How does bullying work?
September 11, 2015 8:54 AM Subscribe
"We should imagine instead a three-way relation of aggressor, victim, and witness" : ruminations on bullying and victimhood from David Graeber.
I don't understand this point at all, and I think it is wrong. I think it even has the stereotype (as I understand it) reversed:
Today, most schools are not like the Eton and Harrow of William Golding’s day, but even at those that boast of their elaborate anti-bullying programs, schoolyard bullying happens in a way that’s in no sense at odds with or in spite of the school’s institutional authority. Bullying is more like a refraction of its authority. To begin with an obvious point: children in school can’t leave. Normally, a child’s first instinct upon being tormented or humiliated by someone much larger is to go someplace else. Schoolchildren, however, don’t have that option. If they try persistently to flee to safety, the authorities will bring them back. This is one reason, I suspect, for the stereotype of the bully as teacher’s pet or hall monitor: even when it’s not true, it draws on the tacit knowledge that the bully does depend on the authority of the institution in at least that one way—the school is, effectively, holding the victims in place while their tormentors hit them.
posted by OmieWise at 9:20 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
Today, most schools are not like the Eton and Harrow of William Golding’s day, but even at those that boast of their elaborate anti-bullying programs, schoolyard bullying happens in a way that’s in no sense at odds with or in spite of the school’s institutional authority. Bullying is more like a refraction of its authority. To begin with an obvious point: children in school can’t leave. Normally, a child’s first instinct upon being tormented or humiliated by someone much larger is to go someplace else. Schoolchildren, however, don’t have that option. If they try persistently to flee to safety, the authorities will bring them back. This is one reason, I suspect, for the stereotype of the bully as teacher’s pet or hall monitor: even when it’s not true, it draws on the tacit knowledge that the bully does depend on the authority of the institution in at least that one way—the school is, effectively, holding the victims in place while their tormentors hit them.
posted by OmieWise at 9:20 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
The point seems to be that regardless of what sort of anti-bullying measures are in place, if a child cannot leave when they are being bullied, the institution winds up supporting bullying by preventing a child from escaping it.
posted by maxsparber at 9:25 AM on September 11, 2015 [10 favorites]
posted by maxsparber at 9:25 AM on September 11, 2015 [10 favorites]
"The ideal victim is not absolutely passive. No, the ideal victim is one who fights back in some way but does so ineffectively, by flailing about, say, or screaming or crying, threatening to tell their mother, pretending they’re going to fight and then trying to run away. Doing so is precisely what makes it possible to create a moral drama in which the audience can tell itself the bully must be, in some sense, in the right. ... Bullying creates a moral drama in which the manner of the victim’s reaction to an act of aggression can be used as retrospective justification for the original act of aggression itself."
Oof.
posted by MonkeyToes at 9:30 AM on September 11, 2015 [30 favorites]
Oof.
posted by MonkeyToes at 9:30 AM on September 11, 2015 [30 favorites]
Yeah, MonkeyToes. Pretty exactly a lot of responses to the Ferguson protests, or people who's justification of fat-shaming is roughly: "but HAES started it!"
posted by postcommunism at 9:34 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by postcommunism at 9:34 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
Like that Bill Hicks routine. "You all saw it. He had a gun."
posted by doctornemo at 9:39 AM on September 11, 2015
posted by doctornemo at 9:39 AM on September 11, 2015
While I enjoyed the exposition, and agree in the complexity and urgency of the discussion, the author didn't do himself any favors with the opening sentences of one later paragraph:
"Here, too, I can offer personal testimony. I keenly remember a conversation with a jock I knew in high school. He was a lunk, but a good-natured one."
For your reference -- especially because I had to look it up -- a lunk (according to Wikipedia) is a fool; an idiot; a lunkhead.
Bullying can be subtle, and it can be non-physical. I know, because it was only later in life did I realize that some of my condescending behavior toward others in the arena of intellect when I was younger, though devoid of toilet swirlies and wedgies, did cause measurable and deplorable emotional hurt. I could presume the author meant no ill-will, but one should also be quite careful to undergo some self-examination. Victimhood and Bullyhood (is that even a word?) is not so explicit, not so binary, and not so non-reciprocal.
One aspect I truly loved about the article was the role of the Audience. I like thinking of this as at least a 3-Agent issue.
