagree with. We have to be taught how to argue, how to deal, struggle with someone who sees things differently, we have to understand where they are coming from. We have to listen.
If we smother the ‘other’, we only perpetuate discord, and more divide. We have to understand to have empathy and we need more empathy to bring our country together.
As humans we strive to understand ourselves, to understand the world; this is why we have psychology, science, why we have religion. Yet we all look through different lenses, lenses compiled of our experiences, our family and our environment, and this leads to different ideas, and different philosophies. This is crucial; breakthroughs in all fields result from people tackling problems from unique perspectives.This is what makes us gloriously human, our ability to be the same, yet see things differently.
Sincerely,
Odessa
In light of the recent events at Mill Valley Middle School involving the writing of defamatory symbols there have been many discussions condemning this incident. Although, I do not believe these students acted with the malicious intentions that the symbols represent, but it is essential to realize there are many people out in the world that do.
This incident forces us to recognize that morality on a whole, is relative. Our society, our culture constructs the basis of our morality and our family and history fill in the blanks. In our society, we are given many liberties in what we choose to believe as guaranteed in our Constitution: freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of religion. With these freedoms, we must tolerate many opposing points of view and many different views on what is right and what is wrong. We learn from our schools, parents, and friends what is good and bad, and it is usually not a conscious decision. For example, imagine a kid whose family have always taught her that ice cream is extremely healthy- let’s say instead of vegetables. They fed her ice cream at every meal, telling her that the ice cream would make her stronger, make her smarter. It seems that she would believe that, for as an impressionable child she would have no other sources that she trusts more than her parents. However as she grows older, peers tell her ice cream is unhealthy for her, this shakes the foundation on which she’s grown up. Naturally, she disagrees with them, arguing back with her own beliefs..
I believe that similar patterns of ingrained, false beliefs are prevalent in most prejudices that pitt humans against each other. In Mill Valley, our majority liberal community, we tend to share a certain set of morals. The KKK and the Nazis go directly against these beliefs. Yet, those people grew up with an ingrained set of morals that aligns with KKK or Nazi beliefs and consequently believe they are correct and doing the right thing. In our perspective their moral compass is turned around. In most organized religions there is quite strong sense of right and wrong as a God mandated code, but truly our morals are a societal construction.
In this world there are people with unbelievably diverse morals and beliefs, some of which contribute to racism, anti semitism, homophobia, and sexism. They believe that this is morally correct and we cannot hush their voices. If this makes your recoil, I am with you. I am in no way saying that I believe that they are correct, being Jewish myself.
There has been a recent influx in hateful incidents in this country that remind us of the differing moralities. If I revert back to my ice cream example, this kid would tend to only read articles that back up the ice cream is healthy scenario and reject the rest. This is called confirmation bias, only seeing, reading and interpreting information as enforcing her belief. For example in our last Presidential election, many Democrats predicted a landslide for Hillary Clinton. I was also confident in this, exclusively reading The San Francisco Chronicle, The New Yorker, the New York Times etc. If I happened upon an article that was detrimental to my views I would write it off as ‘fake news’. This is an easy cycle to fall into, reading only what we want to believe and believing what we want to read. Conservatives only listened to conservatives and liberals only listened to liberals.
It’s important to remember that liberals are also vulnerable to confirmation bias. Dissenters to our political environment, especially in colleges and universities, have been protesting against people with different points of view. An excellent example of this recently is Middlebury College: Charles Murray was invited to speak at the college. Charles Murray, is a conservative political scientist, he had controversial ideas on intelligence. His work has him marked by some as racist and endorsing white nationalism. The private, liberal arts college students had a different set of beliefs and disagreed with Murray and what he represented. Protesters and agitators disrupted the lecture, yelling and chanting. They moved the interview to another location and the several masked protestors violently attacked them, the interviewer was injured. These students wouldn’t even listen to someone who didn’t share their viewpoints speak, in the process injuries occurred.
Another example of this occurred at UC Berkeley, a university known for the free speech movement, was set to host Milo Yiannopoulos, the editor of the conservative Breitbart News. A peaceful protest against this was ruptured by 150 masked dissidents who threw rocks and started fires causing 100,000 dollars worth of damages to UC Berkeley property. Administrators canceled the event before Yiannopoulos’s speech.
It is important to stand up for what we believe in, yet it is also important to listen to those whom we disagree with. We have to be taught how to argue, how to deal, struggle with someone who sees things differently, we have to understand where they are coming from. We have to listen.
If we smother the ‘other’, we only perpetuate discord, and more divide. We have to understand to have empathy and we need more empathy to bring our country together.
As humans we strive to understand ourselves, to understand the world; this is why we have psychology, science, why we have religion. Yet we all look through different lenses, lenses compiled of our experiences, our family and our environment, and this leads to different ideas, and different philosophies. This is crucial; breakthroughs in all fields result from people tackling problems from unique perspectives.This is what makes us gloriously human, our ability to be the same, yet see things differently.
Sincerely,
Odessa