MM155 - Absolutes are Absolutely Wrong | MM Book Study Pt. 13

True absolutes in life are few and far between. The Ten Commandments are absolutes. The Four Universal Firearms Safety Rules are absolutes. Absolutes are the refuge of the intellectually lazy and the tyrant.

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[INTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Welcome to Morning Mindset. A daily dose of practical wit and wisdom with a professional educator & trainer, Amazon best selling author, United States Marine, Television, and Radio host, Paul G. Markel. Each episode will focus on positive and productive ways to strengthen your mindset and help you improve your relationships, career goals, and overall well-being. Please welcome your host; Paul G. Markel.

*Professor Paul*

Hello, welcome back to the Morning Mindset podcast, and in addition to that welcome back to the Morning Mindset book study. We've been doing it for a couple of weeks now and we're going to continue until we get through all 30 sections chapters, whatever you want to call them of the book Morning Mindset: a 30 Day Plan for a More Positive and Productive Life.

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I hope that you guys have taken the opportunity to pick up the book, and if you didn't, go to Amazon Kindle get it to follow along and I think you'll appreciate it. Alright, let's talk about absolutes. Absolutes are absolutely wrong, most of the time. Alright, there are certain things in our lives that I think that we can all I hope that we can all agree upon that are absolutes.

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Such as the Ten Commandments, Commandments are Commandments, Commandments are not suggestions the Ten Commandments are absolutes and were expected to follow them. Absolutely in the Firearms world in the gun culture. There are four Universal firearms safety rules and the universal firearms safety rules can and should be followed absolutely all the time.

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However, when we set ourselves up with absolutes when we say things such as always or never, we need to exercise caution saying always or never, because as you as soon as you say never or as soon as you say always, you're setting yourself up for potential failure or for being wrong and let me tell you why.

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Well, we live in a current era of zero tolerance, right? We live in an era of zero tolerance and we have been sold. We have been told that the zero-tolerance rules are good because zero tolerance keeps us safer. It makes our workplaces safer, it makes our schools safer,  zero tolerance- we established the gun free schools and zero tolerance in the United States of America

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You guys remember it was back in during the administration of comrade William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, they just he came up with the gun-free School Zones Act and everyone's like, everyone applauded it. They're like "That's wonderful, absolutely, there's no reason that a gun should ever be anywhere near a school and if we establish a federal policy, well all the better."

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1994, when we started establishing Zero Tolerance policies in our schools, zero tolerance, not only against actual enacted violence or threats of violence or use of weapons, but emotional things. Hurtful words and so on and so forth. Pictures, pictures of guns or objects that make people uncomfortable or make weak people, uncomfortable. Now, I don't want to bring you down, but let's go ahead and be honest with ourselves, and when in your lifetime, did you do you remember an instance of a mass killing in a school?

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Bet you a hundred bucks that your first memory most of you is the Columbine High School massacre, the Columbine High School massacre, two youths broke many laws and killed many people inside of a school now was this before or after the gun-free School Zones Act and zero tolerance was put in place.

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You might think "Well, you know it was before, it was before zero tolerance and before gun free schools. That's why we have it we have zero tolerance and we have gun free schools today, because of Columbine." If you thought that you would be absolutely 100% wrong the Columbine High School massacre occurred in 1999.

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Now you don't maybe you went to public school, but that's four to five years after the establishment of the gun free schools and zero tolerance in our schools. So if zero tolerance is meant to keep us safe, and it's been in place in our schools since 1994-95 time frame. Why is it that we keep witnessing violence in our schools?

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Is it because absolutes don't work? What have we seen however with our zero-tolerance, absolute policies? We've seen children who show up to school with t-shirts that have pictures or silhouettes or images of rifles or shotguns or they say NRA on them, and they're disciplined the sheriff is called we've seen children in elementary schools all the way down to kindergarten sent to the principal's office interrogated by School staff members because they brought a little plastic toy gun to school.

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We've even seen the insane lunacy of children being punished and discipline for making finger gestures. Not just the little shootie gun gesture with their fingers, like the thumb and forefinger, but bow and arrow gestures and your ear saying up all this isn't true. This wouldn't happen in a sane Society.

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We wouldn't punish elementary school children for making hand gestures for pretending. Oh, but we do and we have and how do we get to that point? How did we get to the point where we have school administrators actually taking the time out of their day to grill, to punish, to interrogate school-aged children for pretending.

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I'll tell you how through absolutes through policies of absolutes. We've seen children punished and suspended and expelled from school for possessing cough drops for possessing. Asthma inhalers in one instance in a public school a teacher exercise the zero tolerance absolute policy about drugs, right? Confiscated an asthma inhaler from a child because according to that teacher, that violated the absolute zero tolerance policy the child later died because they didn't have their emergency breathing inhaler available to them.

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Rather than exercise thought and thinking well, this is probably something that this child should have on them all the time. Instead of that, what we had was we had the opposite. Opposites or I'm sorry, excuse me, absolutes are the refuge of the intellectually lazy and the tyrant or those who seek to establish themselves as an absolute Tyrant the moment, you say absolutely no or absolutely always, you set yourself up to be wrong.

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We as a culture as a nation have well, we've been weak and we've allowed this. We've allowed institutions and government agencies to establish absolutes. Are there absolutes in our judicial system or do you have to prove motive you have to prove motive because that's the mental state? Anytime you say absolutely no or never you're setting yourself up for a potential failure.

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What you're doing is you're ruling out the need or requirement to apply actual critical or analytical thought to the situation that's in front of you at the moment. You see that we see this in our workplaces, we see this in our schools, we see this all over the place where rather than take the time to apply critical or analytical thought to the process, to the problem or the situation that we have instead, we fall back on absolutes on zero tolerance or whatever can we live positive productive and thoughtful lives? Can we move forward if we attach ourselves to absolutes to zero tolerance and so forth?

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Will you see many people do because that is the intellectually lazy way to go about it rather than to stop and think and to analyze and make a decision based upon the information that is available instead. It's just know the answer is no or the answer is always yes, or whatever ladies and gentlemen as you go forward with your day.

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I want you to think about that, absolutes are absolutely wrong. Parentheses, most of the time more often than not absolutes are the refuge of the intellectually lazy and the would-be Tyrant those who don't want to have to think and those who don't need or don't feel that they need to think I truly appreciate you joining me on this journey.

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That is the Morning Mindset podcast. Thank you for being with me for the book study, and the book study is going to continue tomorrow because we have even more to talk about I am your host Paul Markel and I'll talk to you again real soon.

[OUTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Thank you for spending time with us today. To get show notes, submit a topic request, for more from your host Paul G. Markel, visit MorningMindsetPodcast.com. That’s MorningMindsetPodcast.com. Please leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player, we appreciate your time & effort, and we look forward to reading your honest feedback.