Awesome post, Doctornemo. Thank you.
posted by Conway at 9:45 AM on September 11, 2015 [4 favorites]
"Here, too, I can offer personal testimony. I keenly remember a conversation with a jock I knew in high school. He was a lunk, but a good-natured one."
For your reference -- especially because I had to look it up -- a lunk (according to Wikipedia) is a fool; an idiot; a lunkhead.
Bullying can be subtle, and it can be non-physical. I know, because it was only later in life did I realize that some of my condescending behavior toward others in the arena of intellect when I was younger, though devoid of toilet swirlies and wedgies, did cause measurable and deplorable emotional hurt. I could presume the author meant no ill-will, but one should also be quite careful to undergo some self-examination. Victimhood and Bullyhood (is that even a word?) is not so explicit, not so binary, and not so non-reciprocal.
One aspect I truly loved about the article was the role of the Audience. I like thinking of this as at least a 3-Agent issue.
Awesome post, Doctornemo. Thank you.
posted by Conway at 9:45 AM on September 11, 2015 [4 favorites]
The point seems to be that regardless of what sort of anti-bullying measures are in place, if a child cannot leave when they are being bullied, the institution winds up supporting bullying by preventing a child from escaping it.
I got that part, but I Graeber goes beyond that to suggest that bullying is sort of the expected extension of the authority of the school, which is a premise that shouldn't just be glossed like this. I recognize and understand the argument, but find it facile as the basis for conflating the levels of power he is conflating here.
posted by OmieWise at 9:51 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
I got that part, but I Graeber goes beyond that to suggest that bullying is sort of the expected extension of the authority of the school, which is a premise that shouldn't just be glossed like this. I recognize and understand the argument, but find it facile as the basis for conflating the levels of power he is conflating here.
posted by OmieWise at 9:51 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
I suppose it depends on what your school experience was. There have been schools where bullying was, in fact, a tacit extension of the powers of institution -- see fagging in British public schools. If you read through case studies of bullying, even in the United States, you find a shocking number of instances where the bullies were simply following the lead of the instructor.
posted by maxsparber at 10:07 AM on September 11, 2015 [15 favorites]
posted by maxsparber at 10:07 AM on September 11, 2015 [15 favorites]
You never realized that bullying is an intrinsic part of the power structure in many schools? That's a huge part of why it's been so damn hard to root out - because nobody wants to address how The Powers That Be use bullying as a form of social control, whether unknowingly or not.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:09 AM on September 11, 2015 [13 favorites]
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:09 AM on September 11, 2015 [13 favorites]
"Bullying creates a moral drama in which the manner of the victim’s reaction to an act of aggression can be used as retrospective justification for the original act of aggression itself."
This. This.
(See also: politics; abuse)
posted by pos at 10:23 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
This. This.
(See also: politics; abuse)
posted by pos at 10:23 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]
I found this bit most insightful:
Not only does this drama appear at the very origins of bullying in early childhood; it is precisely the aspect that endures in adult life. I call it the “you two cut it out” fallacy. Anyone who frequents social media forums will recognize the pattern. Aggressor attacks. Target tries to rise above and do nothing. No one intervenes. Aggressor ramps up attack. Target tries to rise above and do nothing. No one intervenes. Aggressor further ramps up attack.
This can happen a dozen, fifty times, until finally, the target answers back. Then, and only then, a dozen voices immediately sound, crying “Fight! Fight! Look at those two idiots going at it!” or “Can’t you two just calm down and learn to see the other’s point of view?” The clever bully knows that this will happen—and that he will forfeit no points for being the aggressor. He also knows that if he tempers his aggression to just the right pitch, the victim’s response can itself be represented as the problem.
I see this dynamic everywhere. Like he mentions earlier in the article, bullying at school never gets punished until the victim fights back and then both the bully and victim are punished. That seems like an easy fix - if you're not willing to step in before things escalate - at least only punish the aggressor after they do. Maybe a "sorry but you got what you deserved and here's some Saturday school on top of it" would be effective.
posted by Jess the Mess at 10:30 AM on September 11, 2015 [17 favorites]
Not only does this drama appear at the very origins of bullying in early childhood; it is precisely the aspect that endures in adult life. I call it the “you two cut it out” fallacy. Anyone who frequents social media forums will recognize the pattern. Aggressor attacks. Target tries to rise above and do nothing. No one intervenes. Aggressor ramps up attack. Target tries to rise above and do nothing. No one intervenes. Aggressor further ramps up attack.
