GIJ Politics. A Rude Awakening

“Nothing so educates us as a shock.”

– Will Durant.

One of the earliest experiences I had as a first-year student of GIJ broke my heart into isolated fragments and haunted me for a long time. It was an encounter with one enigmatic lecturer (whom I shall leave unnamed) during my very first semester. He was in class to introduce us to the basics of logic, reasoning, persuasion, critical thinking, rationality, the existence of cognitive biases, fallacious reasoning, et cetera. I had seen the timetable earlier and was eager to meet the critical man but something happened on our first date which nearly killed my fondness of the man and my interest in his course.

A lecture had just ended and the whiteboard was still unwiped when this man came in. So, as the self-appointed whiteboard cleaner, I offered to clean it for him. Without any pompous ceremony, I did my job and walked back to my seat. A moment of unbroken silence passed and he looked around the class as if to say to the others ‘do you realize what this guy has just done?’

I wasn’t prepared for what followed.

In a confident voice with the aura of a prophecy, he told my classmates to watch out for people like me because as sure as death and taxes, I had political ambitions.  Now wait a second! What! Because I had offered to clean the whiteboard? That’s hasty generalization! I wanted to get up and wax lyrical about that little fallacy I had come across but I didn’t have the force of will. I was brutally hurt and scandalized. What were my mates going to think of me? What was it going to take to prove to them that I wasn't a fraud? 

Goodness me, every second of that lecture was excruciating; for lack of a more painful word. Why would someone who doesn’t even know me make such a biting remark about me? Could it be that he didn’t like me already? Was cleaning the board a political requirement in GIJ? Or was there something he knew which I didn’t? 

Well, I resolved to find out and finding out is something I have done since 2015.

You can easily imagine how badly I was itching to tell this lecturer that to assume that any law or principle applies to every person, at every time, in every situation, even though not explicitly stated, is an assumption not grounded in evidence and therefore fallacious. Honestly, however, I am glad I didn’t for two reasons. First, I didn’t (and still do not) have a thousandth of a fraction of the wealth of experience he has in dealing with students. Second, it cannot be considered fallacious making a general statement when a good argument can be made that the action in question is a violation of the rule. Admittedly, I was hurt but the empirical evidence he had was simply overwhelming.

In spite of my experience (and maybe because of it), I have come to find that there are many who are a violation of the rule. These are the people I like to call exceptions: people who are genuinely big-hearted and kind without any ulterior motive. Putting such people in the spotlight is the chief reason for this work; to show that not everyone who helps people in GIJ does it for political benefits.

I seek therefore to emphasize, in this series, some characteristics that will help us to tell a mask and face apart and distinguish honest behaviour from deception. These are my empirical observations over time and I look forward to hearing yours.

Cheers.