It's popular to be a victim these days. Much more popular than I recall it being earlier in my lifetime. It even goes so far as to regard people who aren't victims with contempt.
The kids who are able to set boundaries, say no, respond etc are more likely to stop whole dynamic even before it starts.
Sometimes coping with issues is just learning to ignore them, you must learn that even though you feel hurt there it is not worth putting energy into dealing with what people say and do.
People forget that 50% of the people on the planet are below average, its best to remember that when you're dealing with life. You can't expect these people to have reasoning and logic skills, emotional resilience or even base levels of compassion.
"Toughen up princess" can frequently be the best advice you can give someone.
Which is why our problems now are so much bigger, since our complaining became so much louder.
It is cruel to withhold this education from them, because a state of perpetual offendedness is misery.
They are kids not monks. You can teach them all the self control you like, I don’t think there is a serious argument that let’s say for some particularly sadistic reason I wanted to bully them and do real harm. How difficult do you think it would be exactly?
Kids or adults for that matter aren’t failures for feeling hurt. The idea that you can’t hurt someone without physical pain is really not a serious idea.
It’s entirely possible to get overcome that and genuinely not let it impact you, I’m not saying that, I’m saying for a lot of people it’s not a normal reaction. The goal of life isn’t to not feel emotions in response to words. I genuinely am not even sure you would even really want that if you had a choice.
Mastering one's emotions: Feeling the emotion, understanding it, and developing skills for overcoming negative feelings. Also, the ability to choose not to act based on strong emotion.
In a crisis, or in critical or chronic situations, possession of these two related skills usually yields superior outcomes.
It isn't "wrong" to feel the feelings. It is wrong to let the feelings dominate you to the point of paralysis or drive you to harmful behavior. Children can't help going through phases as their brains develop where they're overcome with emotions. You help them by teaching them it is OK to feel sad or angry. Then you help them by teaching them how to cope through action, or focus on something else like goals.
Having negative emotions is normal. Coping with negative emotions, mastering them, is a valuable skill.
Words do not inflict physical injury. You teach that. Words can inflict emotional pain. You also teach that this is so. Words can inflict mental injury, and you teach that, too. But you start with the far simpler formulation of "sticks and stones" until metaphor and nuance are available tools.
It's like teaching children about strangers. There are exceptions to every rule, but if you value their safety when they're small, you teach them the rule "Do not talk to strangers." Young children don't have the social context to parse exceptions until they're older... when the teaching has to add resolution and detail.
If I'm attempting to repeat back his sensibility: It's an aspiration for people to be self-responsible. Look after self, then others. We're individuals first, and must look after ourselves, and then the collectivist-minded activities come after looking after the self.
This self=>others axis is the basis of Maslow's hierarchy. But it's the inverse of many cultures' (including the blackfoot tribes from which Maslow borrowed the model, which put community at the bottom of the pyramid of needs, oddly enough)
I respect his view (it's rather effective in some contexts, esp environments of scarcity), but I'd rather embrace the collectivist and interdependent aspects of humanity as the foundational principle.
My general impression is that both of these worldviews could save us in different contexts. Maybe the collectivist would save us from climate change, and individualist would save us in some armed conflict. I feel we need to keep both, and keep them balanced, and respecting one another. It's like keeping a seed vault -- different wisdoms for later, and part of a diversity of thought we should probably preserve for unknowable future challenges.
> I don’t think there is a serious argument that let’s say for some particularly sadistic reason I wanted to bully them and do real harm
I think you'd be surprised. I had some tough great uncles who taught rough lessons and were damn proud of it.
It’s not the goal of monks either, so perhaps mastery of oneself shouldn’t be taken as simply being stoic?
One such mechanism is the mentality of "believing victims". Not a bad thing on the face of it, but my feeling is that we've tipped over into a world where people are incentivized to become victims. In this way the mechanism ends up becoming weaponized and wielded like a cudgel by those good at playing the victim against a new set of victims who just aren't as good at that game.
These new victims may end up even more disadvantaged due to ideological fashions which shape who we see as victims (e.g. "girls are more likely to be victims than boys") and dictate to what degree we should mete out empathy (e.g. "we have to make sure we aren't overly empathetic towards the white kids since we are biased and they are privileged").
If there is no disincentive for abuse, then abusive people will continue to inflict abuse on others for as long as they derive some emotional/social/financial gain from it. You are arguing that it is wholly up to those others (ie non-abusive people) to change themselves by making themselves less attractive targets in some fashion. But this has a cost and meantime the abusive person is gaining in strength and confidence. Also, new people are coming along all the time who are vulnerable to abusive behavior, so if previous targets become unattractive, abusers can rely on a relatively steady supply of new ones. I think you need to explain what the overall benefit of your approach is at the collective level.
It's also perplexing to me that you equate inflicting penalties upon abusers with 'becoming the abuser instead'. An abuser, by definition, is someone who inflicts pain or suffering on someone else who doesn't deserve it. Retaliation against abuse cannot be considered abuse, unless you want to argue that there is no such thing as a right to self-defense, only to self-protection. That seems similar to suggesting everyone become like turtles or snails, building shells which they can withdraw into when attacked but never developing any retaliatory capability.
I look forward to considering your alternative perspective.
I'm not sure the words are the problem there.
But also, I def understand that scorning victimhood is exactly the sort of thing a culture would do when those in control (and with greater influence to shape narratives) are hurting a ton of people. It's a ridiculously effective way to avoid reckoning with our impacts on each other. And so of course someone with power to shape a narrative would use that ability to make being "too much of a victim" the taboo (not maliciously, just for self-preservation and limiting their own cognitive overhead of existing).
I'm firmly in the middle of this conversation. There's a balance of what's healthy for society imho. We have pockets in various places where unhealthy levels of one view or the other have concentrated. And sometimes these bubbles have moments of floating up to the top levels of societies, in fad-like ways. Then we see how things start working, and we learn and adjust <3
That is different issue. When kids are bullied, these are good for adults, because they force the victim to be silent, so that peace is kept. If you are educator and believe those, problem with bullying is essentially solved.
You don't have to deal with bullies themselves. You dont have to spend effort teaching bullied kid how to effectively set boundaries. You dont have to listen to yelling as the kid is trying to set boundaries for the first time and inevitably failing.
You dont have to do anything, except telling the bullied kid to shut up.
But I'm not a safetyist. I much prefer to face the world as it stands. But I have a place of voluntary individuals who provide me support and I am stronger for it.
He should be getting more attention but I guess he runs a bit against mainstream narratives. A taste:
https://twitter.com/davidgoggins/status/1386386177184333829?...