“Nobody wanted trouble, nobody wanted to make trouble, nobody wanted a showdown…most kids wanted peace at any price.” – The Chocolate War (p.48)
If you’re lucky in middle school and high school, they talk to you about bullying or sexual harassment, and then they talk with you after an incident as well, but who really talks about the way we psychologically manipulate one another. Who really talks about this layer of bullying that entrenches the physical, but exists just as equally on its own? You’re picked last in gym class—classic example—but there shouldn’t have even been a line-up. Your teachers first set-up a system that then enabled your peers to weigh, measure, and judge you. A kid jumps in front of you in a line for lunch, at the store, when you’re waiting for tickets and you grind your teeth or squeeze your fist, but to what end? They say not to rat out someone else because it’s all about the team or it’s all about the school or it’s all about something that in a few years from now doesn’t really matter (if it ever really did). We take the looks that define what we’re supposed to wear, the curriculum that says what we’re supposed to learn, the organization that says what we’re supposed to think, and then all the pain, torment, and suffering when we don’t quite fit. We take it all silently. Victims. Speechless? Voiceless. Peace at any price? Do we really believe that being all twisted up inside, that feeling unwelcome, unordinary, ridiculed is peace?
Silent victimization maintains the system and then the systems maintain those systems until we’ve trapped ourselves into a process that sets group mentality against individuality. We’re in a state where we’re more likely to help others when there’s no one else around. We bully ourselves. There’s a group like the Vigils in all our schools and companies, and we’re all involved, passively participating in all the psychological posits and positions.
Did we ever think about saying no to selling the box of chocolates? Damn it, why not?
Danielle Maxwell
Just to be the devil's advocate, is the question to ask here not so much IF we thought about saying no, but rather deciding if our prerogatives in doing so, should in fact be our prerogatives
ReplyDelete-Lucy
I think there's some confusion first off as to what I am asking. The question is in the "why" rather than the "if." Thus, the response to a why not could be that we find ourselves bound to the psychological models that exist within our system or you could argue against the existence of these models and suggest instead that we don't have right to say no/it's not in our power...perhaps even that the models do exist, but outside of us, suggesting group mentality is designed to win out over individual. (Or I missed your question entirely; please clarify if so.)
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that they did not want to use Claudette as the face for the movement at first because of her background. They were very unsure about her, because she was from a poor neighborhood and she was being raised by her great aunt and uncle.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised the leaders of the civil rights movements in Montgomery at the time had the luxury of being picky about who they chose to get involved and represent the bus boycotting.
-Katie