This can happen a dozen, fifty times, until finally, the target answers back. Then, and only then, a dozen voices immediately sound, crying “Fight! Fight! Look at those two idiots going at it!” or “Can’t you two just calm down and learn to see the other’s point of view?” The clever bully knows that this will happen—and that he will forfeit no points for being the aggressor. He also knows that if he tempers his aggression to just the right pitch, the victim’s response can itself be represented as the problem.
I see this dynamic everywhere. Like he mentions earlier in the article, bullying at school never gets punished until the victim fights back and then both the bully and victim are punished. That seems like an easy fix - if you're not willing to step in before things escalate - at least only punish the aggressor after they do. Maybe a "sorry but you got what you deserved and here's some Saturday school on top of it" would be effective.
posted by Jess the Mess at 10:30 AM on September 11, 2015 [17 favorites]
OmieWise: "Graeber goes beyond that to suggest that bullying is sort of the expected extension of the authority of the school, which is a premise that shouldn't just be glossed like this."
I think Graeber revisits this a little further down when he's recounting his own run-in with his school's administration after fighting back against one of his own bullies. They punish him and not his bully.
One of the defining features of bullying is its persistence. An isolated instance of cruelty is only that but an ongoing campaign is what makes it bullying. And, as the article states, bullying is very often overt, not covert. So, when bullying exists in the relatively controlled environment of, say, a high school, I don't think that it's a huge leap to infer that it exists with some amount of implicit sanction from that school's authorities.
posted by mhum at 10:37 AM on September 11, 2015 [6 favorites]
I think Graeber revisits this a little further down when he's recounting his own run-in with his school's administration after fighting back against one of his own bullies. They punish him and not his bully.
One of the defining features of bullying is its persistence. An isolated instance of cruelty is only that but an ongoing campaign is what makes it bullying. And, as the article states, bullying is very often overt, not covert. So, when bullying exists in the relatively controlled environment of, say, a high school, I don't think that it's a huge leap to infer that it exists with some amount of implicit sanction from that school's authorities.
posted by mhum at 10:37 AM on September 11, 2015 [6 favorites]
You never realized that bullying is an intrinsic part of the power structure in many schools? That's a huge part of why it's been so damn hard to root out - because nobody wants to address how The Powers That Be use bullying as a form of social control, whether unknowingly or not.
That seems to be an uncharitable reading of what I wrote. Disputing his characterization is not the same thing as being naive or feckless.
posted by OmieWise at 10:39 AM on September 11, 2015
That seems to be an uncharitable reading of what I wrote. Disputing his characterization is not the same thing as being naive or feckless.
posted by OmieWise at 10:39 AM on September 11, 2015
[T]he overwhelming majority of bullying incidents take place in front of an audience. . . . Sometimes, onlookers actively abet the bully. . . More often, the audience is passively acquiescent. Only rarely does anyone step in . . .
Elizabeth the bus driver says she knows how to make "crazy ladies". When a woman starts to talk a little strange or even friendly but too aggressive -- don't answer her. She'll keep talking, you keep not answering, and she's a crazy lady. Everyone in the bus agrees, you can feel them agreeing. Since she found this out, she has to answer everyone.posted by Herodios at 10:39 AM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]
-- Anne Herbert, The Whole Earth Catalog (1980)
Can't give this a read right now, as I'm at work. It's going into the Instapaper queue for when I'm prepared to handle it.
As a viciously bullied kid, one thing that sticks out at me is that so many of the adults in my life at the time (thankfully not my parents) were quick to put the blame on me for being a victim. I'll never forget a teacher in elementary school directly telling me I was being bullied because I didn't associate with the other students---never mind that the main way I was bullied in school was people refusing to even stand near me. A summer day camp counselor dragged me into an office and told me that I was bullied because I "didn't act my own age." I'll never forget that either.
