According to a quick search of the web, the phrase “Double Standards” first appeared in some political commentary published in 1912. This means, of course, that the idea of using these words while discussing the differences between how two groups get treated differently is sneaking up on its 100 birthday. Wow, at first, it boggles my mind to think about all the groups who have a legitimate beef with how they are treated unfairly, and then, I tried to consider the even longer list of groups who feel they are being mistreated when perhaps they really need to suck it up and realize that nobody gets everything they want.
As a rhetorician, one of the ideas I cherish the most is the concept that we often refer to as “The Principal of Similar Cases.” The basic thought behind this principal is that when two things are the same, they should be treated the same unless a reason is given for treating them differently. One of the reasons this particular ideal resonates so deeply within me is that I grew up with a twin brother, and each of us was acutely aware (often painfully so) when we perceived that one of us was getting some kind of favor or break the other one wasn’t.
It didn’t matter that we were two completely different people in our abilities and attitudes; what did matter to us was that we were exactly the same age – so as far as we could comprehend the world, if one of us was given permission to do something, then, the other better receive permission as well or all bloody hell was going to break loose in the Dudding household. Naturally, I understand much more now than I did when I was between the ages of say four to twelve, so I have much more sympathy for what my brother, Dan, and I put our mother through.
“It’s not fair,” one of us would bellow when we perceived the violation of “The Principal of Similar Cases” (we did not know it was called this then, but its expectation was apparently etched into our DNA). Inevitably, our mother would respond with the phrase that pretty much became her mantra through our childhood, “Get used to it. Life’s not fair.”
And that’s the rub when it comes to “Double Standards,” is it? When all know that life is unfair, and yet we continue marching forward through the mire with the faint hope that somehow, somewhere down the road, it will be.
It would not be too far from wrong to say that my entire life has been spent trying to reconcile the cognitive dissidence that comes from wanting life to be reasonable while knowing that it’s often not. The irony is recursive and paradoxical like when we see the reflection of one mirror in another mirror and we notice the long series of ever smaller replications. We want (and often expect) life to be reasonable, but that desire is itself unreasonable. Even when we can get all parties within a disagreement to agree upon the importance of using reason in settling a dispute, we still find ourselves with the conundrum of answering the question, “Who gets the final call on determining what is and what isn’t reasonable?”
While not everyone is a parent, we all have the experience of being children, and typically what we think is reasonable is an odd revision of what we were taught to think was reasonable as we grew up as a member of a family. We don’t always see eye to eye with out parents, or our siblings, or our spouses, and (especially) with our children. It’s not reasonable to expect that we will always see eye to eye with them. The question, then, when we’re trying to work issues out, whose logic gets favored? Whose rationale for what is or isn’t acceptable becomes the standard by which one or the other can rightly claim, “well, at least in this situation, I was right and you were wrong”?
The idea that there is a single right idea is not only irrational but it becomes comical when we try to revisit an argument later. “When we were arguing about X the other day, you said Z” is often how we try to start. “I never did say Z,” you or the other person will counter, “That’s what you thought you heard. What I actually said was Y.” And then, instead of trying to settle the rationales of the argument you thought you had, you can get all cranky and crazy over the argument you didn’t have. “You didn’t say Y,” you might respond, “because if you had said Y, I wouldn’t have said W.”
The only solution is to keep moving forward and keep expecting that someday it will all get better. Optimism may not be rational, but it’s soothing. You can say optimism isn’t soothing if you want to, but I’ll have to fight you on that one.
Just remember, two things: first, after a big argument when all is said and done, more gets said than done. And second, we don’t need a reason to love each other so it’s better if we just go ahead and do that (even if the other person will never admit in the heat of the last argument that she was adamant about Z, but now vehemently denies ever saying any such thing).
