In Philip K. Dick’s novel A Maze of Death, doomed space travelers while away their time living through bizarre adventure scenarios in an advanced virtual reality system. Everything seems real, with their actual circumstances and previous virtual trips temporarily forgotten. Only after emerging from the system can the travelers realize their actual situation again and discuss and analyze what they experienced in this super-enriched game. From scenario to scenario, however, one thing becomes apparent: each of these folks will repeatedly kill or engage in abhorrent behavior given enough provocation, and the provocation is often slight.
Dick implies that none of them, or us, has the true wherewithal to show real “moral” restraint. We are simply not sufficiently trained or educated to stop ourselves given a novel situation that might cause us to violently respond to even the verbal provocation of others. Any preparation or training has been slapdash and haphazard and based on practical principles of avoiding violence at any cost. The novel also implies we cannot easily resist the temptations of personal desire when there is no threat of immanent punishment. In the novel, characters do not even develop a sense of restraint after feeling remorse for, and analyzing, their actions. Cue Will Smith smacking Chris Rock.
Boys are not really given the inner tools to show restraint when verbally provoked. Think also of Zidane. A guy called his sister a prostitute and Zidane physically attacked him. The argument against doing this does not address the emotional whirlwind and upheaval the offended guy deals with.
But looking at the Oscar debacle broadly we can also see that those around us who provide the social context for such a volatile situation are not primed to intercede or defuse the unfortunate response many of us feel obligated to return to an act of verbal malice. One might even further argue that in attacking a malicious actor in defense of a victim (e.g. a husband attacking a cad who insulted his wife), the moral, outraged and indignant attacker misperceives the psychological vulnerability of the victim he is protecting. Perhaps, as callous as it might sound, a guy’s sister or wife might simply shrug an offense off, but the chivalrous avenger of a woman’s honor imagines the woman will be seriously hurt by hostile words. In regard to the Smith debacle, it looks as if he takes the ribbing by Rock toward his wife in a good-natured way until seeing the hurt look on his wife’s face. This is his cue to action.
This is, of course, a good man’s nightmare. It is a lose-lose situation that will not shield the guy from criticism or reproach either way. On the one hand, if the guy just sits there, he might be accused of cowardice. This will leave him open to further insults and attacks as some will perceive him to be too weak to defend himself or others he cares for. On the other hand, if he smacks the offender, he will be berated for acting in a violent manner while the other guy was “just talking”. There does not seem to be any socially worked out correct answer or response for this nightmare. There has never been a moral way out of this situation effectively articulated. It is assumed a guy can easily control his emotions after years of social prodding and rewards based on the fact that everyone seems to secretly hope a guy smacks another guy who is asking for it.
Each of us aspiring to good men status just has to pray that some callow bozo does not come along and put us in this situation because, again, there is no good answer that has been given or taught to us for this dilemma. John Rawls pointed out that those of us considered to be moral have often been more lucky than moral. Will Smith was exceedingly unlucky. What can we do to ensure that someone in this situation can handle himself properly? As a teacher, I also wonder what we can say to our students who continually strike out at others based on verbal provocation just like Will Smith. I have seen this throughout my career on the playgrounds and in the classrooms of my schools. We have to work out an answer and it has to deal with the emotions pushing us to react violently. Some truth to these emotions must be spoken. Some transformative insight to vaporize these emotions must be gleaned. The Zidane fiasco was not used as a teachable moment and I only drag this situation out and air it once more (not another Will Smith Oscars article!) because this public teachable moment should not be missed either.
Ironically, confounding this situation, there is the tangible fact of deterrence. Many folks secretly hope you smack a guy who insults others because it will stop other guys from doing the same thing. This is, probably, why this situation does not happen more often and we do not have buttheads literally running around continually insulting our mothers, sisters, wives, spouses, friends and daughters. Most guys do not insult another man’s wife because there is a strong possibility, and maybe even social expectation, that the husband will belt the guy.
Rock must have thought himself safe, standing on a stage several meters away from Smith. He must have been surprised by how quickly that wall between actor and audience can be breached. When the threat of deterrence is removed, when the man is thought incapable of taking violent physical action, the likelihood of this scenario probably increases dramatically. So can we completely and totally blame Smith for doing his part to sustain the deterrence that might just stop some loudmouth in the future from verbally attacking an innocent woman because of how she looks during medical treatment? Frankly, we all believe deterrence works. This is why we throw tens of thousands of people in jails each year. If you hurt someone for doing something wrong, you believe the likelihood of him doing something wrong again decreases. Where, however, is the public, teachable, non-violent deterrence to deal with what Rock said or to stop Rock from maliciousness in the first place or to stop Smith in the second place?
