On Bullies and Ethics

I saw a piece of Dr. Phil earlier, and his guests were three girls. The bigger girl had been bullying the other two and they had taken to withdrawing, not wanting to go to school, general depression, even cutting! And the whole thing made me think of that bit we keep hearing about how more and more people today feel lonely and disconnected and more and more people are turning to online social lives.

I put 2 and 2 together, and may have come up with 5, but I think all these people, we people I should say, have been bullied. Nowadays, it's just too easy for anyone to say or do pretty much anything that can completely ruin your life. Set aside the rampant, obvious drug abuse, street violence, and general crime - focus on the fact that the legal system is run by career opportunists and abused by career opportunists and all of them can run you down, "lose" you in the system, and have the balls to come down even harder on you when you question their authority.

So people have withdrawn, stopped wanting to go out and socialize. Instead, they live online, with "friends" they don't really know and on themed websites where things aren't what they seem; we've created our own fantasy worlds of sorts into which we've collectively retreated. It's not like we're all xenophobic or agoraphobic and all of that clinical-ese; we're just tired of the way the world is and we really don't want to deal with it on its terms because its terms are not beneficial to us, as individuals. We've been bullied into submission and we've withdrawn online, where we have more control over our environment.

And a lot of this comes from the "got what you deserved" mentality where everyone confuses vengeance for justice and takes the easy way out on everything. I know I've been harping on this for months now, but with Borat and my recent troubles, it's been on my mind a lot. I really think there's something to this, since we're always being told that we are 100% responsible for everything that happens to us, which any common dummy knows isn't even close to the truth. We've become a society that turns to the same handful of cliches to absolve ourselves of responsibility to our fellow man every time the issue arises.

If I walk outside my home and get hit by a meteor, that's "life"; if a guy tells me I'm signing a contract for one thing, but it turns out it's actually for something else, that's a con job! And I don't buy the idea that I should have read the whole thing and since I didn't, I "got what I deserved" - largely because most of the 11-pages are comprised of confusing legal jargon in 4-pt. fine print. And people are so tired of this mentality and this outlook - of being made to feel responsible for every bad thing that happens to them and having to "get over it" and "let it go" that they'd much rather just stay at home, where they at least feel safe and have more control; we're all so tired of everyone blaming the victim that we are refusing to live life for fear of being victimized without recourse.

And this isn't going to change until we change the way modern American society thinks. Of course, my saying that will cause most people to say I am "playing the victim" and "blaming society," which is total bullshit.

Things don't happen in a vacuum, people. If society refuses to be responsible for its individuals, then the individuals will naturally withdraw from that society and seek acceptance wherever they can find it... and a lot of sub-sects of society prey on just such people.