Meanness in America:

After reading an extremely interesting essay by another poster on firefly-dreaming.com, I got the idea for another Thursday Open Thoughts column.   Since I’ve recently had problems with not only comments, but long posts disappearing as well, I decided to take the suggestions of yet another poster on firefly-dreaning to heart and write it on a blank e-mail first, which I’m presently doing.  

The essay in question, which was called “Main Street and Fox Avenue”, told about the nasty, vicious and ignorant rightwing people who were clearly Republicans, who wanted to “cleanse” America to make it the way it supposedly was when Ronald Reagan took office, and burn all the books, including and especially Korans, that they could.   It sounded like a rough, raucous and nasty-spirited crowd, not to mention clearly uneducated, who “seemed” to be infected with some sort of a virus”, and he decided to run from them when one of them offered him an American flag jacket to try on in order to “prove his patriotism and Americanism”.    These people certainly were aggressive and seemed to be the type of people who, with the viciousness of blind, brainless beasts, could/would fall upon anything or anybody that crossed their path, and often won’t hesitate to resort to the nastiest, most mean-spirited baiting, or even physically assaulting their victim(s).   Whether it be fellow Conservative Republicans or even fellow liberal/Democrats who differs with the Republican or Democratic orthodoxy, a left-winger,  anybody of color,  or any ordinary person who they’d been friendly with just the day before, or  they’d joked with or even conversed with moments or even hours earlier, nobody, whoever s/he may be, who inadvertently crosses their path is safe.  

Yet, at least, unlike the kind of strait-laced mentality of people who cloak their meanness and nastiness  underneath a mantle of gentility and respectability and find legitimate, more subtle ways to be mean, the visibly rough, ignorant, loudmouthed crowd that is written about in oldtomblood’s essay are people that the vast majority of people know enough to keep away from.  The people who cloak their nastiness in this so-called cloak of respectability and gentility, however, are a different matter.  These are generally people who have a long  history of working in defense-related jobs at high-tech companies,  who come from families that are more educated, or they can be people from a somewhat lower socioeconomic background who’ve supposedly manage to escape their upbringing to get a better job in an office or whatever and crave respectability.  Some of them reside in small rural towns, others in beautiful suburban homes o r McMansions, and others in cities.   The meanness and the tendency to totally screw” others” over in some way or other, or bully them psychologically, whether it be in the workplace, school, neighborhood, or even online, and it’s generally not noticed or sensed by the victim, and the people who associate with such bullies don’t realize that they’ve been infected with the “virus” that was discussed on oldtomblood’s essay until it’s way too late.  The victim of such bullying may not recognize the fact that s/he has been victimized until it’s way too late, also.  Some of these supposedly more respectable and genteel people will often use another person as a go-between in order to hurt another individual.  

When it comes to the supposedly more respectable people who bully, they often find other, more subtle and legitimate ways of making it clear to an “odd person out” that s/he isn’t wanted around, although the target of such bullying isn’t always aware of it.  Such supposedly more respectable behavior often takes the form of ostracizing, shunning,  ignoring, or excluding the “odd person out” from social circles and events, the rescinding of invitations to the “odd person out” to attend parties or other events at the very last possible moment and then making grandiose excuses for doing so,  token invitations, which include inviting the “odd person out” to an occasional party or whatever in order to assuage their guilt for not treating the “odd person out” in a decent manner, and also giving into so-called “bosses” by people who’re more easily swayed and influenced than some others.

In children, adolescents and (often) very young adults of pretty much all backgrounds, this kind of ostracizing often takes place in a different setting, in different ways.  Young children play together in order to learn how to get along, to communicate, and to share with other people when they get older.   By constantly excluding children who are different in some way or other, and making them the “odd person(s) out”, and therefore depriving them the opportunity to play with and develop  the necessary learning, communicating, compromising and sharing skills alongside other children, the children and teenagers doing the rejecting and excluding of “odd people out” are failing to give anybody who’s different the opportunity to also grow and develop the necessary skills needed to compete with other people out in the world in later life.    It’s a small wonder then, that so many people who were “odd people out” as youngsters often continue to be “odd people out” when they mature into adolescence and then into adulthood, or they become self-styled geniuses, or whatever, in order to compromise.  Not caring about what goes on in  society and the world at large is also an attitude that can and often does develop as a consequence of constantly being an “odd person out” so to speak.  

Because the front cortex of the brain of adolescents and very young adults (under 25) are not yet completely de- veloped, tact, control of one’s impulses and good judge is often lacking, and the  various forms of rejection of the “odd person out”, during childhood and adolescence and even very young adulthood can and often do  take the much blunter forms of rejection, such as verbal taunts and insults, physical attacks, teasing their victim, and also making it clear under no uncertain terms that the “odd person out” is not welcome in their crowd, or to certain events.  Unfortunately, however, at least as often as not, people who constantly engage in bullying others in some way or other, be it physical or psychological, often (though not always) turn out to be mean adults, who, depending on their familial upbringing, the kind of environment they came from, their psychic make-up, their socioeconomic class and education, or their overall personality, often continue to treat “odd people out” with contempt, hostility, or, at best, indifference.  Theoretically, of course, one could successfully (and correctly) argue that, by the time people reach high school and beyond, that there’s not an excuse for this sort of meanness.  However, people being people, stuff goes on.

it is also true, unfortunately, that victims can and often (although not always) do come up to  treat others in a similar way to how they were treated in the past.  This, too,  can take the place of scapegoating, teasing, snubbing, excluding,  physical aggression, and, in extreme cases, even murder.   About three years ago, at the high school where I’d graduated from over 40 years ago, a young Freshman who was afflicted with Asperbers Syndrome and the constant victim of bullying, brought a knife to school and stabbed his tormentor to death.  The Aspergers Syndrome patient, under pressure from the deceased boy’s family, underwent a regular trial, and is now serving a sentence, although I don’t know for how long.  

Even in adulthood, bullying, whether it be physical or psychological,  can and still occurs in the workplace, online, and even in schools.  Even in the workplace, it can take the forms of teasing and mocking by co-workers, harassment by supervisors, and various  vendettas against a particular person, by degrading their work, or gossiping about them, in the hopes of pushing the person off of the job.  Online, it can and often takes the form of cyberbullying, by both kids and adults alike.  A person will often instigate “flame” wars against an “odd person out”, and, since flaming begets more flaming, the person being flamed, not surprisingly, flames back, and the person who was under attack and has stood up for him/herself often gets banned from a given blog or blogs, for good.  Sometimes kids (and adults, too), taunt other people on a given internet blog, as a way of hounding him/her off of a given blog, or just for the sake of teasing them.  Not a nice sport, imho.  

So, how to solve the problem of  meanness in our society and in the world?  Not a hell of a lot that people can do, except to start out by changing themselves if they have a history of indulging in meanness, inotherwords to start in each individual’s back yard.