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Jonathon Costa English Final I would like to (and will) write about a topic that we attempted to discuss in class that is not represented in the assignment, but is related to your Knowledge Survey, concerning tolerance. Fortunately for me, unlike your classroom and many others, my home is not cursed with a Miller-Falbonian dynamic to distract me from reaching a direct conclusion regarding the toleration of beliefs and actions and allows me to pursue proper analytical discourse. The practice of indiscriminant toleration of belief, culture, being and even action has been perpetuated by the indoctrination of children to exercise total acceptance of others through education, parenting and the media. In America particularly, it is common practice to be tolerant of any belief. It is also typical that criminal actions are not permitted and are punished. There is often nothing wrong with this, however, when people begin to unintentionally exceed tolerance and begin to respect beliefs, problems occur. This allows people to do things that would normally be considered criminal, impermissible or immoral by citing a respected belief as justification. We discussed an example of this when you told the story of the execution of the thirteen-year-old Somalian rape victim. Due to respected traditional and religious belief, a human beings absolute right to life was violated and the international community tolerated the actions derived from respected beliefs. (I base my assertion that the right to life is absolute on the fact

that humans are aware that the primary purpose of an individual, as programmed by nature, is to survive. Therefore sentient beings must mutually honor this purpose held by their fellows by not killing each other in order to ensure the species survival, especially when the victim has not violated anothers right to live.) A similar, yet less dire, situation exists in America. The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States legally guarantees the freedom to express ones thoughts. Unfortunately, Americans believe in and respect this principle so strongly that it transcends law and is respected socially and politically. This allows people to do things that seemingly would be unacceptable in a social or political setting such as lying or making irrelevant statements. Im not claiming that such things should be prohibited, (that would be unconstitutional), but, that they should not be enabled, given a platform or undisputed. This ties into my opening statement since the allowance of the actions of certain individuals in class and of candidates in the most recent senior class student council elections, which are rarely prevented because of protection from the popular respect for the citation of the First Amendment, disrupt and distract public discussion. This is analogous to modern politics and media in which liars and noise-machines are given a platform and are seldom challenged, thus disrupting proper and useful discourse. The point I am trying to make is that an aggressive willingness to be tolerant often causes people to cross the thin line that separates tolerance and respect, leading to the acceptance actions that are detrimental to society as a whole.

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Pascals wager is something that have been familiar with for quite sometime, and though I am aware that it applies to any fear based argument, I have only discussed the proposition in terms of faith in the existence of God. The argument that Pascal makes, in its original form, is very easily dismissed through a superficial analysis, however, when the concept is applied to other instances of decision making, the resulting conversation is a stimulating one. Fear is older than humanity and exists within almost all animals. It serves as a very primitive and emotional way to deal with danger. In its simplest form, fear exists as fight or flight response. This response has prevented the demise of many, if not all humans by allowing us to recognize a threat, which we either instinctually attack it or flee from. Since the human mind is capable of being conditioned, we can learn to predict a negative consequence though feedback so we can avoid the situation that led to it in the first place. Conditioning is a amore logical manifestation of fear, both of which are necessary for survival. Unfortunately, other individuals and society can exploit both fear of a physical threat and fear of consequence. Oftentimes, fear is used to control masses of people. In Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carrolls character the Red Queen reaches the conclusion that it is better to rule through fear than through respect and love. But is living in fear really the best way to achieve a goal? Worrying about what might happen in the case of failure and not wanting to actually find out? I would have to agree with the opposing argument: working towards a goal with the hope of success in mind is the

most effective way to reach a goal. Of course I am not a behavioral expert and dont really know if reward is more effective than punishment but the positivity is enjoyable. Personally, I believe that surrendering to externally fabricated threats is to abdicate independence and self-control. Regardless, it is important to remember that at the end of Alice in Wonderland the Red Queens subjects abandon her and her jabberwocky is killed.

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In todays fast paced society, humans are forced to adopt routines that make our lives simpler and smoother. Rhythms are common in nature and many animals abide by routines that coincide with environmental, abiotic events. For them, these instinctual rhythms dominate their activities. Humans, enabled by modern technology, are no longer slaves to the environment. We create our own scales that we build our routines upon. We abdicate a degree of freedom to these rituals as we autonomously follow them, becoming slaves of our own creation. Besides the boredom that perpetual repetitiveness generates, blindly focusing on doing and expecting the same things everyday causes us to overlook the subtle changes in the things that our routines condition us to anticipate. Our brains cause incoming information to conform to what it anticipates it will receive. And when the time comes for us to make decisions, our strict adherence to our routines causes us to assume that the only options we have are the ones clearly and conventionally presented to us and we dont care to search for any others. This practice is often very constricting since our future actions are limited by our perceived options. By being given options and not taking the time to pursue the options that arent given, we find ourselves in a dull and redundant situation because we refused to exercise our creativity that may have produced an incredible and beneficial outcome. Of course pursuing a creative option leads to a less predictable future but, personally, I prefer trying to approach all situations in a multidimensional way in order to explore all possibilities. For this reason I try to avoid

developing routines that weaken the spontaneity of life, even if this means risking my certainties to do so. I try to imagine how life would be if everyone kept their thought within externally defined limits in the interest of adhering to a schedule. If people did not challenge these limits, most of the scientific and technological advancements that we depend on we wouldnt have occurred. It is immeasurably important that we shake things up from time to time to prevent the intellectual stagnation that can crumble societies. Its ok to be radical and eccentric whereas doing the same thing repetitively and expecting different results each time is insanity. Life can only be improved by exploring the potentials that have not been previously investigated.