And, of course, when I pushed back, I got in trouble. (Well, at school. The day I finally punched my summer day camp bully in the face, the camp administrators happily looked the other way. Small blessings.)
posted by SansPoint at 10:41 AM on September 11, 2015 [12 favorites]
As a viciously bullied kid, one thing that sticks out at me is that so many of the adults in my life at the time (thankfully not my parents) were quick to put the blame on me for being a victim. I'll never forget a teacher in elementary school directly telling me I was being bullied because I didn't associate with the other students---never mind that the main way I was bullied in school was people refusing to even stand near me. A summer day camp counselor dragged me into an office and told me that I was bullied because I "didn't act my own age." I'll never forget that either.
And, of course, when I pushed back, I got in trouble. (Well, at school. The day I finally punched my summer day camp bully in the face, the camp administrators happily looked the other way. Small blessings.)
posted by SansPoint at 10:41 AM on September 11, 2015 [12 favorites]
I got that part, but I Graeber goes beyond that to suggest that bullying is sort of the expected extension of the authority of the school, which is a premise that shouldn't just be glossed like this. I recognize and understand the argument, but find it facile as the basis for conflating the levels of power he is conflating here.
posted by OmieWise at 9:51 AM on September 11 [+] [!]
Knowing Graber, he'd probably argue that childhood bullying is an extension of the state itself, as a way of socializing children to the brutality of the social order.
And he'd be right.
posted by Avenger at 11:18 AM on September 11, 2015 [20 favorites]
posted by OmieWise at 9:51 AM on September 11 [+] [!]
Knowing Graber, he'd probably argue that childhood bullying is an extension of the state itself, as a way of socializing children to the brutality of the social order.
And he'd be right.
posted by Avenger at 11:18 AM on September 11, 2015 [20 favorites]
Rather than glossing it, I think he spells it out quite clearly and convincingly. Just one bit:
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 11:23 AM on September 11, 2015 [8 favorites]
Today, most schools are not like the Eton and Harrow of William Golding’s day, but even at those that boast of their elaborate anti-bullying programs, schoolyard bullying happens in a way that’s in no sense at odds with or in spite of the school’s institutional authority. Bullying is more like a refraction of its authority. To begin with an obvious point: children in school can’t leave. Normally, a child’s first instinct upon being tormented or humiliated by someone much larger is to go someplace else. Schoolchildren, however, don’t have that option. If they try persistently to flee to safety, the authorities will bring them back. This is one reason, I suspect, for the stereotype of the bully as teacher’s pet or hall monitor: even when it’s not true, it draws on the tacit knowledge that the bully does depend on the authority of the institution in at least that one way—the school is, effectively, holding the victims in place while their tormentors hit them. This dependency on authority is also why the most extreme and elaborate forms of bullying take place in prisons, where dominant inmates and prison guards fall into alliances.That dynamic extends to protests, and to cops killing unarmed black men, and to war. I think it's pretty obvious, but I guess that's partly a matter of our own experience with these dynamics.
Even more, bullies are usually aware that the system is likely to punish any victim who strikes back more harshly. Just as a woman, confronted by an abusive man who may well be twice her size, cannot afford to engage in a “fair fight,” but must seize the opportune moment to inflict as much as damage as possible on the man who’s been abusing her—since she cannot leave him in a position to retaliate—so too must the schoolyard bullying victim respond with disproportionate force, not to disable the opponent, in this case, but to deliver a blow so decisive that it makes the antagonist hesitate to engage again.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 11:23 AM on September 11, 2015 [8 favorites]
I see.
posted by OmieWise at 11:36 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by OmieWise at 11:36 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
“…were just kids who didn’t want to fight”
And that’s why they engaged in genocide against the Kurds just a few years before (Ali K'myawi who?) and engaged in a scorched Earth campaign on the way out resulting in one of the worst environmental catastrophes in history.
How does one equate the Iraqis retreating from Kuwait with victims of the Bosnian Serbs?
Politically, I get the point. But Graeber using that specific example instead of the broader political picture, ignoring the Kurdish genocide done by exactly those (Republican Guard) retreating troops who, oh yeah, set hundreds of oil fields on fire on their way out … kinda distracting from the point.
More like ‘kids who didn’t want to fight people who would fight back’. They seemed to have no problem kicking over the Kuwaiti’s tea wagon. No problem fighting for decades against Iran. My lack of empathy for those specific soldiers in that specific example stems from their actual war crimes which is what infuriates me about the U.S. propaganda and the Nayirah incident.
