EDITORI AL
a. Osgoode Hall Law School, 0014 G
York University
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, ON M3 J 1P3
e. [email protected]
w . www.obiter-dicta.ca
t. @obiterdictaoz
“ witty saying proves nothing”
A
- VOLTAIR E
Editors-in-Chief: Cass Da Re, Travis
Weagant, Karolina Wisniewski
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Obiter Dicta is the official student newspaper of
Osgoode Hall Law School. The opinions expressed
in the articles contained herein are not necessarily
those of the Obiter staff. The Obiter reserves the
right to refuse any submission that is judged to be
libelous or defamatory, contains personal attacks, or
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The Obiter Dicta is published biweekly during the
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Ltd.
See you in September!
The Obiter Dicta is a member of Canadian
University Press.
The Unreasonable Man gives you
advice
I don’t take advice well. I think I’m naturally
mistrustful of the presumptuous, despite being
very presumptuous myself. When people give me
well-intentioned guidance, I usually disregard
it. Thus, I have no expectation that any of you
will consider the following seriously. In fact, I’ve
never expected anyone to agree with anything I
wrote here (there’s a special circle of hell for those
that do). But some of you read it, and that’s good
enough for me. So, without further ado, I present
to you the wisdom of decades (and I barely qualify
for the plural) in 900 words. As far as the Unreasonable Man is concerned, here are the two things
you should know about life.
The first is that no one can be extrapolated.
I’ll explain what I mean. The world is awash in
sloppy reasoning, mostly because it’s easier to take
mental shortcuts than it is to come to terms with
the staggering uncertainty inherent in human
beings. I don’t blame folks for taking these shortcuts, but that doesn’t make them less troubling.
The most insidious of these fallacies is guilt by
association. It happens when you claim to invalidate someone’s opinion or argument by associating it with an undesirable person or idea rather
than addressing its substance. For example, arguing against the construction of divided highways
because a certain German happened to enthusiastically support the construction of the autobahnen
in the 1930s.
This fallacy has crept into our consciousness
in less pronounced ways. I speak of the tendency
to extrapolate other people’s beliefs, situation, personality, experience, and other personal characteristics from unrelated things that you happen to
know about them. We do this with political beliefs
when we assume that card-carrying Liberals who
advocate for a national daycare program are also
pro-choice, or when we assume that a union activist supports an increase in the minimum wage. We
do this with language, when we assume that an
anglophone living in Québec is not a sovereigntist.
It’s more than stereotyping; it’s the agglomeration
of stereotypes into mutually exclusive categories
until there are, conveniently, fewer types of people
in the world. It seems to be instinctive to think
this way.
An economist, an accountant, and a lawyer
visit Scotland. They come upon a field; in the field
stands a cow. The economist says “Ah! I see that
the cows in Scotland have spots.” The accountant
says “No my friend, one cow in Scotland has spots.”
The lawyer chuckles, shakes his head, and retorts:
“You are both wrong. One side of one cow in Scotland has spots.” Professor Li told me this joke. It’s
supposed to mean that lawyers lack the ability to
make the inferences that facilitate normal human
interaction. Perhaps this is true, but the same attitude is what allows us to fight the tendency to
extrapolate. That’s the kind of lawyer I aspire to
be. If you want to know something about someone,
don’t infer it. Ask them. I’ve never met a person
who couldn’t surprise me.
The second thing you should know about life
is that nothing is ever as big a deal as it seems.
Whenever contributors submit work to the Obiter
and want to be published anonymously, I tell
them this story. 18 months ago, I Googled myself.
Among the first page of results were: multiple
results from this fine publication in whose very
title I claimed to be the embodiment of unreasonableness, a Globe and Mail story from 2010 in
which I was misquoted, and another Obiter article
in which I claim that the publication’s secret backissue archive is hidden “in our porn folder.” And
yes, the word “porn” appeared on the results page.
In fact, I’ve used the word twice more now, which
probably means that if I Google myself in a week,
the search engine will probably ask “Did you mean
Travis Weagant porn?” But until that time, and
since a few months ago, the top Google result for
my name is the website of the firm where I will be
articling. They hired me, unreasonableness, misquotes, porn, and all. Turns out that my Google
personality wasn’t a big deal at all.
I was also told in 2010 that law schools scan
applications for extracurriculars in which candidates have participated for many years, demonstrating focus and commitment. During my
undergraduate, I gave away almost none of my
time for free, and had six different jobs, two of
which lasted for less than four months. And yet
here I am, about to graduate from law school.
Turns out that my extracurriculars weren’t a big
deal at all.
The point isn’t that everything always goes
your way despite setbacks. Hell, I wanted to be
an astronaut. The point is that the setbacks, especially the ones you can’t control, are never the end
of the world. If you can ride them out with grace
and perspective, you’ll be happier. Plus, overcoming obstacles is like employer catnip. Interviewers
love that shit.
So that’s what I’ve learned. Now that I’ve written it down, it looks a tad cliché. I wouldn’t blame
you at all if you ignored it. But if you’ve made it this
far, at least you read it. In fact, it seems that some
of you have been reading my tripe for three whole
years now. For that, you have my sincerest thanks.
As parting words, I have to come back to what I’ll
miss the most about law school – my friends – and
the two things that always brought us together.
The best advice I can give you, Osgoode, is to eat
pizza, and drink beer. Worked for me.