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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33387 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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I guess. There could be a noblesse oblige for those at the top, but so much of our society is predicated on catering to the bottom already.

Further, it incentivizes the worst kind of bullying — cry bulling.

Pretty sure the worst kind of bullying would be the sort that leads to death (by own hand or otherwise) or permanent physical damage.

The 'catering' we do for the bottom is caused by the meritocratic view, however. Believing that every ghetto-denizen and backwoods hick is just a temporarily-embarrassed email worker is a direct result of ignoring the fundamental differences between people. Our current system is built around trying to pretend the bottom is "really" just like the top, while shunning anything that's actually 'bottom-ish.' Proper recognition of natural differences means that we can accept that no, most of the bottom has very different ways of thinking than those at the top, and will never be the same.

The same goes with cry bullying. It only works because privileged people are able to pretend that they're not. Proper noblesse oblige means that the privileged are held to higher standards.

Yeah. But I guess...I think that a lot of middle class schools have gone too soft. Take stuff like zero-tolerance. It'd be a good idea to have at least a cursory attempt to find out who started it...if Bully punches Victim and Victim grows a pair and decides to fight back they both eat a suspension. Incentives are all fucked up.

So too: we've got stuff like...1) people crapping on someone that doesn't shower, calling them Stinky or some shit like that. They can probably fix that problem, and if they can't there are larger issues at play. Then you've got shit like 2) assholes bullying a kid on crutches by repeatedly kicking his crutches out from under him and causing him to fall. These are not the same.

I've heard stories of things that are closer to 2)...Tonya Harding tier shit where a bunch of jealous guys ganged up on a star football player, punching him when no one was looking and eventually pushing him down a flight of stairs. Guy broke his leg, but returned to football the next year.

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