E. L. Lindley
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Is Violence Part Of The Human Condition? 

6/21/2015

16 Comments

 
I’ve recently read the novel Ultra Violence by Mark Barry (don’t know how to do links so you’re going to have to put in a bit of effort and look it up for yourself but, believe me, it’s well worth it). Anyway, it got me thinking about the concept of violence and whether or not it’s part of our DNA.

I consider myself to be a placid person, I don’t condone violence or wars and the like and think we’d all be better off if we simply talked out issues out or, better yet just let stuff go. Scratch the surface of my Dalai Lama-esque exterior though and I have been known to flip my lid when pushed that fraction of an inch too far. What I’ve been wondering then is this – is that simply the result of my upbringing or, given that we’re only a few evolutionary steps away from the animal world, do we all deep down have a natural propensity to rip someone’s throat out.

There is a scene in Barry’s novel where the protagonist is so savagely attacked at school, it took my breath away. This depiction of brutality is so authentic; I couldn’t help but feel slightly shameful about what might have been going on beneath my nose in schools over the last twenty odd years. There is no cruelty like the cruelty of children and, I’m sure we’ve all endured the merciless taunting when we’ve committed the odd fashion faux pas or had a dodgy hair cut but, when does that cross the line and become bullying?

In our current exam factory schools, there are layers of distance between student and teacher like never before. Primarily because the role of a teacher has transformed since I first qualified in the 1980s. Teachers are now there to get students through exams and there is a whole army of other people who do the rest, pastoral staff who at best are kind and well meaning and at worst unqualified and unsuited to their role. Over the years there have been numerous initiatives put in place to combat bullying and I have no idea how effective they have been. As we are now seeing soaring levels of teenage anxiety and a seeming epidemic of self-harming, I wonder how this correlates to incidences of bullying. One thing's for certain though, schools are too busy tallying up their potential exam results to worry about bullying statistics.

Thinking back to my own school days, I can’t really remember bullying being much of an issue. To be fair, I had an unfair advantage having eight Amazonian aunties, the youngest of whom was only five years my senior. They never had cause to intervene in my affairs but the unspoken threat was always there – start on me and they’ll batter you. It was only when reading Ultra Violence that I recalled an incident from my first week of secondary school, when I would have been eleven. Another first year girl was attacked by a classmate and beaten so badly she was hospitalised. The girl never returned to school and her attacker, a strangely unassuming girl, carried on her school life without any further episodes. It was as if the whole thing had never happened. In fact, all of the first year girls were called to a special assembly, where the head teacher warned that anyone caught gossiping about what had occurred would be punished. Bizarrely, nobody ever mentioned it again and I have no idea what happened to the injured girl as, so effectively was it brushed under the carpet I’d forgotten all about it, until now forty years later.

I may not have witnessed systematic bullying but my childhood was littered with lots of casual violence, which at the time seemed completely normal. My parents were what you would consider ordinary, well meaning people and yet the message during my formative years was – if someone hits you then you hit them back twice as hard. There was no point going home whining if you’d been the recipient of a slap or a punch, as the first question that would be asked was – did you hit them back? It’s with a mixture of disbelief and horror that I recall once being hit by a large stone thrown by another girl. I was about ten at the time and ran home with blood pouring down my leg. My dad gave me a bat and told me to go and hit the stone thrower with it as hard as I could. Suffice to say she probably had quite a headache and presumably her stone throwing days were behind her.

There were other instances where I came off the worse for wear, in fights that often blew up over something and nothing. I once limped home with my face clawed and missing clumps of hair after a girl, whose shoe I had thrown into a quagmire, wreaked her revenge. My parents never batted an eye because it was roundly accepted that I had it coming. Looking back, with our modern day sensibilities, it beggars belief but my family were no different to anyone else’s. There was no turning the other cheek round our way. Times have changed, however, and what was acceptable in the 70s is no longer the type of thing you’re inclined to mention.

Not mentioning it though doesn’t mean it’s not there, beneath the surface like a volcano waiting to erupt. We all like to pretend that we’re far too civilised to partake in scenes of violence, distancing ourselves by demonising those who end up in brawls. The idiots scrapping over Black Friday bargains or the nut cases who end up in fist fights over seats on planes, not to mention the animals rampaging around town after a few pints at the football.

How many of you though, like me, find yourselves seething in silence full of unexpressed rage? I sometimes wonder if the day will come when I actually punch the cinema phone pest in the face or stab the business man, taking up 4/5ths of the train seat, in the eye with my teaspoon rather than just think about it. We live in stressful times and, as the pressure rises, maybe that bubbling lava of violence buried so deep we pretend it’s not there, will rise to the surface like a toxic cloud.

There’s no doubt that violence is a bit of a dirty word but it’s an interesting concept none the less. Whether we like it or not, it’s all around us and maybe a little bit closer to home than we want to admit. Maybe it’s part of the human condition, maybe it’s learned or maybe it’s a response to feelings of powerlessness and alienation. I don’t have any answers but maybe we need to start asking some questions. 