Who arrested 25,000 Kuwaitis? Murdered 7,000? Commited summary executions by beheading in the streets on videotape? Was it the U.S. arguing the Geneva Conventions didn’t apply because Kuwait was part of Iraq? Who presented an armed response for 7 months against human rights observer forces?
Other conscripted soldiers, solid. They run, you let them. This specific case? Not so much.
What’s the idea, how dare you win by such a large margin? A turkey shoot in a war is an absolute ideal situation. You don’t ever want a fair fight. You want an absolute curb stomping and that’s what happened.
In this specific case the turkey shoot is equated with someone running away and being gunned down. Well, someone firing at you while moving away from you is not running away.
And it's not bullying just because their weapons are inferior and they can't inflict more casualties on you on their way out the door. Which is another reason they set the oil fields on fire.
And the gulf war in general, that’s not bullying. That’s the U.S. being a bad cop and railroading some goon to jail because the department is getting a lot of P.R. pressure.
The irony here is the citizens of the U.S. supported that particular engagement because they felt, because of the propaganda, they were stepping in to prevent a larger country picking on a smaller one.
That instinct was abused and perverted of course for opportunism and war profiteering.
(And that's one of the reasons the Serbs got away with what they did. And the Hutus in Rwanda. We'd been fooled before. More's the pity.)
No homophobic social code enforcement there. Just straight up beating a guy for his lunch money. However -
“Knowing Graber, he'd probably argue that childhood bullying is an extension of the state itself, as a way of socializing children to the brutality of the social order.
And he'd be right.”
Yeah, this I agree with.
War requires a fundamental transgression of basic interpersonal relationships. And for the most part many social orders support those kinds of violations in favor of other things. In many cases just for the sake of being orderly.
Gotta obey the rules even if there’s something wrong or it’s a special case, an emergency, etc. What was the guy in Virginia a bit back having a stroke or diabetic coma – got tasered and pepper sprayed by a Fredericksberg cop for non-compliance?
It’s actually quite rare to encounter an actual coward. Typically they’re incredibly dangerous people who get others to do violence for them. And set up systems to do so.
posted by Smedleyman at 12:20 PM on September 11, 2015 [6 favorites]
And that’s why they engaged in genocide against the Kurds just a few years before (Ali K'myawi who?) and engaged in a scorched Earth campaign on the way out resulting in one of the worst environmental catastrophes in history.
How does one equate the Iraqis retreating from Kuwait with victims of the Bosnian Serbs?
Politically, I get the point. But Graeber using that specific example instead of the broader political picture, ignoring the Kurdish genocide done by exactly those (Republican Guard) retreating troops who, oh yeah, set hundreds of oil fields on fire on their way out … kinda distracting from the point.
More like ‘kids who didn’t want to fight people who would fight back’. They seemed to have no problem kicking over the Kuwaiti’s tea wagon. No problem fighting for decades against Iran. My lack of empathy for those specific soldiers in that specific example stems from their actual war crimes which is what infuriates me about the U.S. propaganda and the Nayirah incident.
Who arrested 25,000 Kuwaitis? Murdered 7,000? Commited summary executions by beheading in the streets on videotape? Was it the U.S. arguing the Geneva Conventions didn’t apply because Kuwait was part of Iraq? Who presented an armed response for 7 months against human rights observer forces?
Other conscripted soldiers, solid. They run, you let them. This specific case? Not so much.
What’s the idea, how dare you win by such a large margin? A turkey shoot in a war is an absolute ideal situation. You don’t ever want a fair fight. You want an absolute curb stomping and that’s what happened.
In this specific case the turkey shoot is equated with someone running away and being gunned down. Well, someone firing at you while moving away from you is not running away.
And it's not bullying just because their weapons are inferior and they can't inflict more casualties on you on their way out the door. Which is another reason they set the oil fields on fire.
And the gulf war in general, that’s not bullying. That’s the U.S. being a bad cop and railroading some goon to jail because the department is getting a lot of P.R. pressure.
The irony here is the citizens of the U.S. supported that particular engagement because they felt, because of the propaganda, they were stepping in to prevent a larger country picking on a smaller one.
That instinct was abused and perverted of course for opportunism and war profiteering.