Further compounding the situation is that in these situations we seem to forgive the instigator while excoriating the avenger, although the avenger has felt the social pressure to strike back his whole life. The provocateur becomes the innocent victim. Will Smith may not attend an Oscar event for the next 10 years. Chris Rock is free to verbally abuse women with medical conditions in perpetuity. Why can there be no forgiveness for Will Smith, who was never adequately taught what to do in this type of situation, because we as a society have not developed the humane values needed to fully address something like this? Ironically, the punishment and deterrence to ensure this never happens again at the Oscars is directed at Smith and not Rock. Would it not seem more reasonable to dig at this problem at the source? So, what should we do?
First, we have to deal with the social scenario and we have to prime ourselves for intercession. After Bill Cosby was arrested for rape, a recording of a live show from the past was discovered in which he joked about using drugs to put women to sleep so that they could be raped. The audience stupidly laughs along with repugnant jokes about drugging and raping women.
When Rock mocked a woman with a medical condition for how she looked, people laughed as well. Is it too difficult for us to morally discern hateful and malevolent humor? As a social audience we have to be primed and ready to boo. We have to be ready to yell out, “Wait a minute – that was wrong.”
Let’s say you are at a little get together and a man gets drunk and verbally abusive toward another guy’s wife. If you do nothing a confrontation will escalate. This is the time others have to step in and escort the guy out the door. We have to learn how to be a diffusive audience. We must diffuse situations in order to relieve the pressure to engage in violence from the aggrieved party. The hypocritical audience at the Oscars, now behind the punishment of Will Smith, laughed at an innocent woman causing this woman to grimace causing her husband to jump into action because nobody had ever taught him to do otherwise. Take away the thoughtlessness of the audience and you remove the perceived need for violence on the part of Smith, although this in no way, shape or form justifies what he did.
This next suggestion may seem callous, but perhaps the female victims in these attacks need to be perceived as being capable of disregarding ignorant and malicious insults. Maybe women do not really need men to jump in there and get blood for them. Maybe we can imagine women as being mature enough to shrug such crud off. When Jada Pinkett Smith flashed her hurt look at Will Smith, perhaps he could have said, “You’re brave, you’re strong. I love you. We’ll get him during the press conference after I win my Oscar. I’m upset too, but we have to do this the right way.”
So, I wrote about an audience diffusing situations and the need for reimagining the “victims” one wants to defend. Finally, we have to ask: Is there a good way for a guy to handle this type of situation? How does one deal with the emotional tumult and confusion which prods one to violent action after verbal abuse? One has to realize, first of all, there are always choices for our actions and violence must be taken completely off the table. This message is not being articulated strongly enough in our society. Secondly, there must be recourse for the offended party – there must be fairness. If a student comes to his teacher and reports verbal abuse or provocation, he must be shown that there is a possibility for justice. The need to take things into one’s own hands must become unnecessary. I do not feel we have focused enough on this – it took Columbine before folks took bullying seriously enough, now we need to realize how deeply hurt young people are by their peers through “mere” words. This is not a small thing.
The initial aggressor must be punished or admonished. Will Smith did not provide adequate time for Rock to be punished, and now that Rock is playing the role of a victim, he will not be punished. He will blithely walk away from an instance of verbal abuse against a woman with a medical condition and Smith will suffer ridicule.
Finally, to help boys and men handle this type of situation, we must encourage an acknowledgment that these emotions exist, and that we have an obligation to examine and not deny them; they are real. We must not treat them as inevitable, however; we have to question them and speak the truth to them. They are the cause of violence and harm. We must ask ourselves why we feel these emotions so strongly, what is their source, what is their secret that we need to crack so that we can better control our actions and possibly respond to a malicious statement as it should be responded to – with pity and compassion for the person who feels the need to bring more harm into the world.
I imagine a world and an Oscars’ ceremony where 1) buttheads do not insult women suffering from medical ailments, because people within the social context will not tolerate it; 2) loved ones really will not care what idiots say about them; and 3) men cannot be moved to violence through moral outrage, but can look at and dismiss emotional motives that do not resolve problems. This type of holistic approach is better than dumping everything on a good man’s shoulders and telling him to behave.
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