Many are starting to notice. and i think perhaps its time we all did.

The ever-entertaining Loki made an argument the other day. 

We need to bring back bullying in school.

The context was a discussion about the shortcomings of college graduates coming into the work environment today.  The first part of the conversation was whether the stereotype of the precious and over-coddled, self-centered college employee even had merit.  Is it real?

While not confirmed, there was enough anecdotal evidence to roll into the second part of the conversation - Why?  Lots of nominees on that one.  

And then of course, what do you about it?  How do you toughen up these vacuous laggards and emotional cripples into something that warrants being considered an adult with agency.  That was when Loki made his straight-faced argument that we need to bring back bullying in school.

It was offered with a straight face but with much laughter.  It had the vibe of A Modest Proposal in 1729 by Jonathan Swift.  The subheading to Swift's proposal being:  A Modest Proposal For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick.

And as dynamic conversations do, we rolled on from there into further and more distant points of discussion.

But I keep coming back to that idea.  Clearly there are at least some forms of bullying which we are well rid of.  Stuff out at the margin involving hazardous physical abuse and sadistic social behavior.  

But does bullying serve some greater purpose?  It's universality around the world suggests so, or at least that there is some evolutionarily beneficial aspect to it.  Have we thrown the baby out with the bathwater?

I continue to ruminate on the idea.

Then today, el gato malo has something similar.  From toughening up the buttercups by el gato malo.  

when i was a child, we had an expression:

“toughen up, buttercup.”

such sentiments seem out of keeping with “modern” ideas of childhood and child rearing and even adulthood, but i suspect that this is the source of serious problems and not the pathway past them.

when i was a gatito “so why don’t you cry about it?” was a common retort to the whiny kid, the complainer, the mewling malcontent. was it nice? perhaps not. was it kind, well not precisely. but was it needed? i would argue yes. was it vital to raising real and competent humans? yes, very probably. and is it not the unkindest cut of all to allow our progeny to sidestep the struggles that imbue strength and grow up into sissified wussballs? well yes, i suspect it really truly is.

and many are starting to notice. and i think perhaps its time we all did.

El Gato Malo heads in a somewhat different direction, a public health view in some ways, and I don't disagree.  

so let’s be clear, i’m not saying there is no such thing as mental illness or that some people and especially some children may require more than typical levels of help. of course there are.

but the idea that this issue is exploding and increasingly becoming the norm and that somehow wide swathes or even majorities of the population require pharmaceutical intervention in their mental states is one that i think is deeply dangerous.

37 million americans take anti-depressants.

who knows how many are taking anti anxiety drugs and adderall and who knows what else.

feel bad? not your fault! it’s a disease. here, take a pill!

(never mind that these treatments do not, on balance, actually work)

this bizarre modern fixation upon the idea that all difficulties are pathologies and that no one ever had a hard time or found life confusing or adolescence disorienting and that everyone needs to be medicated has become a full blown mental illness of its own.

it’s not the people who are sick.

it’s a severe societal problem and likely a symptom of a society that’s broken.

a lot of this is a normal reaction to abnormal situations and deprivations.

and it’s time we start looking at taking another path. 

But then he comes back to the argument I would make.  There is a cognitive, linguistic and socializing process which occurs in the early years, particularly 0-6 and stretching out into the teens.  These are known to be critical years.  If a child is not exposed to language, they can lose the capacity to learn language.  If they are not exposed to normal human interactions, they can suffer behavioral deficits.  If they are not exposed to cognitive stimulation they can suffer permanent developmental outcomes.

And these aren't just matters of delay.  If the exposures and experiences do not occur in the time frames of neurological, physical and social development, there can be permanent loss of capacity.  

What if bullying is one of those exposures (within limits) which everyone needs to experience in order to develop one's true and full capacities?  There is a logic to that argument (El Gato Malo develops some of it). 

Obviously there is a link in here as well to Nassim Nicholas Taleb's argument in Anti-Fragile.  From Wikipedia:

Antifragility is a concept of systems developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in which they increase in capability to thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures. An example of Antifragilaty would be the hydra from Greek mythology. If you cut off one head, two will take its place. Similarly, the concept of antifragile is that when you break it it grows back stronger than before.

In our well-intended humanity to eliminate the grotesqueness of extreme bullying, have we thrown the baby out with the bathwater?  Is this another instance of Chesterton's fence? Just because we do not understand something we don't like does not mean it does not serve some larger beneficial purpose.