Beyond Feelings - Vincent Ruggiero [25]
A Hasidic rabbi serving a three-year term (for bank fraud) in a federal prison petitioned a U.S. district court to order the prison to provide a kosher kitchen, utensils, and diet for him. He argued that his health was failing because the food served at the prison did not meet his kosher requirement. He could eat only lettuce, oranges, apples, carrots, and dry rice cereal.7
"Heavy metal" music has drawn pointed criticism from a number of social critics. They argue that it at least aggravates (and perhaps causes) antisocial attitudes and thus can be blamed for the increase in violent crime.
Some people believe the penalty for driving while intoxicated should be stiffened. One provision they are urging be added to the law is mandatory jail sentences for repeat offenders.
Read the following dialogues carefully. Note any evidence of "mine is better" thinking. Then decide which view in each dialogue is more reasonable and why. (Be sure to guard against your own "mine is better" thinking.)
Background Note: On a trip to Spain in November 1982, Pope John Paul acknowledged that the Spanish Inquisition, which began in 1480 and lasted for more than 300 years and resulted in many people's being imprisoned, tortured, and burned at the stake, was a mistake.8
Ralph: It's about time the Catholic church officially condemned the Inquisition.
Chester: The Pope shouldn't have admitted that publicly.
Ralph: Why? Do you think five hundred years after the fact is too soon? Should he have waited for one thousand years to pass?
Chester: Don't be sarcastic. I mean that his statement will undoubtedly weaken the faith of many Catholics. If you love someone or something – in this case, the church – you should do nothing to cause it shame or embarrassment. Of course the Inquisition was wrong, but it serves no good purpose to say so now and remind people of the church's error.
Background Note: When an unmarried high school biology teacher in a Long island, New York, school became pregnant, a group of parents petitioned the school board to fire her. They reasoned that her pregnancy was proof of immorality and that allowing her to remain a teacher would set a poor example for students. The school board refused to fire her.9
Arthur: Good for the school board. Their action must have taken courage. Pious hypocrites can generate a lot of pressure.
Guinevere: Why do you call them hypocrites? They had a right to express their view.
Arthur: Do you mean you agree with that nonsense about the pregnant teacher's being immoral and a poor example to students?
Guinevere: Yes, I suppose I do. Not that I think everybody deserves firing from her job in such circumstances. I think teachers are in a special category. More should be expected of them. They should have to measure up to a higher standard of conduct than people in other occupations because they are in charge of young people's education, and young people are impressionable.
Group discussion exercise: Reflect on the following quotation. Does it make sense? Does anything you read in this chapter help to explain it? If so, what? Discuss your ideas with two or three classmates.
It doesn't matter if everyone in the world thinks you're wrong. If you think you're right, that's all that counts.
1 New York: Dover Publications, 1958, p.66.
2 The descriptions of ethnocentrism in this paragraph and the preceding two paragraphs reflect the findings of a number of studies. Principal among them are Else Frenkel-Brunswik's "Prejudice in Children," first published in 1948 and republished in Psychology in Action (1967): T. W. Adorno's The Authoritarian Personality (1950); and James G. Martin's The Tolerant Personality (1964).
3 The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1954), pp.355-56
4 Charles Dickens (New York: The Press of the Readers Club, 1942), p.15
5 "Theologian: U.S. Too Tolerant," The (Oneonta) Star, May 30, 1981, p.15.
6 Letter to the Editor, New York Times, May 9, 1982, Sec. 4,