The Natural Order?
By now if you really wanted to see 'the Avengers' movie, you could have, so I'll fucken just go ahead with spoilers. Everybody's favorite part and by everybody, I mean consensus is, where the Hulk grabs Loki whom is in the middle of a speech and smashes him repeatedly into marble flooring like he is swinging a club around.
It was the big 'laugh line' of the movie. The poncing Loki, villainous tyrant shown his place in the natural order.
Now I may be reading too deeply into things, I am often accused of doing so, but the Hulk vs. Loki moment was of widespread appeal to the audiance. These moments usually occur when they hit some resonant chord with the audience, and I put it to you that the resonent chord for people was that Loki represented 'role power' or 'legitimate power' somebody essentially handed power to fulfill some role in an organisation, a manager, supervisor, teacher etc. The hulk represented, you may be surprised but I'm going to describe it as 'political power' that is, somebody who is naturally identified as a leader and hence empowered by the people around them deferring, in the same way people are (in theory) supposed to vote for a politician to lead their community, deferring to them as more qualified.
But obviously the lingo 'political power' is going to confuse people whom may think of politicians, the very epitome of 'legitimate power' possessing increasingly, a lack of expertise, charisma or even physical strength.
So let's just call it 'darwin power'. Darwin power can be evaluated by the simple thought experiment. Whatever circumstances you are in ask yourself 'if this were the jungle/desert island/zombie apocalypse who would actually be in charge?' and even the term 'in charge' is possibly a misnomer, because darwin power amongst us social animals tends to be given rather than taken.
Now, Steven Pinker writes a book called the 'Better Angels of Our Nature' about how as we have become more civilized violence has declined in our society, even in the world. (although, you have to take the view of relative, not absolute in some cases. As in violent deaths per 100,000 people etc.)
That's good.
I'm all for the decline of violence in our society, but then allow me to show my antiquity, my neanderthal nature in saying that most times a 'bullying' story comes up in the news, I find it hard to be sympathetic for the bullied child.
Obviously there are bullying stories that are newsworthy - 'boy set on fire by bullies' etc. ones that result in physical harm and destroyed lives, need to be treated as the horrific criminal acts they are. And hopefully not to appear in the news in the future.
But, on the scale of things 'they called me terrible names.' type bullying stories, come across as close to the fantastic story of the girl whose parents are suing/tried to sue Geelong Grammer for failing to get her into Law School and somebody wonderful commented "oh oh, better call the Wahmbulance."
Now don't pin me with 'Slippery Slope' arguments, fuck you, let me finish.
It's always bothered me, honestly since fucken year 8, that civilising forces intervene in the natural order of the school yard. I equate it to that hygene theory, that if you go around killing the 99% of germs on cutting boards etc. then once your kids are placed into the fucking jungle, the bacteria will just eat the flesh off their faces.
In the same way, if a kid is just a fucken twat, and I mean, are so stupid that when they say something dumb and annoying to a year 12, and that year 12 calls them back some name, and they are too fucking dumb to even get how clever the year 12's retort was, and they keep on saying twat things, then I mean it gets up my nose.
The fucking kid should instinctively keep their mouths shut for fear of being smacked in the face. In accordance with darwinian power, but instead the year 12 instinctively endures the stupidity, for fear of the legitimate power invested in the school that act as the peacekeepers.
Now, I'm in favor of rules, I'm also in favor of rule breaking. Or rather a recognition that the rules are unlikely to be created that they are perfectly applicable all the time.
For example, I will defer to my manager, might be a rule, but it also assumes that the appointment of the manager was done correctly. I will obey the law, is also a good general rule, but it presumes that the ways laws are made are done correctly, free from corruption etc.
Furthermore, wherever you have 'legitimate' or 'role' power, you are going to find heavy competition for those very roles from people who don't possess any 'darwinian' power.
The old bullshit of 'power corrupts' or whatever, it's just whenever you formalise power, you are going to attract corrupted people. And everybody gets fucked over.
So those kids, those kids that were the children of teachers at the school they attended always seemed to highly correlate with the biggest twats, and the moment you remove them from their protected environment into real world situations are done a huge disservice because in my hair brained theory, they haven't built up that memetic immune system known(?) as transferrable social skills.