(And that's one of the reasons the Serbs got away with what they did. And the Hutus in Rwanda. We'd been fooled before. More's the pity.)
No homophobic social code enforcement there. Just straight up beating a guy for his lunch money. However -
“Knowing Graber, he'd probably argue that childhood bullying is an extension of the state itself, as a way of socializing children to the brutality of the social order.
And he'd be right.”
Yeah, this I agree with.
War requires a fundamental transgression of basic interpersonal relationships. And for the most part many social orders support those kinds of violations in favor of other things. In many cases just for the sake of being orderly.
Gotta obey the rules even if there’s something wrong or it’s a special case, an emergency, etc. What was the guy in Virginia a bit back having a stroke or diabetic coma – got tasered and pepper sprayed by a Fredericksberg cop for non-compliance?
It’s actually quite rare to encounter an actual coward. Typically they’re incredibly dangerous people who get others to do violence for them. And set up systems to do so.
posted by Smedleyman at 12:20 PM on September 11, 2015 [6 favorites]
an extension of the state itself, as a way of socializing children to the brutality of the social order.
And he'd be right.
I don't know. The modern political state may encourage and formally enshrine certain aspects of human nature that could be characterized as "the brutality of the social order." But the use of bullying behavior, physical violence and coercion, and dominance play to sort out social heirarchies isn't even exclusively a feature of primate societies, much less human ones. So it seems like an ideologogical overreach to identify the political state uniquely with social orders maintained by some form of brutal or low level violence. Dominance play in social behavior is found pretty uniformly throughout mammals and other animal populations. Isn't it just more scientifically plausible the roots of human bullying and brutality are common to our shared genetic heritage with other species, not some emergent property of political states?
posted by saulgoodman at 12:29 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
And he'd be right.
I don't know. The modern political state may encourage and formally enshrine certain aspects of human nature that could be characterized as "the brutality of the social order." But the use of bullying behavior, physical violence and coercion, and dominance play to sort out social heirarchies isn't even exclusively a feature of primate societies, much less human ones. So it seems like an ideologogical overreach to identify the political state uniquely with social orders maintained by some form of brutal or low level violence. Dominance play in social behavior is found pretty uniformly throughout mammals and other animal populations. Isn't it just more scientifically plausible the roots of human bullying and brutality are common to our shared genetic heritage with other species, not some emergent property of political states?
posted by saulgoodman at 12:29 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
(And the above is not intended as a defense of bullying or brutality, in the least. But we need to understand its roots properly to get a handle on it, and blaming the existence of the state seems like the wrong place to start.)
posted by saulgoodman at 12:32 PM on September 11, 2015
posted by saulgoodman at 12:32 PM on September 11, 2015
saulgoodman: Graebers position, if I understand it right, is that examples of societies with different dynamics mean we can't just appeal to nature to explain these phenomena. That may not be the same as saying that low level drives determined by genes have no role.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 4:09 PM on September 11, 2015
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 4:09 PM on September 11, 2015
I'd bet most if not all stateless societies still built and reinforced their less rigid and shorter term social heirarchies with bullying behavior, low-level violence, and aggression in some form. Violent initiation rites/hazing ceremonies, sexual violence, ostracism, etc. It's hard to believe bullying in some form doesn't always play a role. Why would humans be the outliers among the social animals in the world, needing a political state to emerge first to teach us how to bully each other?
posted by saulgoodman at 8:26 PM on September 11, 2015
posted by saulgoodman at 8:26 PM on September 11, 2015
The "witness" role is critical to bully culture. There are some days you can watch it happen and say to yourself, "at least it wasn't me this time." And saying it to yourself, rather than to the others in the audience, gives legitimacy to the bully.
posted by yesster at 9:25 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by yesster at 9:25 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
saulgoodman, these are all good questions, and Graeber does respond to these in the article to the degree his word count allowed. I don't have the patience to type this out by phone, but basically his thrust (in much of his writing as well) is that "human nature" is not so easy to pin down, and there are numerous cultures around the world that eschew behaviors we consider a part of some primate hardwiring.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 9:33 PM on September 11, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 9:33 PM on September 11, 2015 [6 favorites]
I went to a number of different schools as a kid, and the extent of bullying varied widely, as did the school's complicity in the bullying. I do very much agree with him about the role of the audience -- I can remember bullies openly playing to the audience almost every time, rather than finding private moments for their tormenting.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:47 AM on September 12, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Dip Flash at 6:47 AM on September 12, 2015 [3 favorites]
I went to something like 16 schools. There were bullies in every one of them. At a certain point I learned the value of a good sneak attack. The trick was to do a little damage to preferably the largest bulky. Extra points if the bully was male. But a female who was physically larger than me was almost as good. It was worth the 3 day suspension.
