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For the first time in my life, I'm starting to think we need childhood bullying. I am continually astonished by the cruelty of other people, often practiced under the pretense of standing up to bullies. It's like these people don't actually know what it's like to be on the other end. If they did, wouldn't they be more sympathetic?
So, what if we need childhood bullying to prevent adulthood bullying? Perhaps people need to learn at a young age how it feels to be a victim so they don't become the victimizer as an adult?
Of course, maybe being mistreated doesn't cause people to sympathize with others who are mistreated. But I've never seen anyone make this argument, at least prescriptively, so I figured I should, so I can see how people would argue against it.
I don't see any reason to expect that all people subject to childhood bullying will have a uniform reaction to it. Surely some people subject to it will come away more empathetic for people in symmetric situations. Undoubtedly others will come away thinking such behavior is normal and appropriate, the only problem is to make sure you are not the one on the receiving end.
There's also something of a question of the sustainability of this practice. Say we have cohort C_0, whom all are bullied as children. As a result of this bullying they all sympathize with the victims of bullying and will not bully another person. Where do we get the people to bully some future cohort C_1, so they will develop the same sympathy? Do we teach the people in C_0 that, actually, they need to bully the people in C_1 because the bullying is ultimately for the good of the people in C_1? So childhood bullying is Good Actually? That seems like quite the opposite of the message we wanted to send!
While I am not the biggest fan of arguments about how people need to be bullied more, I take issue with your assumption that
This doesn’t match my model of how “bullying” and related behavior works. Otherwise, for instance, no frats would have hazing rituals for the pledges, because after the first pledge class joined the frat, they’d all sympathize with the next pledge class and swear never to put them through what they themselves went through. More generally, cf. theories about the “cycle of abuse”.
I agree, I was adopting the assumption of the OP I was replying to for the purpose of illustrating the issue of perpetuating the model. I think frats and related hazing are excellent examples for "some people who are bullied come to see it as normal behavior to inflict on others."
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