Yes, I realise it's been a long time since I've posted. Frankly, I've been busy with Passover preparations, and learning a haftarah to sing in synagogue. I know that you honestly don't care about the petty details of my life, and I promised myself this wouldn't be a blog like all other blogs (Today I changed my cat's litter box. I think Fluffy must be coming down with something. He hardly played with his ball of yarn today. I must see the vet about it. I hope he doesn't give me any medication. Remember the fiasco that happened the last time I tried to give him medication?! :)). Ever notice how all bloggers have cats? But I digress.
On to today's topic: bullying. This is something, of course, that I see on a daily basis. The notes I intercept on a regular basis are all about how so and so's been calling so and so words that I didn't even know at that age (and I'm still too young to know). Kids also get beat up in the hallways (on a less regular basis, as that type of bullying is more often caught and more severely punished). With instant messaging kids have an easier time of harassing each other at home (one reason to be thankful I didn't grow up in the age of the Internet). I don't know that things change much as we get older, there will always be aggressive personalities vying for some bitch to do their work for them or to make miserable for some unknown reason.
People are always going on about what's "natural." So isn't the natural order of things that someone stronger should prey on someone weaker and get what they want? Yet the great majority of us feel this is morally wrong, whatever code we abide by. Even Nietzsche wrote about the "Superman" who was being oppressed by society because of our beliefs. (I haven't actually read Nietzsche, but I read about him in the excellent comic Action Philosophers #1, in stores now). Regardless of how Nietzsche's beliefs have been bastardized throughout time, perhaps they still have some validity.
If my scientifically minded husband will forgive me for exploring the world of evolution, I will start with the reasons why we are programmed to be aggressive. The main reason is that if people weren't aggressive, somebody else would eat their share, and they'd have nothing and die. In scarce times, only those who were strong enough got to eat, and instead of bullies beating people up for their lunch money, they just took their lunch. Those who got to eat got to reproduce, if only for the sheer fact of being alive (but hey, bullies also have bad boy appeal, and maybe that's an evolutionary trait too--women want a man who can provide, no matter what he has to do to do it). This is how the world worked for many a year. At what point did this change?
I would have to say Romanticism killed the Superman. No where else in history (and my college professor always used 1776 as the beginning of the age of Romanticism) are man's rights defined so clearly: Rousseau and his Social Contract, the Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution. During this time the idea that everyone has rights even if they can't defend them becomes paramount. Even a Superman is not bigger than someone's Rights. If a Superman tries to be bigger than someone else's rights, everyone gets together and does something to the Superman to beat him into submission, whether it be by shaming him or literally beating him. The Superman is nothing against the collective (Resistance is futile. He must be assimilated).
Besides cultural programming and societal pressure (as if that wasn't enough), why do we still espouse human rights? Why do we feel such a strong sense of morality when it comes to human rights abuses? It is possible that there is still a degree of self-preservation. Were it not for the stars, we could have been born in any situation around the world. I also believe that somewhere we know that now that we have finished being fruitful and multiplying (enough with the fruitful already! Isn't 6 billion people enough?!) that the way to world peace is through the respect of the rights of others. Essentially, while the Superman had a role to play in the building of this world, he is incompatible with the preservation of this world.
Fundamentally, though, the social contract not only comes to our benefit with Rights. It's purpose is to lay out Rights and Responsibilities, something which is greatly forgotten in our post-post-modern world. This is the reason why human rights abuses are still occurring around the world. And if we can't bear our responsibilities well in small things (someone else's lunch money), how can we manage the big ones (ethnic cleansing)?
"Most people, no doubt, when they espouse human rights, make their own mental reservations about the proper application of the word 'human'"-Susan Lafollette [Concerning Women]
