Apology and Authority

The Age of the Bully

When someone says:

“Can't you take a joke? Sorry if your feelings were hurt.”

“I'm a truth-teller. Sorry if you can't take it.”

Here is what they mean.

“Please accept my deeply insincere apology.”

“If you were as mature, mentally strong, and accepting as I am you would not have been offended, but I should have taken your emotional weakness into account. It isn't easy, being as powerful and truthful as I am. I often crush my inferiors without intending to. Again, sorry.”

“Your insufficient sense of humor, caused by your crippling self-esteem issues caused you to take my harmless joke as an insult. Since I am a person of a more durable caliber than you, I don't have to care about hurting your too-fragile feelings, but I will condescend on this one occasion to give you this valuable piece of advice - “Get over it.”

“I have prodigally spent my time and effort, which is far more valuable than your fragile feelings, to teach you a lesson, which is what your betters should do for and to you. Shut up and take it, you pansy, you sissy. Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself!”

Bullies commonly blame their victims for being bullied. The victims need to be “toughened up” for the “real world,” or need to stop being “weird.” This doesn't change much from the playground to be boardroom, or probably, the nursing home. The instruments of bullying usually change from fists to words, from taunts to backstabbing and sarcasm, but this remains constant – the bully sees themselves as reality's enforcer – teaching “lessons” to their lessers.

This fits neatly with the authoritarian worldview, which sees social reality as a great chain of repression and tribute. Everyone has their place in the chain, and is obligated to pay obeisance to those above, while keeping everyone below them “in their place.” The view of most authoritarians, especially religious ones, is apocalyptic; if those lower on the chain insist on acting above their station, society itself will collapse into anarchy.

“Kiss up and kick down” is not just a sadistic pleasure to an authoritarian, it is a sacred duty. Repression down and obedience up is the only way that society can function. It is “realistic.”

This is why the schoolyard bully you remember so vividly decades later was not restrained by the school officials that were supposed to be protecting you. Most of them were certain of two things: first, that you need to “work on fitting in,” knowing your place, and that the bully was “teaching” an important lesson: “life isn't fair.” That's just “realistic.”

It is not, of course, realistic in any objective sense. Life isn't fair because we learn to tolerate unfairness.

Authoritarian thought allows only two roles – the torturer and the tortured, the exploiter and the exploited. Any resistance will be punished. It is not just rebellious to “buck the system,” it is rank heresy. In the view of the authoritarian, a great light radiates down the chain from above – be it from god, if the authoritarian is of the religious type, from the great leader if they are fascists, or from the gilded rich if they are capitalists. The view of those at the top is superior to those below them. God, or merit, or destiny put the highly placed where they are, and to doubt it is to doubt, god, the great, destined leader, or the most ruthless deity of all, the “free market.”

The response I often heard in my coal mining, chemical plant poisoned town when I was a child in response to some obvious injustice was, “God is on his throne,” implying that to resist unfairness was to resist their god's great plan. “Life isn't fair,” the unofficial credo of authoritarianism, puts unfairness as a necessary axiom of life itself. They never ask, “why not?” or “how can we make it fairer?” They not only believe that life can be fairer, they don't want it to be fairer. The suffering should accept their lot, and the privileged should maintain their privilege, by any means necessary.

This is accepted by those who have spent their lives with the gilded heel on their neck because they believe in the great chain of authority. They have been raised, and educated to believe “that's just they way it is.” The only way it can be. Resistance, or even discontent has always been punished, by the boss, the preacher, the parent and the bully. They make their submission into an act of courage and self-sacrifice. It is noble to submit in silence. It is nobler still to be shot down on a battlefield, or suffocated in a mine, or mangled in a factory. Or to simply suffer, living a tenuous life at the edge of poverty, ready to be thrown to the bottom because someone further up the chain decided, that despite all their sacrifice, the company could make another dime on their stock price by moving your job to somewhere where the workers can be more efficiently exploited.

Just your bad luck, I guess. Life isn't fair. God is on his throne.

We live in a time when the authoritarian, the bully, is ascendant. When a society advances technologically, without advancing in wisdom and duty to others, we merely create more efficient exploitation and oppression.

It is not a simple or easy thing to resist. For standing up to the bullies, you will be punished. You will be called useless, or worse. Few will understand, or dare to support you. There will be many attempts to “put you in your place.” But if you break from the chain of authoritarian illusion, and free a few others, life is a little fairer for you, and for them.

It will be for you to decide if it's worth it.