Bill and Ted's excellent civility

“Be excellent to each other.” This is the message conveyed by a time-traveling Abraham Lincoln toward the end of the 1989 classic “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” As I lay in my dorm room last Saturday morning, recovering from the night before and soaking up the wisdom of Socrates, Freud, and Lincoln, it occurred to me that the plot of Keanu Reeves’s finest film is not unlike the plot of our Columbia education. Like Ted Logan and Bill S. Preston, Esq., we are sent on a journey through time by Rufus (the Core Curriculum) to visit (learn about) the great doers and thinkers of Western history. The journey keeps us from failing history class (not graduating) and helps us develop into well-rounded adults who will ultimately bring harmony to the planet through the music of our rock band, Wyld Stallyns (in our case, become productive members of society).

The analogy got me wondering. What if, just as “Be excellent to each other” is the moral of Bill and Ted’s adventure, the same sentiment is the true lesson of our two-year trip through the Core Curriculum? What if all those books we read encourage us, on some level, to simply be civil to one another? I know that might be a stretch, but bear with me.

Just about every one of the philosophers whose works we read in Contemporary Civilization is concerned with questions of morality. And, with the possible exception of Nietzsche and his rejection of Christian morality, each of them would probably agree that human beings should “be excellent” to one another. The question is never “Should we be moral?” but rather “Why should we be moral?” and/or “How do we live a moral life?” In other words, there is no doubt that we should be excellent to each other, only debate over what “excellent” really means. In the sense that the Core helps us answer that question, it tells us to follow Lincoln’s words.

Or does it? If such a significant part of our education at Columbia is dedicated to instruction in moral philosophy, should we not ask if it actually succeeds in making us moral people? How would we even go about measuring this?

One simple way to take the moral temperature of the school might be to see if people are being civil and courteous to one another in day-to-day interactions. If we cannot witness the big moral decisions made by Columbia students, we can perhaps witness the smaller ones.

On examination, it seems that this campus could probably use a little more civility. Whether it is a result of the indifference required to survive in a city of eight million, our nerdy and antisocial tendencies, or classic young adult self-absorption, courtesy is not our strong point. We verbally accost students who take the elevator to the third floor, we play loud music that can be heard through the walls when we come back to our rooms on Friday nights (I may be guiltier than most on this one), we ignore acquaintances on the street, we hide behind cell phones in social situations, we are fiercely competitive in our classes, we carry around a sense of entitlement, we post nasty anonymous comments on Bwog anytime someone we vaguely dislike gets mentioned in a post, we under-tip, we condescend, we exclude.

The list goes on. None of these is a particularly heinous offense, but they are all offenses. And together they form an atmosphere at Columbia that can make the place feel stressful and unwelcoming.

We might wonder, then, what we can do about said atmosphere. Rutgers University has one possible solution. The school has begun a two-year program of optional lectures and discussions to encourage courtesy on campus. The program is open to the public and addresses topics such as the effect of technology on civility and the importance of social intelligence in the workplace (hint: it is very important).

But I would venture that such a program is unnecessary and unlikely to succeed at Columbia (I certainly could do without another class). Our education has already done a lot to teach us why and how we can be moral, and we should be able to consider and implement that knowledge in our daily lives. I don’t mean to suggest that we should be contemplating the categorical imperative every time we see a friend of a friend on College Walk, but I also don’t think it’s too much to ask ourselves a simple question on a regular basis: Are we being excellent to each other?

Anyway, let me leave you once again with (the character) Lincoln’s words, except this time I’ll include the part I refrained from quoting before: “Be excellent to each other … and party on, dudes!”

Neil FitzPatrick is a Columbia College junior majoring in creative writing and East Asian languages and cultures. He is a former associate editorial page editor. Excuses and Half-Truths runs alternate Mondays.