It got to be The Drill. Move to a new school. Inform my parents I'd figured out exactly who was getting the pre-emptive strike. Sometimes they'd ask me to wait. They after all were going to get The Phone Call From The Principal. I had to do it twice in my last school.
Again so worth it.
Usually whoever tried bullying me thought I was going to be a pushover because I was a skinny, nerdy girl. My small size meant I had to fight dirty. Doesn't matter. All that mattered is that for the rest of my time at that school, I could go to class, and go home and to school without being harrrassed.
In grade school, the bully I took out usually became a friend. In High School it was more complicated. Generally if it becomes known you won't take shit, you won't be on the receiving end.
Whatever tendency I had toward pacifism was destroyed by school.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 10:08 PM on September 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
It got to be The Drill. Move to a new school. Inform my parents I'd figured out exactly who was getting the pre-emptive strike. Sometimes they'd ask me to wait. They after all were going to get The Phone Call From The Principal. I had to do it twice in my last school.
Again so worth it.
Usually whoever tried bullying me thought I was going to be a pushover because I was a skinny, nerdy girl. My small size meant I had to fight dirty. Doesn't matter. All that mattered is that for the rest of my time at that school, I could go to class, and go home and to school without being harrrassed.
In grade school, the bully I took out usually became a friend. In High School it was more complicated. Generally if it becomes known you won't take shit, you won't be on the receiving end.
Whatever tendency I had toward pacifism was destroyed by school.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 10:08 PM on September 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
Why would humans be the outliers among the social animals in the world, needing a political state to emerge first to teach us how to bully each other?
I think that's the problem. People do tend to look for the pecking order, but it's not a real issue until resources become an issue. Hunting societies tend to be egalitarian for example.
Certainly there is a "best" hunter in the group. And he's accorded more respect and deference in certain ways. But it doesn't form the basis of a heirarchy. For the most part group decisions require consensual validity, and IANAA (anthropoligist) but I have seen this in smaller groups, usually close knit, living close to the bone, among hunters and warfighters, individual pride is seen as unfriendly to survival.
Let it grow and eventually someone has to kill someone else, and since everyone is good at it it’s not an abstract moral issue but an immediate reality.
And killing isn’t domination. Dominators tend to want their target under their thumb. Can’t do that if you wipe them out. So ironically, such tribes tend to be actual pacifists as opposed to primitive agricultural societies like the Yanomami who were brutal to their neighbors as well as one another.
When the basis of a given group dynamic requires cooperation (as hunting, hunting-gathering) there is less bullying and there tends to be more a fostering of skills because there’s less reliance on things. You play with your fellows. And again, I’ve seen/experienced this. In fights with a smaller guy in a group you go easy. You play fight. It might get a bit real, but the drive to dominate is suppressed.
Whereas bullying, even where there’s no physical engagement, requires intent to harm. Lot of misconceptions about the military on this. And certain kinds of male interactions in general. If we wrestle, some idiots call us gay. Some other idiots call us violent. But it’s play. It’s mutually beneficial, or meant to be. At best it fosters camaraderie, at worst educates, but it’s not harmful.
The real “macho” types though, if they wrestle, that tends to be for dominance. Bullies too. And the aggressive (and/or closeted self-denying) homosexuals. Whatever else that may or may not be it’s not play. It’s not sharing. It’s for the benefit of one person at the expense of another.
And we build socio-political systems to control those kinds of things. Scarcity. Shame. Fear. That drives the machismo or the need to dominate, the desire to have something at the expense of someone else.
We make systems to stop that sort of thing.
Because hunter gatherers really don’t need it. Most squads dispense with the formalities associated with rank. But the hierarchy tends to be relied on when someone gets out of hand.
But… the idea is that the systems themselves can reinforce the person who is getting out of hand.
Sometimes as a mistake or flaw, but often by design.