16 Comments
Terry Tyler
6/21/2015 05:56:25 pm

I think it's in us all, and I think it's okay to reprimand children with a slap. There, that's probably me ostracised by anyone else who reads this! But, like you, I grew up in an era when children were spanked if they were naughty and got sent to the headmaster/mistress for the cane or the slipper. It worked. There wasn't any ADHD in our day!!! Or hoards of undisciplined children. Or bullying, at least, not to the extent there is now. Or maybe it was just seen as a natural part of growing up, but it wasn't so VICIOUS as it is now.

I do think it's in us all, and no, I don't think we should go around acting on it. I think this is a much bigger issue, though, and the increase in things like drink fuelled fighting and children lashing out at teachers is more to do with the sense of entitlement that children grow up with these days, thinking that they must have everything they want.

Reply
Gloria Mc Breen link
6/21/2015 11:44:31 pm

I totally agree Terry. I think they get away with far too much these days. (I'm probably in trouble now too) Hasn't everybody at some point in their lives wanted to slap someone? No? I have. But as you say Terry, just because we have the urge to do it, doesn't mean we have to. And we won't even start on the hormones!! ;-)

Reply
E. L. Lindley
6/22/2015 03:53:58 am

I think you've hit the nail on the head, Gloria in that we are made to feel ashamed of our feelings of anger and so we repress them and they become something bigger and worse. I think especially for women expressing anger is very difficult

E. L. Lindley
6/22/2015 03:51:42 am

You make some very interesting points Terry. I'm not sure if bullying is more vicious and prevalent now or we just perceive it to be. Mark's account of bullying I'm assuming was late 1970s and that's as vicious as I've ever come across. I sometimes wonder if what, as you say we saw as a natural part of growing up, people now class as bullying. I think a big problem with bullying is we all have different definitions. For lots of people teasing is classed as bullying whereas for others it's just life. Bullying does ruin so many lives and I've yet to meet anyone who doesn't claim to be anti-bullying but yet it still goes on.

Reply
Terry Tyler
6/23/2015 10:00:58 pm

yes, I know whatcha mean re Mark's being the 70s, but that was just one incident. My 30 year old friend told me the other day that she didn't want to be an older mother because when she was at school the children with old parents were bullied (though, as you say, that might just have meant teasing - then again, children's teasing is often EVIL). I was amazed - I had the oldest parents in the class, but never heard anything of it. She said 'you must have been to a posher school, then'. Turned out we went to the same one. What you say about it being 'part of life' - indeed, yes. Part of the fuss about it these days is idiots thinking that children have to be wrapped in cotton wool, I think.

Lloyd Lofthouse link
6/24/2015 12:46:48 am

I won't ostracize you. I was bullied in kindergarten but another boy intervened and stopped the bully, who never bothered me again, probably becasue the bully feared the boy who intervened, who wasn't a bully.

Then I was bullied a few years later in grade school, and I closed my eyes and started swinging my fists wildly---gave the bully a bloody nose, and him and his friends never bothered me again. Maybe I learned something from the boy who stepped in to stop a bully when I was age 7.

My father spanked me once when I was a kid, because I deserved it for something careless I had done that could have caused my death. I never did that again. Imagine if I he had promised to buy me an ice cream instead if I never did that again. If bad/stupid behavior is rewarded with treats instead of slaps, won't that just lead to more bad behavior?

My mother spanked me to force me to learn to read when the so-called experts at school told her I would never learn to read. I wanted to go out and play. At age 7 I didn't care if I learned to read or not. But nothing I said or did---like crying and sobbing---would deter my mother from making sure I learned to read.

Maybe those cruel children who are bullies are the hyenas that are there to create a merit system of the survival of the fittest that separates the sheep from the wolves. When a child is forces to fight back against a bully, it makes them stronger.

When my stepdaughter was six, I taught her to fight like I was taught in boot camp at MCRD, and one of her (when she was 14) boyfriends who made her really mad ended up painfully regretting what I taught her, and he never crossed that line again with her. She clobbered him good---and then felt really guilty for it.

Reply
CathyRyan
6/21/2015 06:29:52 pm

I agree with Terry’s comments. I think we’re all capable of violence at different levels, even if it’s only verbally. From my recollection ‘bullying' was more mickey taking than violent, in fact the teachers were more violent with their use of the cane. One of our teachers used to sling the blackboard duster willy nilly and if it found a target it was hard luck. We learnt to duck pretty quickly. My earliest school memory was being whacked round the head for leaning on the teacher’s desk!

I do think this PC culture we live in now is not helping and, like Terry says, children expect too much and in some cases feel they’re entitled to take it regardless.





Reply
E. L. Lindley
6/22/2015 03:56:44 am

We do seem to have gone from one extreme to another, Cathy. Obviously none of us would want to see a return to the misuse of power and casual violence of the past but now it seems we can't even talk about it.

Reply
Barb Taub link
6/21/2015 09:21:37 pm

In the light of the horrific massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, I have to question this. Or rather, sadly, I have to admit that the capacity for violence is there. But the question is what makes someone think it's okay to cross that line? What if, instead of your father handing you a baseball bat, your family kept guns and made it clear their use was acceptable? Or maybe even (as is the case with the young suspect in this case) gave you a gun as a birthday present?

