mverde wrote:
Hi, Alex--Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Your analogy about the jewish people and the Holocaust raises the subject of identity in a poignant way--namely, what is the basis of our identity, and do we have a common identity deeper than, or at least in addition to, our religious, ethnic, national, gender, etc. identifications? Aspergers seems to open up some intriguing questions in this universe of inquiry, since being identified as one with Aspergers relates to a neurological uniqueness as opposed to one of the more typical categories of difference. One question might be: in what ways are people with Aspergers and people without Aspergers identical--or rather, what is common to them, what ground of humanity do they share, beyond all the ways, including neurological ones, that they are different? Bringing this back to our original topic, one might ask: what common ground of humanity do bullies without Aspergers and those bullied with Aspergers share?
In regards to the impetus to bullying, you have called my attention to the idea that social and institutional influences might be instigating factors. I have never considered how the expectations of the school and the larger social environment might be generating dis-ease that expresses itself ultimately in one person bullying another. More particularly, I never considered that a too narrowly defined ideal of success might create an environment in which people who are anxious about not meeting that ideal themselves would deal with their anxieties by tormenting those who were least in accord with the prevailing notion of success, the outliers, so to speak. The question of identity raised above seems to be at play here too, though in a different guise: with what ideal does a particular school encourage us to identify? What identities are acceptable within a particular school's social environment? Your analysis suggests that many schools promote an identity ideal that in its "standardization" fails to recognize, and may even reject, a vast domain of fertile ways of being human.
This makes me wonder where our ideals of acceptable identities come from? On what imaginative resources do school's draw when conceiving of their ideal student? How much diversity of personality, interests, talents, etc. exists within that ideal? Do schools differ from each other in this respect? And if so, what explains why one school's ideal of success allows for more diverse ways of being a thriving student than another?
Finally, your analysis raises this question in my mind: why do some students and not others deal with their stress about not meeting a standardized ideal of success by bullying others?
Thank you again for your stimulating insights.
Just a thought but I keep saying society needs to be restructured so the environment is not such a perfect breeding ground for things like bullying..........but the idea usually gets rejected by others, maybe its because I am not sure how to restructure society yet and maybe it is impossible.
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Tis the time to melt the Ice.
08 Dec 2010, 1:03 am
