MovieBob said:
Magneto Was Right
This week, Bob looks at what it's like to be "different."
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An interesting look into our escapist reactions to bullying. I think really, perhaps unintentionally, you've hit on the very heart of bullying, when you get right down to it:
Bullying is the act of forcing someone else to engage you in a domain in which you know you have the advantage, for the purposes of demonstrating your superiority and exerting control. This is often (but not always) fueled by frustration with an area of a person's life in which
they feel inferior, or that control is being exerted over them. (NOTE: This is not intended to excuse bullying in any way)
The most overt and easy type of bullying is, of course, physical. Bigger kid picks on smaller kid. Why? Because bigger kid is better at... being bigger. So, big kid can force little kid to eat bugs and dirt, or take his lunch money. It is hard to counteract this type of bullying because:
1) It's easy to do. Just be bigger and/or stronger.
2) It requires little effort. There are plenty of readily-available targets to choose from.
3) It is hard for the target to escape.
(The only ways to address it are by avoidance, which is difficult in settings like school, or by meeting with like force. And, of course, the reason you were chosen as a target is because
that is unlikely to go well for you.)
But there are other types of bullying, and all work the same way. You pick something you are good at doing. You pair yourself up with someone who is not good at it. You show them who's boss, forcing them to admit (by word or deed) your superiority.
Where the geek/nerd crowd meets with frustration is that it is far more difficult to force someone to engage you on an intellectual battlefield if they don't want to. Physically, you can block someone from leaving a room... but intellectually? It's just not as concrete. This promotes the feeling of powerlessness in the Geeks--they are forced to face their own inferiority in the physical domain, but are not given equal opportunity to demonstrate their superiority in the intellectual domain.
So instead, we concoct fantastical means
by which our own advantages become translated into our "enemy's" domain. My brains
become a proportionate amount of brawn, allowing me to "beat you at your own game," since I don't have the opportunity to beat you at
mine. Of course, we also keep our brains, and we don't give our enemy the same fantastical exchange... which is why heroes are usually smart
and strong, while villains are just one or the other.
A lot of the superhero mythos revolves around the struggle between Will and Force--or intellectual strength and physical strength. Pretty interesting stuff.