Not to godwin here but Hitler’s Germany is an excellent example.
You had, say, the civilian police who were trying to do the basic police stuff. Catch thieves, murderers, and so forth. Meanwhile the chain of command became blurred – by design – with paramilitary organizations as auxiliary police and the political offices set up by the high command with overlapping jurisdictions and unclear authority and Nazi ideology as part of all police activities.
So Kriminalpolizei detectives who were anti-Nazi were pressured to resign. Then you would get Gestapo officers doing that work. And essentially they were incompetent as police investigators. Someone calls in and denounces someone, easy. An arson investigation? Not so much.
And that sort of illustrates the difference in that sort of social contract regardless of the base state of humankind (although I’d posit hunting-gathering as our default animal state).
The Hobbes thing where life is otherwise "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" and so a system is created, but then that system enforces life being solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short at the expense of some people, whomever they might be, whether a given ethnic group or people just opposed to the new junta.
posted by Smedleyman at 2:07 PM on September 18, 2015
I think that's the problem. People do tend to look for the pecking order, but it's not a real issue until resources become an issue. Hunting societies tend to be egalitarian for example.
Certainly there is a "best" hunter in the group. And he's accorded more respect and deference in certain ways. But it doesn't form the basis of a heirarchy. For the most part group decisions require consensual validity, and IANAA (anthropoligist) but I have seen this in smaller groups, usually close knit, living close to the bone, among hunters and warfighters, individual pride is seen as unfriendly to survival.
Let it grow and eventually someone has to kill someone else, and since everyone is good at it it’s not an abstract moral issue but an immediate reality.
And killing isn’t domination. Dominators tend to want their target under their thumb. Can’t do that if you wipe them out. So ironically, such tribes tend to be actual pacifists as opposed to primitive agricultural societies like the Yanomami who were brutal to their neighbors as well as one another.
When the basis of a given group dynamic requires cooperation (as hunting, hunting-gathering) there is less bullying and there tends to be more a fostering of skills because there’s less reliance on things. You play with your fellows. And again, I’ve seen/experienced this. In fights with a smaller guy in a group you go easy. You play fight. It might get a bit real, but the drive to dominate is suppressed.
Whereas bullying, even where there’s no physical engagement, requires intent to harm. Lot of misconceptions about the military on this. And certain kinds of male interactions in general. If we wrestle, some idiots call us gay. Some other idiots call us violent. But it’s play. It’s mutually beneficial, or meant to be. At best it fosters camaraderie, at worst educates, but it’s not harmful.
The real “macho” types though, if they wrestle, that tends to be for dominance. Bullies too. And the aggressive (and/or closeted self-denying) homosexuals. Whatever else that may or may not be it’s not play. It’s not sharing. It’s for the benefit of one person at the expense of another.
And we build socio-political systems to control those kinds of things. Scarcity. Shame. Fear. That drives the machismo or the need to dominate, the desire to have something at the expense of someone else.
We make systems to stop that sort of thing.
Because hunter gatherers really don’t need it. Most squads dispense with the formalities associated with rank. But the hierarchy tends to be relied on when someone gets out of hand.
But… the idea is that the systems themselves can reinforce the person who is getting out of hand.
Sometimes as a mistake or flaw, but often by design.
Not to godwin here but Hitler’s Germany is an excellent example.
You had, say, the civilian police who were trying to do the basic police stuff. Catch thieves, murderers, and so forth. Meanwhile the chain of command became blurred – by design – with paramilitary organizations as auxiliary police and the political offices set up by the high command with overlapping jurisdictions and unclear authority and Nazi ideology as part of all police activities.
So Kriminalpolizei detectives who were anti-Nazi were pressured to resign. Then you would get Gestapo officers doing that work. And essentially they were incompetent as police investigators. Someone calls in and denounces someone, easy. An arson investigation? Not so much.
And that sort of illustrates the difference in that sort of social contract regardless of the base state of humankind (although I’d posit hunting-gathering as our default animal state).
The Hobbes thing where life is otherwise "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" and so a system is created, but then that system enforces life being solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short at the expense of some people, whomever they might be, whether a given ethnic group or people just opposed to the new junta.
posted by Smedleyman at 2:07 PM on September 18, 2015
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posted by kozad at 9:18 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]