American Ijime

by Tom Creasing

         The shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado are a tragedy for any number of reasons; the personal tragedy of the young people injured and killed after they had trusted others to make the world safe for them; the social tragedy of a community losing so many people; and the political tragedy that will come from the fallout as calls go out again for more rights to be abolished or restricted, "for the children."
         One of the more interesting aspects, though, from a comfortable academic distance is the way these sorts of incidents always seem to crop up during debates on the issue. Colorado, like many other states, is currently legislating on the issue of firearms and whether the Powers That Be will graciously permit the inhabitants of that state to go unmolested by armed gangs of badgers in the event that those inhabitants choose to carry, concealed, the tools of victim-avoidance. Now, a reasonable person might conclude that upright individuals carrying concealed firearms might help to avert situations like that shooting -- after all, how often do these nutcases go shooting up police stations or military posts? Such is not the case, though, and the victim disarmament mob is already gearing up its sob machine, pretending that by keeping honest people from having guns that criminals will also forego same -- or some Alician logic like that, I can never quite keep it straight.
         Shortly after I learned of this shooting I emailed a friend saying, essentially, "now what?" His response, edited for brevity, suggested that we should be "demanding that Wellington Webb and Bill Clinton prove they didn't stage this thing." Given the convenience and coincidence of this event that is certainly one interesting demand but I demurred, replying, "I sincerely doubt they did ... My guess is that you're looking at a classic example of Japanese "ijime" (organized bullying) combined with American "anomie" (a disconnectedness with and deterioration of society)."
         The ultimate evolution of human society is the recognition of the individual -- individual rights, individual empowerment, individual sovereignty, and so on. Without individuals there can be no "groups." A mark of insufficiently evolved peoples, then, is their commitment to "groupism" over the individual, "herdthink" as it were. Authority figures have known this for millennia and strive to keep people solidified in groups, if for no other reason than it makes them easier to herd. In Japanese schools, the practice of "ijime" is one method by which a group solidifies itself. Certain individuals who don't quite fit in are singled out for abuse and torture. It is not uncommon for these children -- too fat, too thin, too tall, too short, in essence, "not us" -- to be bullied to death for the sake of the group, committing suicide as their only escape. A small fraction of them will, however, turn on their tormenters, often killing them in the process. So it seems with these two. Spurned by other groups they formed their own and finally, due to insecurity, elected to demonstrate their own superiority by killing "jocks and minorities." Members of other seemingly privileged groups, as it were, exacting their revenge against the society that cast them out by attacking its most visible members.
         At the other end of the spectrum is anomie. Anomie is a term coined by a sociologist whose name escapes me at the moment, but is in its essence a state of society where there are few standards of conduct or belief, and those that exist are weak. The older term for this condition, coined by Thomas Hobbes two centuries ago, is "a state of nature."
         This is a society where the emphasis is on the individual -- but to the exclusion of everything else. The strong take advantage of the weak, doing with them as they will, and where life is "nasty, brutish, and short." Locke wrote that the "social contract" was something that people entered into to escape this hobbesian world, giving up the "right" to aggression, for instance, in return for at least some security from every other person's aggressions. Locke recognized that there would still be predators who would not adhere to the social contract, but was a firm believer in the right to self defense, making that problem generally moot.
         But only in America could we have managed to have a series of incidents, and make no mistake, more are coming, where overemphasis on the group and on the individual meet like this. Unable to be accepted by a "mainstream" group, yet desperately craving group membership, these anomic individuals -- anxiety ridden, disoriented, isolated, feeling no attachment -- decided that their tormenters should pay the ultimate price in best Japanese style.
         As long as Americans are "herdified," as long as they allow themselves to be sheered for the benefit of others, as long as they accept that they can only achieve benefits at the expense of other groups, not in cooperation, these incidents will continue and worsen. The herders have spent nearly a century creating this mess and resolution, if any, will be neither easy nor painless.

Never trust a dog to watch your food. -- Patrick, Age 10

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