I could spend a lot of time (and have!) ranting about the need for gun control. But actually, what I think we need is some kind of message—both from families and from society as a whole—that it's JUST NOT allowed.

I don't think that objecting to violence, whether from a parent slapping a misbehaving child—who then gets the message that it's an acceptable method of enforcing desired behavior—or in any other instance is desired.

Maybe violence is part of our nature. So is walking around naked, carrying off the other tribes' cows, fights to the death for pack leadership, and scratching our privates. With few exceptions, these behaviors aren't encouraged in society as a whole these days. I would like to hope that society and family and cultural expectations could combine to discourage whatever innate violence we have as well.

Just because we have the capacity for violence doesn't mean we have to use it. I have a fire extinguisher but that doesn't mean I have the green light to start fires.

Reply
E. L. Lindley
6/22/2015 04:06:50 am

You make some great points, Barb. I don't condone violence at all but worry that as with racism by making subjects taboo there's a danger they simply go underground and become even more dangerous as they fester. We live in a society where subjects like violence and racism are deemed bad and so not discussed but avoiding talking about feelings doesn't mean thery're not there. I just think there's then more chance that because they've been repressed there's more chance they're going to explode on a grand scale as with massacres.

I completely agree about the folly of guns and I know, without a shadow of a doubt, if I had one I would shot numerous people by now especially in cinemas!

Reply
CP Bialois
6/22/2015 12:14:13 am

Honestly, I have to agree with the "it's in us" thought process. No matter how far we evolve, we are, in our hearts, still violent animals in our basic nature and act as such. That doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to be better, but it is what it is. To ignore that is to do ourselves a huge disservice, in my opinion.

I also grew up in an era where spanking was the norm (I deserved far more than I got) and I was taught right from wrong. The thing that kept me on the straight and narrow wasn't that knowledge, but the idea of what would happen if my dad found out.

Despite being a big and strong kid/man, I was bullied until I stuck up for myself. It led to many fights, but in the end that what kids do. We learn how to deal with adversity and the hierarchy that is an unspoken norm in any society. That's not the case anymore.

The biggest problem today is no one wants to admit or confront it. We're in a political correct society where we've stripped away the coping mechanisms for people to deal with obstacles whether it's bullying, receiving bad grades, just being told no, or dealing with honesty. Everyone deserves a medal now and many playgrounds in the US don't have swings anymore because kids might fall and hurt themselves. So much for building risk assessment.

Sorry if I got a little ranty. lol I can't even begin to say how much it bothers me to see society become a shell of what it was or could be with all the appeasement and passing the buck happening.

Reply
E. L. Lindley
6/22/2015 04:12:16 am

I love a good rant, CP and you make lots of interesting points. I agree with you that when we police every area of childrens' lives they don't develop the social skills they need to stand on their own two feet. I don't know what the answer is, I really don't. I just think that there is so much anger and violence bubbling beneath the surface of our so called civilised society something is not right with how we are going about things.

Reply
CP Bialois
6/22/2015 04:35:27 am

It's definitely a big problem, and maybe even worse than we think. It's like no one has a means to deal with their repressed thoughts and emotions. The first step could be talking about it and accepting the PC environment may be the cause of a lot of it. Unfortunately, until we have an open dialogue. I think things may get worse before they get better

Lloyd Lofthouse link
6/22/2015 05:55:21 am

It may genetic and only some humans are prone to violence and being bullies..

"Located on the X-chromosome, the MAOA gene is one of many genes that play a part in our behavioral responses. The "Warrior Gene" variant reduces function in the MAOA gene.

"Studies have linked the "Warrior Gene" to increased risk-taking and to retaliatory behavior. Men with the "Warrior Gene" are not necessarily more aggressive, but they are more likely to respond aggressively to perceived conflict."

https://www.familytreedna.com/landing/warrior-gene.aspx

It seems that a gene has been identified for psychopathic behavior too.

"While the idea of a ‘criminal gene' is nonsense, there is growing evidence that some psychopathic behaviour might indeed be grounded in genes"

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2933872/

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/?no-ist

"Children who bully others are not necessarily badly brought up. It is all in the genes, according to a new study. ... Harden says the findings show that genes might influence the development of antisocial behaviour more than parental conflicts do."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11125-genes-may-be-underestimated-cause-of-bullying.html#.VYhnm_lVhBc

What happens if an individual has the genes that are linked to being a Bully in addition to the warrior and psychopathic gene all together? Would that be a monster in the making---Hitler, Stalin?


Reply
E. L. Lindley
6/23/2015 03:41:14 am

This all makes very scary reading indeed Lloyd and if part of it is genetic then it makes it more imperative than ever that we find a way of diffusing our increasingly angry society.

Reply
Lloyd Lofthouse link
6/23/2015 11:00:12 am

Agreed. Maybe identify who these people are and then teach them how to manage their specific genetic traits that might make them prone to be dangerous to others. That's what therapy for PTSD does. We learn to manage the PTSD. There are even service dogs that are trained to calm a vet with PTSD down when a trigger that has been flipped is detected by the dog.




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