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Comment by hedberg10 | Hacker News Reader

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assholes:_A_Theory

Today on the train I saw some bullies. Kids wouldn't let the quieter kid sit with them.

What I could see immediately in their eyes is the knowledge that they can just do that. There are no repercussions. There is nothing anybody can do. This works. The bully just lashing out because of his own issues is a myth. This is just how humans work and certain societies are able to mitigate the blow.

There is a social hierarchy, we reward those who enforce it and we respect those who create it - which is good (agency), even if they behave like assholes - which is bad.

I don't know where I'm going with this, but there are people who take what isn't theirs. Even just in the physical realm policing doesn't seem to work that well. There are just societies with more trust and thus less thievery.

What to do about our psychological world?

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> What I could see immediately in their eyes is the knowledge that they can just do that. There are no repercussions. There is nothing anybody can do. This works. The bully just lashing out because of his own issues is a myth.

These two things are not mutually exclusive though. If you want to take your frustrations out on somebody else, you do it on people you can take them out on, not people you can’t.

And yeah, most of those little shits have issues. Just because someone is an asshole doesn’t mean they don’t have anxieties and insecurities that motivate their behavior.

I think that age was horrible, when you had no power to choose your own tribe of people. You got grouped together with people you didn't choose yourself, and what's worse, those people were kids who sometimes has no empathy whatsoever.

It really was the worst time in my life personally and I often felt like I just wanted to end my life.

Luckily I came through, and life as an adult is a lot easier. We still get grouped together with strangers at work, but there are unspoken rules how to behave as an adult that most adults actually follow. Also most adults have some degree of not wanting others to feel bad.

There are exceptions however. Some people are just mean.

Pretty similar youth for me. But one question I ask is whether my adulthood is easier because of the pain I experienced as a youth. Whether I can handle harder emotional situations now as a result. Not a reason to allow bullying, just that I feel fortunate to have been able to learn a lot of tough lessons as a child instead of as an adult.

for you adult age is easier, maybe for bullies it is harder :)

I think what I mean is not even taking out frustrations. This behavior doesn't need an a priori frustration. That is the big issue.

I'm able to forgive a frustration. You cut me off, you have a bad day/parent in hospital - I'm able to live with that. That is in stoicism, radical acceptance etc. You do it just because - it's a different animal. "Just because" meaning, you take the power.

I'm finding it hard to discuss social hierarchies. They clearly exist. I suspect they have a much greater influence on many things, depression for example (seems to me like a "self own", making oneself lower in the hierarchy, maybe as a survival strategy, but coming with unintended consequences).

But people are unwilling to talk about it or get political very fast, because it seems to all hint to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Might_Is_Right.

There is a strong argument that cooperative populations are more effective/efficient than non-cooperative.

Structures and processes that place a high value on all people and their many quirks instead of conformity to an arbitrary leader are likely to do better in most situations than ones that don’t.

Not sure that history would prove that out. Highly structured, militaristic colonial powers (Inca and Aztec, Mandarin Chinese, Vedic Indian, Persian, Egyptian, Roman, Western European) all had pretty good runs. Have there been societies that "place a high value on all people and their many quirks instead of conformity to an arbitrary leader" who have been dominant for spans of centuries? I can't think of any.

> There is a strong argument that cooperative populations are more effective/efficient than non-cooperative.

Which probably means being at the top of the social hierarchy in such a population is even more valuable.

Being at the top of the social hierarchy in a cooperative environment is not necessarily valuable, probably not even pleasurable, at all. Because true cooperation can either exist without a top, when the experience is mostly p2p, or with a benevolent top painstakingly at the service of the entire community.

So if your commentary meant valuable as in dedicated to the point that the individuals at the top become shit sponges for everyone else and do die as saints or martyrs, then yes, it is very valuable.

That being said, it depends on where you put value in life.

Valuable how? I realize that altruism is an unpopular concept, but it exists nature and works quite well when civilization is placed under the greatest survival pressures.

Selfishness is a luxury humans indulge in because those pressures are quite weak in modern days.

Here's the question though, is it natural to abuse might? Yes, bullies might fear no consequences, but why do they even care about the existence of the other kids? What makes bullying pleasurable to them and preferable to staring out the window and watching the world go by

Take it out on yourself like the rest of us.

> There is a social hierarchy

There is a power structure, and there are social hierarchies that ally themselves with the power structure. These social hierachies vary in formality and even in practical knowledge. Some are nothing but fads, quackery, and supersition.

And within these social hierarchies, there are people who seek rank and the preservation of the behaviours that make their badges of prestige important.

These are the bullies, the fanatics, the assholes.

I've read that in some countries bullying and workplace harassment are considered group dynamics, rather than the product of individual bullies which makes sense to me.

It seems to fit your example and I think it provides some useful frames for thinking about this and how to improve things.

To some extend this is the case in France.

People are going to "probe" you with some more or less controversial claims or comments and see how you will behave. This is part of the culture and is honestly tiring.

I would not call it "bullying" yet, but it is still a violent way to probe someone's character.

In my experience with organisations, it is the people with the most agency (i.e. leaders and their cliques) who set the standard for those group dynamics.

If you get bullied by your boss, you can count on others joining in.

Bullying has changed if "wouldn't let .. kid sit with them" counts. If I could not-associate with school bullies I would have.

There was only one free seat and the quiet kid had to stand because the bullies wouldn't let him sit next to them. That counts as bullying in my book.

Bullying behavior exist also in the bullied: The quiet kid had to appease the bullies.

Train these roles often enough, both parties are on a set course for life.

I'm afraid this discription rests primarily on your understanding of bullying, and what it means to have would not let.

It's clearly implied in my understanding that the cool kids pushed him over however, and that you expect they were to let the kid sit. The interpretation still depends on the environment, and the details, because it is a legitimate concern in principle, that one might not want to associate with another, and it's left open whether the kid really wanted to sit with them or accomodate them with preferable seating arrangements, or frankly would rather stand than associate with them. In small terms it may be actually quite fair if such distension is communicated quickly anyway--same way that you don't elaborate nearly enough to reach an agreement with your conclusion unless the agreement was established prior to the conclusion.

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