I recall an incident that took place at school when I was about 14 years old. As I’ve stated here before, I was a bookworm all throughout my school years. One of the jocks, a thick-headed fellow who was just as enamored with his biceps and his barrel chest as he was with the sawdust factory between his forehead and the nape of his neck, was carrying out his daily routine of demonstrating how vice-like his hands were when he had the head of a student like me in them. Being the Professor that I was, I challenged him as to why he found such pleasure in bullying. He unleashed a few insults on me, much to the delight of his ilk, other jocks. I responded with an insult of my own, and surprisingly, instead of pounding me, he got all serious and told me conspriratorily, “Ya caint say nuthin’ li’ dat ta me.” I wondered what strange Bizarro World I had landed on, and asked him why not. After all, I told him, he and his kind said stuff like that every day, so they should be able to take it. He answered that it was different because when he and his insulted someone, they could back up their words with their fists, a nerd like me could not. I didn’t understand it, I thought it made no sense whatsoever, nor was it fair. We have not yet arrived at my epiphany.
Sometime shortly later, I was at home with my sister who is 11 years younger than I am. Being the baby of the family, she was utterly spoiled, and anything that I did that she whined about was automatically a cardinal sin in my mother‘s eyes. Even at age 3, she could already sense what power that gave her, and she played it to the hilt. On the day in question, and forgive me because with the passage of time I don’t remember this verbatim, but some type of sniping was going on between she and I, when she said something to me to which I took exception and I told her, “You can’t say that to me.” She responded, “Why not? You say it to me all the time.” I found myself saying to her, “I’m older, so when I say it, I can back it up, you can’t.” Epiphany! I immediately reflected on the school bully and his point. I had not understood it when he said it, but I suddenly found myself in that sane mindset. Might makes right is what it told me. I looked at myself, hanging up on a 3-year-old girl JUST BECAUSE I COULD. A change came over me that day, and I started my treating my little sister better, treat other people better, but I also began to look at power-based interactions between people with a more critical and more mature eye. I didn’t become any kind of perfect person overnight as a result of it, and I didn’t solve all the world’s problems, but I did incrementally work on me.
Unrelated to story one above, here’s story two. At about age 16, I experienced what I consider to be akin to a religious epiphany, or more accurately, an enlightenment. It was both a mental and physical awakening that made certain concepts of spiritual importance reveal themselves to me. Since I had been a toddler, the Baptist religion had been a part of my life, church attendance was a regular part of my family life, and I had a rudimentary working knowledge of The Word of God commiserate with my age. On that day, however, it was like scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fell into place for me, and first of all in my chest, but then all throughout my body, I felt tangible something unnamed and unnameable surge through me. I know that there are some people on this website who have viscerally opposing viewpoints on the topics of religion and spirituality, such to the point that they constantly make condescending remarks about believers, so I won’t elaborate further on what it means to me. I’ll just suffice it to say that personally, I experienced something meaningful to me.
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Whew! I’m glad I read that, and for many reasons. In no particular order:
Often when someone poses an insightful question here, I winder what that same person’s answer is to his or her own question. You have satisfied that with your answer here.
I think my religious epiphany is a personal and intimate entity that I can neither fully explain to others nor would I want to. It’s far too deep in its meaning to me that to even attempt further revelation would be like self-betrayal. All too often, religious and/or spiritual ideals are challenged or derided, especially by those who oppose them or are adamantly non-believers. Even religious or spiritual people of other faiths or other sects clash with people who believe certain ways. I am not accusing you personally of being such a challenger, please understand me in that.
Just prior to reading what you have written here above, I read your response to the tongue-in-cheek question about how one “calibrated” Christmas. I was thoroughly tickled by your response there. Additionally, putting it together with what you wrote here, and with things you’ve written in the past about your husband Ari, his good and bad points, your sister and the struggles she’s presented to you, your parents both collectively and apart, your circle of friends both current and past, your neighbors, your gatherings, your upbringing, your school years, your likes and interests, your choices in reading, your diet, your dedication to animals, your home, your take on sense of humor, your curiosity about things and people, your peacefulness, and your life’s journey in general. What I came away with was a clearer vision of Mannaism. It’s both wonderfully revealing and revealingly sad. It carries hope and promise, along with cautionary reflection and affirming teaching moments. It’s gut-wrenching (to think that the world would have lost you if you had carried out your demise at your own hand) and breathtakingly relieving to see the path that leaves you here among us today. I believe you seek neither pity nor sorrow, I don’t see that in your nature. To write as you do must be both therapeutic and relieving for you, and by doing it, those same two elements are bestowed on the reader. Lol, when you write, you truly emit.
Might makes right. My take on the concept is far less altruistic and far less benevolent than the way you surmised it might mean. By its very nature, bullying is a lopsided power system that relies on tangible or intangible force that the aggressor employs or hordes over the oppressed. It carries with it no semblance of fairness or righteousness, just the threat of danger and harm imposed to strike fear, not respect. Periodic examples of the flexed muscle are required to maintain its goals, feats which the antagonists are quite cheerful to carry out. On the case of the average schoolyard bulky, the paradox is that by physical strength and infliction of cruelty, there is quite often a missing element that must be silently acknowledged: “I can beat the crap out of you, dweeb, but you’re smarter than I am [and I envy that].” Personally, I found this to be true in second grade, when Mark B. practically ordered me to do his daily classwork or he’d pound me into the magma. Out of fear, I did it the first time, but deeper fear of getting caught and getting punished by the teacher I respected (along with facing my mother and stepfather) overrode his balled fist, and I sort of stood up to him on the second day. In a stammer with my bladder wrapped around my spleen in a slipknot, I mumbled and reasoned with him that we‘d both get caught. He bought it, miraculously, and never bothered me again. Part and parcel of my aversion to suborning cheating was the infatuating crush I had on his half-sister Rochelle, who was on the same class that we were in. But I’m rambling; back on topic. You see, in “might makes right”, the word right is not an acknowledgement that the correct thing is being done, quite the opposite. It’s akin to the “they do it because they can do it”, or “who’s going to stop them”. Bullying creates its own screwy sense of right and wrong, both turned on their heads fueled by the fear the bully draws from the toolbox. Whether a schoolyard or neighborhood grocery store beset on by extortionist Serling seeking protection money or the large country with advanced technology/industry/military might meaning on a smaller country/countries or the bank robber with the gun jammed in the face of the trembling teller or the convicted prisoner preying on the “new fish”, might makes right has less to do with the proper application of power, and all to do with its misapplication. Thuggery and intimidation at its their best.
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Randy D 