They don't know how not to get their ass not beat.
It was the big 'laugh line' of the movie. The poncing Loki, villainous tyrant shown his place in the natural order.
Now I may be reading too deeply into things, I am often accused of doing so, but the Hulk vs. Loki moment was of widespread appeal to the audiance. These moments usually occur when they hit some resonant chord with the audience, and I put it to you that the resonent chord for people was that Loki represented 'role power' or 'legitimate power' somebody essentially handed power to fulfill some role in an organisation, a manager, supervisor, teacher etc. The hulk represented, you may be surprised but I'm going to describe it as 'political power' that is, somebody who is naturally identified as a leader and hence empowered by the people around them deferring, in the same way people are (in theory) supposed to vote for a politician to lead their community, deferring to them as more qualified.
But obviously the lingo 'political power' is going to confuse people whom may think of politicians, the very epitome of 'legitimate power' possessing increasingly, a lack of expertise, charisma or even physical strength.
So let's just call it 'darwin power'. Darwin power can be evaluated by the simple thought experiment. Whatever circumstances you are in ask yourself 'if this were the jungle/desert island/zombie apocalypse who would actually be in charge?' and even the term 'in charge' is possibly a misnomer, because darwin power amongst us social animals tends to be given rather than taken.
Now, Steven Pinker writes a book called the 'Better Angels of Our Nature' about how as we have become more civilized violence has declined in our society, even in the world. (although, you have to take the view of relative, not absolute in some cases. As in violent deaths per 100,000 people etc.)
That's good.
I'm all for the decline of violence in our society, but then allow me to show my antiquity, my neanderthal nature in saying that most times a 'bullying' story comes up in the news, I find it hard to be sympathetic for the bullied child.
Obviously there are bullying stories that are newsworthy - 'boy set on fire by bullies' etc. ones that result in physical harm and destroyed lives, need to be treated as the horrific criminal acts they are. And hopefully not to appear in the news in the future.
But, on the scale of things 'they called me terrible names.' type bullying stories, come across as close to the fantastic story of the girl whose parents are suing/tried to sue Geelong Grammer for failing to get her into Law School and somebody wonderful commented "oh oh, better call the Wahmbulance."
Now don't pin me with 'Slippery Slope' arguments, fuck you, let me finish.
It's always bothered me, honestly since fucken year 8, that civilising forces intervene in the natural order of the school yard. I equate it to that hygene theory, that if you go around killing the 99% of germs on cutting boards etc. then once your kids are placed into the fucking jungle, the bacteria will just eat the flesh off their faces.
In the same way, if a kid is just a fucken twat, and I mean, are so stupid that when they say something dumb and annoying to a year 12, and that year 12 calls them back some name, and they are too fucking dumb to even get how clever the year 12's retort was, and they keep on saying twat things, then I mean it gets up my nose.
The fucking kid should instinctively keep their mouths shut for fear of being smacked in the face. In accordance with darwinian power, but instead the year 12 instinctively endures the stupidity, for fear of the legitimate power invested in the school that act as the peacekeepers.
Now, I'm in favor of rules, I'm also in favor of rule breaking. Or rather a recognition that the rules are unlikely to be created that they are perfectly applicable all the time.
For example, I will defer to my manager, might be a rule, but it also assumes that the appointment of the manager was done correctly. I will obey the law, is also a good general rule, but it presumes that the ways laws are made are done correctly, free from corruption etc.
Furthermore, wherever you have 'legitimate' or 'role' power, you are going to find heavy competition for those very roles from people who don't possess any 'darwinian' power.
The old bullshit of 'power corrupts' or whatever, it's just whenever you formalise power, you are going to attract corrupted people. And everybody gets fucked over.
So those kids, those kids that were the children of teachers at the school they attended always seemed to highly correlate with the biggest twats, and the moment you remove them from their protected environment into real world situations are done a huge disservice because in my hair brained theory, they haven't built up that memetic immune system known(?) as transferrable social skills.
They don't know how not to get their ass not beat.
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