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It's extremely common in the animal (incl. human) world to seek dominance. In cultures where physical domination is rewarded, you have violence to establish the
by SiVal 13y ago
It's extremely common in the animal (incl. human) world to seek dominance. In cultures where physical domination is rewarded, you have violence to establish the dominance. In cultures where intellectual dominance is rewarded, you have more expressions of contempt for "stupid" people. When you have a diverse group, you have the strong beating up the weak and the smart verbally humiliating the dumb. It's not complicated. It's about public status and privately making yourself feel superior.
Blaming it on class and gender roles is one of those things that urban intellectuals do to maintain their status among urban intellectuals. Maybe he should analyze it from a Marxist-feminist perspective for good measure.
- afshin 13y ago"Blaming it on class and gender roles is one of those things that urban intellectuals do to maintain their status among urban intellectuals. Maybe he should analyze it from a Marxist-feminist perspective for good measure." I don't suppose the irony of this statement escaped you.
- dasil003 13y agoIt's escaping me. He said "for good measure". Where is the irony?
- James_Duval 13y agoHis comment exhibits anti-intellectual posturing.
- psutor 13y agoIt's actually anti-urban-intellectual posturing, suggesting that the comment author is on a higher level intellectually. I had a good laugh at both the joke itself and that the telling of the joke is an act of "verbally humiliating the dumb".
- brazzy 13y agoIt's domination-posturing all the way down!
- James_Duval 13y agoOh, I think I saw a different irony to you -- I saw the comment as an act of verbal aggression towards the author of the article on the grounds that the author was being too academic. The author of an article about geeks being bullied, not because they were too academic, but because they were seen as being of a different class. I prefer your interpretation to be honest, but clearly there is enough irony for everyone.
- pekk 13y agoI agree with your exact wording: applying Marxist theory to everything is exactly 'more academic' in the sense that it is an artifact of fashion in educational institutions. It isn't actually 'more intellectual' because it is content-free, being equally applicable to everything, and brings little or no insight to any topic outside of economics. Taking this criticism as validation of Marxist analysis (or accusing the critic of bullying, etc.) is cheap and pointless, like Freudians answering criticism of a weak Freudian analysis by saying the critic is only criticizing due to reaction formation. If we disallow this kind of criticism then we are validating every kind of posturing. Not everything anyone says can be correct and it isn't bullying or snobbery to say so. It's not even personal.
- James_Duval 13y agoI'm not sure what exactly you're responding to, here, but I'm certainly not disallowing this kind of criticism or claiming that the top-level comment validates Marxist analysis because it's poorly thought-out. I don't use Marxist analysis myself, at least not deliberately (I am not myself an academic), either. I don't know what you mean by: >content-free, being equally applicable to everything and I think that: >brings little or no insight to any topic outside of economics ignores the fact that a large amount of history, culture and contemporary society has been profoundly shaped by economics. >Not everything anyone says can be correct and it isn't bullying or snobbery to say so. It's not even personal. Yes. There are a lot of things I agree with in your post, the problem is that they are "equally applicable to everything", so I feel like I've joined an argument halfway through, and I have no idea what you are responding to or why.
- crdoconnor 13y agoI'm just waiting for him to give the atlantic a wedgie.
- VLM 13y ago"When you have a diverse group, you have the strong beating up the weak and the smart verbally humiliating the dumb." Anecdotal evidence, which I have not been able to disprove so far, is its more like in a diverse group, people who don't follow the "greek golden mean" tend to get pounded down for not being diverse. Lets rephrase the original article as "kid who hyperfocuses on art gets pounded by kids who do some sport, some TV, some movies, some socializing, etc". For another anecdote no surprise I did a heck of a lot of computer "stuff", but also did weightlifting and long distance bicycling and also hung out with the kids who joined the .mil (at least back then, we all hung out together in later high school years), I also hung out with the geeks and the heavy metal kids (who were actually pretty cool), no problemo with bullying for me... I'd see kids who did nothing but ace math all day have a rough time of it. Or kids who did nothing but pick their nose all day have a rough time. The correlation seems to be if only one word description fits, gonna have a rough time.
- gradstudent 13y agoYou did weightlifting? So you were a pretty big kid? That, probably more than anything else, helped you to not be bullied.
- James_Duval 13y agoI was a tall, strong, athletic teenager and I was certainly bullied. This is partly why I'm concerned about the strong vs weak/natural order talk going on here. I don't think it's that simple.
- gradstudent 13y agoI'm not trying to make a point involving absolutes but I noticed, among my peer group anyway, that size and fitness is inversely proportional with the amount of attention a kid receives from bullies. Certainly there can be other factors -- I think bullying is primarily the result of social ostracism, which can have many causes -- but it's much easier to pick on people you do not perceive as a serious threat.
- 13y ago