Black and White

If you take black paint and white paint and you pour them into a bucket in equal portions you will get gray, perfect gray. No I am not sure there is such a thing as perfect gray, but since I just used the phrase I am going to say there is. If you pour black and white paint in a bucket and you pour more white than black you will get a lighter shade of gray, still gray, but lighter. More black, darker grey. I could keep going, but I am sure you get the point.

The expression about there being a million shades of grey, or gray, I will come back to this in a minute, is not entirely accurate. If you were really bored and wanted to have some fun you could continue my logic from above, continue to look at a little more white then black then white then black, and what you would discover is that no matter how much lighter, or how much darker, the grey became, you would never get back to either pure white, or total black because you are in fact repeating the exercise from early algebra, I think, where infinity is defined, and the explanation we were given back then is that if you moved closer to the wall, each time cutting the distance in half, you could essentially do this forever. The same would be true of the mixing and thus there are not millions of shades of gray, but in fact there are an infinite number of shades.

Here is the catch, life is not paint, and while there are many different views on many different subjects there are not an infinite number of views, and in fact there is a very finite number. In a city like New York City you could easily find millions of opinions on all sorts of topics, but what tends to happen is that you get millions on one side of a debate, millions on the other and a whole bunch of folks in between. Does it really matter how far in between? Not typically, unless we are talking abut elections because then how far to one side you are or the other of the middle may, and most often does, move your vote to one pile or the other. I guess this just brought us back to black and white again did it not. In fact, this past presidential election was very much black and white, and black won...or was that gray??

It is actually quite simple, there is black and there is white in this world, and although there are lots of folks who may be inclined to argue both sides of an argument, or have trouble making up there mind, when it comes down to it there is black and white, right and wrong.

Murder, wrong. Helping an older woman with her groceries, right. Stealing, wrong. Making time for your kids baseball game, right. Adultery, wrong. Helping a friend in need, no matter who that friend is, or what people think, right.

Again, I could go on with this forever, but I am sure you see where I am going here. I guess I simply believe in the "Houseian" theory of ethics and morals, there are absolute rights, and absolute wrongs, and no amount of rationalization or justification can change those facts. If you do something that is legally within your rights by the US Constitution, but morally and/or ethically wrong, it is still wrong. Everything from using cell phones while in the movie theatre to sleeping with your best friends wife. Different shades of wrong? sure, but wrong nonetheless? without question.

To me right and wrong are like pregnant and not!! You cannot be a little pregnant, you either are or you are not. Just because someone's moral compass was never completed, or was issued with readings missing doesn't make things magically ok, it just means that for some people right and wrong, especially wrong, just does not register as it should. Sure makes life tough for the rest of the planet.

From the teaching and coaching I have done the last few years I can tell you that a lot of this moral compass is missing in high school and college kids these days, but don't blame them, it is missing in their parents just as much, or more. Dartmouth College students, for example, cross the street anywhere they feel like it in Hanover, NH where the school sits, but if you are ever in town on parents weekend so do their folks. I guess they figure since they pay so much in tuition they must own the streets of Hanover. Having gone to Hanover High for a while and then having received my Masters from Dartmouth, and having paid my own tuition, I can tell you that this is not true about the owning of the streets thing, but don't tell them that their pompous little heads will explode.

I will also tell you that to use the derogatory word for a woman, or the crass word for female anatomy, that starts with a C is also wrong, even if you are all alone in the woods, let alone in the company of another person, more so in the company of a woman, or women, and especially in the company of multiple women and a 9 year old girl!! No one should have to point that out to any male over the age of five, let alone to a 22 year old and a 47 year old that happen to be father and son.

Like I said, don't blame the kids, blame their parents.

I wish I could say that although my moral compass always knows the different between black and white I always make the right choice, but that would then make me perfect, and even I am not that, actually about as far from it as possible, but at least I continue to work towards it, which I guess all we can expect from ourselves, or so I am told.

By the way, grey and gray are both correct, and thus I felt like using them interchangeably!!

Thank you for getting this far with me.