Adam Levin - The Instructions

“Here’s another idea that I’m sure you’re familiar with: The world at large is like a cage. The world is bounded and governed, and those who violate its boundaries or defy its governance meet with negative consequences. And yes, even those who stay within their cage’s boundaries and allow themselves to be governed meet with negative consequences, and indeed that happens far more often than should be the case, you’ll hear no argument from me on that — I do not deny the world contains its share of injustice, but… Most people, Gurion— most people do not violate boundaries, do not defy governance, and most of them come out intact, whereas very few of those who act lawlessly do. And that is why school is so much about following rules. You are here, above all else, to learn to live lawfully for the rest of your life. You are here to learn how to exist in cages without acting as if they are cages, to live like mensches despite being locked in cages. You are here to learn to survive in the world. That is the most basic purpose of our educational system, and it is a high purpose. It is good. I stand behind it. I want you and your fellow students to leave Aptakisic more capable of survival than you were when you entered.”

You didn’t just have to get your teeth down to the very base of the string. You had to get one of the two big middle ones in the top row to press the string base directly against two of the three small middle ones in the bottom row, and once you started sawing you had to go perfectly side-to-side so that you wouldn’t pull the string longer, and you had to be mindful of the width of the top tooth so you wouldn’t over-saw and lose the string and have to start over, and plus with your inner-lips and gums flush with the fabric, your saliva gets triggered if you don’t remind yourself every half-second that your cuff isn’t food, so there was that to concentrate on too, and finally I just twirled the string around my swear and wound it til it ended and my cuff was that much looser.

“In any case, when you say all the students in the Cage act like they are in a cage because they are in the Cage, it’s too extreme a position. I can dismiss it with great ease. The rest of the world is in a cage as well, and the vast majority of us don’t endanger others. The vast majority of us act quite decently. However—”

You’re arguing semantics with me? I said.

“Excuse me?”

You’re saying, ‘For one to act like one is in a cage is for one to act decently. To endanger others is not to act decently. The students in the Cage endanger others. Therefore the students in the Cage do not act like they are in a cage,’ I said.

“I appreciate your intelligence,” he said, “but this isn’t one of your detention assignments. I’m being serious here.”

I said, So am I. If the world’s in a cage, and most of the world acts decently, then to act decently is to act like you’re in a cage.

“Fair enough, but it’s beside the point. Let’s forget the phrase ‘act like one is in a cage.’ Let’s focus instead on ‘endangering others.’ Can we do that?”

I chinned the air at my shoes = It’s your office.

“Thank you. Now. Were you to qualify your statement — were you, as I suggested earlier, to say, ‘ Some students in the Cage endanger others, at least in part, because they are in the Cage,’ I could not dismiss that, not responsibly. Were you to say ‘some’ instead of ‘all,’ and add the ‘at least in part’—after all, everyone in the Cage was originally put in the Cage for having, in some way, endangered others while outside the Cage — it would be my responsibility to ask, ‘How many?’ And yesterday, on my drive home, I imagined a dialogue with you in which you did say ‘some,’ and added the ‘in part.’ You said ‘some,’ and ‘in part,’ and I asked you ‘How many?’ And you said, ‘Five or six.’ You said, ‘Five or six students endanger others, at least in part, because they — the five or six — are in the Cage.’ And I said, ‘That’s eight to ten percent of the Cage who endanger others, at least in part, because they are in the Cage; that’s one percent or less of Aptakisic. That is not troubling. That is something to celebrate. That is a system that works for ninety-nine percent of the student population.’ You see, it’s about math, Gurion, it always is. Yet I thought maybe I wasn’t being fair. Maybe, in our imaginary conversation, I had formed your argument of straw. So I rewound. I rewound the conversation so that when I asked how many, you doubled the number. And still your argument was weak. So I rewound again and had you triple the number. Yet again, your argument was weak. I had you increase the number by increments of eight, then ten. I had you increase it until you were back to ‘All the students in the Cage endanger others, at least in part, because they are in the Cage’; until you were up to forty students. Forty students is roughly seven-point-five percent of the school, I reasoned, which would mean the system worked for over ninety percent of the school. And though a ninety-two-point-five percent success rate is not as admirable as a ninety-nine percent success rate, it is nothing to scoff at. But this is where the revelation happened.

“You, the imaginary you, said two very intelligent things to me in succession. First you said, ‘Mr. Brodsky, you are rationalizing the abandonment of seven-point-five percent of your students.’ And I saw that you were right. And it stung me, Gurion, it did — even in fantasy the idea stung. I am an idealist, a do-gooder, I have always been. I am not ashamed of it. I am, in fact, proud of it. Do-gooders who disregard practicality, however, are a dime a dozen. It seemed impossible to reconcile the sting with the ninety-two-point-five percent success rate. So I wasn’t perfect, I thought, but no one was, I thought, and it’s nothing short of hubris to strive for perfection as if it were attainable. It is hubristic to fail to leave well enough alone. Who is to say that if I changed the system, I would make it better? Who is to say I wouldn’t make it worse? Could it be anything other than selfish, I wondered, to take such a risk? But then you said, ‘Last month, only five or six of the students in the Cage endangered the school, at least in part, because they were in the Cage. This month it’s forty. The danger has spread and the danger will continue to spread.’ And that, Gurion: That was a strong argument for change, an argument based in math, however imaginary. And this is what I decided, in my car, with an imaginary you as my audience: I decided that the danger needed to stop spreading, and I saw that it was not the Cage itself that caused most students in the Cage to endanger our school, but those original five or six — that original one percent. That one percent truly wishes harm on the school. ‘Damage’ as the graffiti would have it. The Cage doesn’t fail them so much as they fail the Cage. The rest of you — and I am counting you among the rest (though exceptional among the rest, which I’ll get to momentarily) — the rest lack true malice. You all have good intentions, you want to be good, but the one percent has filthied up your environment, has not only made school feel unsafe, but has made it dangerous, and you can’t help but respond with dangerous behavior, for dangerous behavior begats more of the same. It does so by means of undermining trust in authority. You look around at all the dangerous behavior… You look around and feel unsafe, and you think, ‘The school is failing to protect me. I must protect myself. I must blend in with my dangerous surroundings.’ And when you get in trouble for it, for blending in, when you get in trouble for engaging in what seem to you to be acts of self-protection, you think, ‘Not only is the school failing to protect me, but it is attacking me. It is as hostile toward me as those who initially made me feel unsafe.’