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If you’ve been paying attention lately to political news, you may be feeling like those in power have lowered their expectations regarding suitable behavior. At times, it seems as if accommodating unacceptable behavior and looking the other way in the face of rule-breaking and degradation of standards has become de rigueur. There appears to be a steadily increasing social expectation that we should let things slide that would not have passed muster in earlier times; excusing violations of basic rules and tolerating entitled behavior now regularly win out over adhering to a higher set of values.
I see this dynamic play out on a smaller scale at my university when I am advising students. My department requires a minimum GPA of 2.75 to declare a psychology major. Increasingly, students whose GPAs fail to meet this threshold come to me asking that I make exceptions, often under the rationale that their circumstances justify it or that their natural abilities should supersede the rule. Sometimes, they even get advisors or staff from other departments to advocate for the exceptions on their behalf; when this occurs, the implicit message often seems to be “be nice and help this student out” by being a “team player.” Inevitably, I say no, not because I’m not nice or collegial (which are increasingly operationalized as acceding to any and all requests, no matter how ill-advised), but because basic fairness demands it.
Beyond this, though, I also contend that supporting and caring about students demands it. I say this because although GPA exception requests are clearly in a totally different league than politicians ignoring the rule of law, the implicit messages I’m sending if I waive the GPA rule for a student are the same negative messages that our politicians increasingly give us, namely (a) the rules don’t matter, (b) the rules don’t apply to you, and (c) you deserve special treatment (either because you’re better than everyone else or because you're incapable of succeeding without it).
Thus, what we are seeing in our politics is simply an exaggerated form of what we see daily in our culture. Surely, we should not be overly rigid about rules; the reasons for establishing any rule must be carefully considered and, obviously, every rule has an exception. But if exceptions become commonplace, then either the rule is no good or we lack the courage to enforce it and thereby, do damage to the greater social good.
What are the psychological and social implications of abdicating our responsibility to hold ourselves and others to high standards? With our politicians, we see it in their increasingly bold conviction that they can do anything they want and in their blind outrage when anyone suggests otherwise. With my students, I occasionally see rage, as well. However, more often I see anxiety, depression, and poor functioning. If people regularly let you off the hook—by lowering educational standards so that you earn the grade you “need,” by declining to tell you when your performance is poor or your behavior is out of line, or by taking care of things for you so you needn’t take care of them yourself—then you end up feeling inept, incompetent, entitled, and enraged. A society full of people who feel this way cannot be expected to operate effectively.
I’d like to suggest that holding people to account is not “mean” or “disloyal.” It is doing right—both doing right by those we hold accountable and the larger society of which we’re all a part.
