Sgt.Bosco ‘B.A.’ Baracus: “Victory attained by violence is tantamount to defeat, for it is momentary.”
Col. Hannibal Smith: “Gandhi”, (nods) “It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.”
Baracus: Who said that?
Hannibal: Same guy
(from the film The A-team)
It might as well be blasphemy to not mention the fact that this is from a movie about four military guys. Ironically, the most aggressive of the four turned to religion and nonviolence in prison. The above dialogue is one of the most resonant in an otherwise light hearted, quite hilarious movie. It rather succinctly puts across the conflict we still feel today when it comes to violence.
On one hand, we’re holding a rainbow coloured flag decorated with peace symbols, but on the other, we sport a katana, or a broadsword, or a light sabre, or a pistol, or a grenade, or… well, you get the idea. We’ve become increasingly tolerant of some things, but at the other end of the spectrum, there are those who are increasingly intolerant of others – it seems odd, doesn’t it, that we can accept homosexuality, (which is great), but not someone who has an old model of a laptop, or out-of-fashion clothing. Why does it matter so much that my spectacles are the simpler, more practical kind, rather than the large, in fashion, ‘nerd specs’? The irony isn’t lost on me, that I’m the ‘nerdy’ one (And proud of it!), while the others are the ones rampant on Instagram and Tumblr and whatnot.
Bullying, the norm
In the case of younger children, there is nothing short of outright bullying. The kid with the Star Wars backpack and the extensive vocabulary is definitely not the cool kid whom everyone loves. That would probably be the football star. If the quiet guy decides to come out of his shell and make a joke, he’s laughed at, not with, or just ignored. But if a certain popular person makes the exact same joke a minute later, he’s automatically voted class clown. The metal head girl is a basket case, while the ‘Swifty’ is the most popular girl in the grade.
And it’s not enough that the different ones are also the uncool ones, but they’re also teased and bullied, just because they’re that way. Whatever happened to being different, but equal? That philosophy probably went out of fashion around the same time flip phones did.
But we conform, because it’s obviously the safer option. And what’s the alternative? Being on the bad side of a bunch of teenagers is right up there with ‘locked in a cage with hungry lions’ on the list of top situations you’d much rather avoid. Discretion is the better part of not getting your lunch money stolen.
A chilling thought is that these popular and explicitly hostile kids are the ones who are going to be running the country a few years from now. Are these type of people really the ones we want in charge of things? What if their parents aren’t around to tell them that passive aggressive, snarky comments are not going to work? We’d get hit by a nuke just so the enemy country could have the satisfaction of shutting them up. We could always hope that they’ll mellow over time and realise the world doesn’t revolve around them, but can we guarantee it? Is that enough to make your blood run cold? It’s alright, they’ll probably get mature when they grow up a bit. Probably.
We live in a generation in which we’re exposed to violence in the most innocuous of ways. Take Tom and Jerry; is there a teen alive, who hasn’t envisioned the expression on their friend’s face enshrouded in pie? The image still incites chuckles in the mind of everyone who imagines it (whether they admit or not). Actually, it’s not even the teenagers anymore; there are plenty of grade school bullies who aren’t being kept in line, because they’re just so cute. We’ve gone from moody teens to moody twelve-year-olds to moody primary schoolers. As we grow up, the violence becomes not only more extreme, but also more diverse. From Game of Thrones to Assassin’s Creed, we see violence just about everywhere. I wonder how the aliens would feel if they came here and saw the hundreds of movies we have of us killing them.
The idea of violence
Bottom line, everyone needs violence, or at least ideas of it to vent their frustration. From nerds to jocks, to the popular girls to the invisible kids or the knuckleheads of the class, everyone needs their rants or their venting sessions – which ranges from throwing your favourite childhood stuffed toy against the wall, to punching your pillow, or just annoying your younger sibling.
Most of these are normal, even healthy, but there’s always someone who’ll replace the pillow with a person…
Though it may be inaccurate to assume that children become more violent themselves if they see or are exposed to violence on television or in books, all that anger has to come from somewhere. It seems entirely possible that we get it from each other. The smallest of things can start a chain reaction of anger, forming an endless cycle of anger and misunderstanding. Take, for example, a student. Let’s call her ‘A’. Now, A is a good kid- smart, decent grades, doesn’t get into too much trouble. But A has a problem- student B. B considers every moment not spent making A’s life miserable a moment wasted (sound familiar?) Usually, A can deal with this and tries to stay out of B’s way. But one day B gets to her. A goes home angry, and takes it out on her unsuspecting mother, who’s only trying to help; needless to say, that does not go well. A’s mother, frustrated and angry herself, vents her feelings by yelling at the housekeeper. And so on, and so forth. It seems almost amazing how one person’s immature teasing could affect so many others. A little goes a long way, and somehow people don’t seem to realise that that is true for negative things as well. While, all the people involved were probably justified in their anger, it could also have been easily avoided.
Maybe it’s time we understood how to deal with this kind of thing. Maybe it’s time we took the Zen approach, and just decided to not retaliate. It takes just one person to break the cycle, just one person to stop a projectile hate pie. Though sometimes, you can’t avoid confrontation, sometimes it is even necessary. In these situations, the smartest thing to do would be to pick your battles; and let’s face it, you can’t win every time. And even then, a little humour can never go amiss. In fact, it may be the best way to handle the problem. But mainly, just remember that the next person in the proverbial chain probably doesn’t deserve the anger you can cause them. You probably didn’t either, but that’s not something you can help anyway. Just inhale, exhale, and go to your happy place.
Elsa said it right- Let it go!
