Perpetual seventh graders

This is something I've thought about for a while, based on what I see on my (minimal) social-media participation: It seems there is a large group of people out there who emotionally and perhaps intellectually never left seventh grade behind. You see it all the time: there's a political candidate someone dislikes, and rather than saying, "Well, here's why I disagree with this person's platform" or "Here is how I think they are drawing incorrect conclusions about the issues" the talk is about how the person looks - they're fat or they're old or they dress badly or they mispronounce one particular word and OMG how dare they? Or other people who get in the news..

And you also see it trickling down.....people are nasty and rude to other people. (How often do we see someone abusing a shopclerk or a waiter for something that is out of that employee's control?). People make nasty snarky comments online. There exist sites devoted to judging others in various ways.

I've said to myself several times these past few weeks that I should just quit all social media, that it's mostly a place where people go to express the weaker parts of their natures, and too many people get hurt. And yet, I wonder: if all the people who strive to be nice quit social media, what would become of it? And is humanity as a whole becoming more inclined to give in to the meaner, baser parts of their natures? I've seen (and heard, anecdotally) a lot of recent incidents of one person being just nasty to another that made me shake my head.

But I don't like the way people will knee-jerk judge someone. A woman posts a photo of herself and the immediate reaction from someone will be that she's too fat. And then people will pile on. Someone will suggest all fat people be sent to an island, so presumably, the "correct" people will not have to look at them. And on, and on.

And I understand that some of the nastiness is probably done sarcastically or in jest, but here's the thing: some of us are very literal-minded. Some of us have a hard time knowing what's a joke or not. And even at that, "Ha ha, just kidding" is the last resort of a scoundrel and it does not absolve someone who just said something very hurtful if they use that phrase. 

And in all of this, it is a way to, as Madeline L'Engle would probably say, "Other" the other person. Make them into an Other. And therefore, push them off, reject them, declare them Less Than and therefore fair game for....whatever. And that becomes dangerous ground.

Oh, I get it: politicians put themselves out there, some of them seem to be remarkably tin-eared in terms of how you interact with people. But I'd rather see an honest editorial explaining why Candidate X's positions or past experience makes him or her a bad choice, than tons of social media snark about, I don't know, the shoes they wear or the fact that there's a gap in their front teeth or whatever. And I also get that trying to "understand" people in some cases is not a fruitful exercise: better to fight a military enemy than to try to psychoanalyze him.


 But for the ordinary citizen....I don't know. The Othering bothers me. And yes, I openly admit, I've done it. If you look at it from the outside, you can kind of see why:

Humans are pack animals. (or tribal creatures, if you prefer). A person naturally wants to be accepted and be part of the tribe. And so if members of your tribe are ridiculing one who has trespassed what they regard as the norms of the tribe (never mind that those norms might be stupid, like, for example, the person in question is a 13 year old girl who does not own ANY designer jeans), you jump in. Because if you say something - "Hey, guys, lay off her. She's a nice person and doesn't deserve this" - you often risk winding up the target of ridicule. Sometimes even if you passively resist by not saying anything people begin to hint that, I don't know, you are somehow an ally of the group that the Other belongs to (whether that membership is real or imagined). "Ethnic-slur"-lover is a word because of this kind of thing.

And I think this kind of behavior is more common in the immature. I said "perpetual seventh grader" because for me, seventh grade was THE very lowest pit of Hell. On the worst day of my adult life, I can at least take comfort in the fact that I will never have to be thirteen again. (And as I've joked: if my beliefs are even slightly wrong and reincarnation is a thing? I'm tearing up my return ticket.) But the thing is: we get to leave being thirteen behind. We should also decide to leave behind treating people like we did when we were thirteen.

And, as I've said, I've fallen prey to it myself. I've talked before about how one of the great regrets of my early teen years is how I piled on and teased a girl who was even lower on the pecking order than I was. Looking back on it now, I find it incomprehensible: it didn't gain me any popularity and I KNEW it wouldn't. It was cruel to the girl. And yet, I did it. I don't know whether it was desiring to give back what I got on a regular basis myself (never mind that it was to a totally undeserving party) or whether I wanted some kind of thrill of feeling like I fit in, of feeling what the popular mean-girls felt when they harassed me.

And you do see it everywhere: Professors bash administrators, partly because what comes down from them isn't always explained totally or no justification is given, so it's easy for us to see it as capricious. Administrators roll their eyes over professors because some of us do sometimes behave a bit childishly when "asked" (reminded) to do tasks that we feel we are already doing. There's always going to be that tension there. But that even strikes me as slightly different than people piling on some anonymous person who happened to take a bad picture that winds up on the internet. Or any of the million ways humans seem to have of dehumanizing other humans.

And people are difficult. The good Lord knows all too well how difficult I find many people.

But I wonder, if just as the true test of freedom of speech is that you put up with speech you dislike deeply, if maybe the truest test of "Love your Neighbor" is to sigh and think "I love you, even though you aggravate me" about certain people. (And as many pastors are quick to point out: loving someone doesn't mean you're their bestest bud or that you even have to do anything with them; it is rather, not wishing ill on them, seeing them as a fellow human, and, if it comes to it, giving them help if they need it and you can give it)

I don't know. I try hard to love my neighbors. I don't always succeed. I try hard to avoid to adding to the mean snark on the internet but I don't always succeed. I think I'm going to try harder, especially on that second. 


Added later on:

Also, I think maybe being gentle, being forgiving, in some ways is more difficult than being snarky. Stopping and going, "That person may have different experience" rather than just making a joke at their expense. Again, it's the Law of the Schoolyard thing: if your buddies are picking on the kid from the wrong side of the tracks, and you stick up for him, they may well wind up lumping you in with whatever group they are characterizing him as being part of, or turning on you instead. ("Blessed are the peacemakers" (by God) because they so often catch Hell from other people).

Also, the thing with being snarky, is it allows you to skate over the surface of things. You can BE that perpetual seventh-grader, too cool for school, too cool for your teacher. Too cool to care about things. Because when you care about things - especially when you care about people - that's when you open yourself up to being hurt.

And the thing is, being gentle doesn't always mean being soft or supportive or giving way. Sometimes the hardest loving thing you have to do for a person is cut them off....or tell them how big of a problem they really seem to have....or discipline them for doing wrong. But again, if you care, you do it - because there are rules, and because often people who break the rules in some way wind up hurting themselves and others.