Pork Chop

[PrimaGaga 1025]

I don't think that bullying is okay. But the word "bullying" tends to be thrown around a lot these days.

This this this!

 

Also, i agree with the rest of your post, Chase. For the most part at least.

This is exactly how to discuss a video with someone. I'm glad the Pheonix I once knew has turned into this poor excuse of a person. : /

 

 

Now, you said you couldn't even finish the whole video, Phanta, is this still true? Because if so, watch the whole video. I don't see the point in trying to discuss the video with someone that hasn't even finished the subject of the thread.

Okay i will

 

Phanta watch the whole damn video.

Never mind I wont.

[Sahaqiel 1232]

I'd be there for them in an instant. I'm sure there are many, many more people like me out there. So you're never alone. 

 

high five

 

though I'm certain you don't really understand enough of his viewpoint and life to understand exactly how he felt. Kids aren't usually the type to say "I'm concerned for your health, here is some advice I could give you". There's a distinct difference, and I think most people understand that.

 

I think the world needs more understanding between people. Like, I called my little brother fat, but that's because he's actually fat and I'm concerned that it'll negatively effect his health down the line, so I tell him so: "Look, Devanti, this isn't just me teasing you, you might actually die early." He's started doing exercises and playing sports and doing that dance-workout thing with my mom; everyone in their house is on a diet and Devanti even learned to cook. He's losing weight a little at a time; he's still clearly overweight, but he's working at it, so I don't bug him anymore, and he doesn't let it affect him that people think he's fat; it helps that he's got a friendly demeanor too. If he came to me with problems about it though, I wouldn't hesitate to give him encouragement. No one deserves to be ignored.

 

I grew up in a pretty alright neighborhood, so I couldn't really understand having a limited pool of support or feeling like there's only one other person out there that tries to empathize with you until recently. I could say I'm pampered, but my standards for being pampered are just living in the US and not starving for extended periods of time. It's a bit more complex than that. I remember there was a kid on our bus who everyone was always obnoxious to. He wouldn't ever say anything, but I tried to approach him and told the other kids to back off; he didn't speak pretty much at all, so I didn't even know if he spoke English until I ran into him at college, where people are mostly more respectful. I regret not doing more back then; if I was more like me today I would have gotten pretty pissed about it and started an argument or two. They also bullied the bus driver; I was almost constantly pissed off at the instigators.

 

But if people tried to understand the people they ignore or annoy, or if they presented their problems differently, or if they just learned to accept peoples' differences more, there wouldn't be nearly as much psychological turmoil, I think. So maybe you can't understand why a guy wouldn't let go of his hatred for pork chops, but the guy's been through it for years. If you've gone through something long enough something is bound to stick. They bring up painful memories for him, so don't be a jerk about it, yeah? Maybe you haven't been bullied extensively all your childhood, but there are people who have, and people develop the most heavily during childhood. They're more inclined to feel the way people project onto them. Don't try to take the responsibility off the attackers like that. They're in the wrong too.

[Fierce Muffin 490]

Good Lord, Muffin, if I knew you wanted to discuss the video this badly then I would have said something more indepth about it to begin with. Every week I post three or four short films from my animation class in the talk thread and no one but teto says anything about it.

I don't read the talk thread, but I thank you for actually coming out of your hole and making not only a wonderful post but also linking to a fantastic video. Artistic, clever, and completely neato.

 

But, yeah, I agree with you on how how it's hard for people to understand that it's alright being just who you are and that everybody else's opinions do not determine your self worth. But I feel like a lot of the negativity in this thread and one or two comments on Youtube I saw don't understand that he's talking about children that can't really be "grown up" or be able to get over petty insults as easy as most adults can(should?). In fact, I'm sure there are a few adults that would benefit a lot from watching this video. Although, I can see where Chase is coming from since he mentions not being able to eat pork chops to this day, but maybe it's just to show the lasting effect of what happened as a child can still affect him now, same with his wife and to give it more emotion as well as make it more personal. Plus, that's years of torment, 2+ from what he mentioned. Not as bad as some other things, but that's some psychological damage.

 

 

Or he's a vegetarian now. There's a plot twist for you.

[Sahaqiel 1232]

just watch it jeez

 

from a non cynical point of view

[Du5t1n 57]

I think that while there are varying degrees of bullying -- it all does damage.  Even the small bullying like calling someone pork chop can utterly shape and change a person's life.  We know brains are very plastic and a little kid can completely change their way of thinking and acting to avoid being full-on bullied, beaten, and stabbed with knives to being teased with silly names.  They all shape the victim's mind and change their behavior and thinking.  Remember that children do not have the mental skills to know how to cope and most children do not have positive open communication with loving adults in their lives to help them through problems.  I'm sure most people can remember something that hurt them as a kid but they were too embarrassed to tell someone or seek help with coping, even if only a hug.

 

"If your self-esteem is so low that you allow others to shape your personality and shape your emotions...that's rough." - Chase

I agree that is indeed a huge part of the problem but as these are children that we are talking abou they aren't self-aware, don't understand what self-esteem means or the importance of it, and their self-esteem is literally in the process of forming and this is what gets included in their worldview when building said self-esteem.   If that initial building of it is damaged and then the words / bullying / whatever continue for years then it can reinforce the negative self-view and really screw with people.  Even people that cope or 'get over' it have hidden scars beneath.  Those are often our insecurities, our weaknesses inside that we keep hidden from view.  All humans have them.  Anyone that thinks they don't has just been able to lie to themselves, but it's there somewhere.  Perhaps we could better help kids form a positive self esteem earlier to help ward off these problems because like Chase said if they have a good self esteem they can cope with these situations much better.

 

Even if someone gets over being called something like "pork chop" and it doesn't influence their life anymore, I think it's short-sighted to think that he should not dislike the term anymore.  He may not freak out or even show a response hearing the term now but it certainly may bring back memories of that time which are very negative.  None of us really like to dwell on being hurt, at least not long-term, especially when it's something you know was said by dump kids that didn't know any better.  Many people "deal" with issues like this by cutting off the memories associated with words or terms -- they try to forget or numb the experience.  That's a way of coping but it's not necessarily any more healthy than remembering the pain but realizing and truly understanding that the kids didn't know the damage they were doing -- but as a kid you didn't know that so the memories and pain felt then were still very real.  ..and if he didn't remember the pain those words brought then he likely wouldn't be able to bring us this video in such a powerful way.

 

And importantly, all of us here wouldn't find so much in this video if we too didn't remember past pain and what it meant to us at the time but that doesn't mean that we haven't healed or "coped".  But that does not mean the scars don't remain, just like a wound on the skin.  It has healed, but it leaves its mark.

 

I am very much an atheist but I do quite enjoy Jesus' saying "father forgive them for they know not what they do" as I believe it sums up pretty much all hurtful human interactions.  Humans are short-sighted and many have shit empathy skills so they don't understand WHY something they say hurts someone, even if it's only a joke.  We all have weak spots, insecurities, etc and when teasing hits them, it reinforces them in the mind, even subconsciously.  "Neurons that fire together wire together".  Our brain learns from our environment and if as a kid you get teased a lot, your brain shapes its world view to include that.

 

Even self esteem itself is complicated -- too much self esteem results in a person feeling like they are so badass awesome that they become arrogant dicks.  Humans, our mental well being, and the complexity of psychology, our subconscious, and the effect of experiences on the way our brain functions and is literally physically laid out (our brain LITERALLY physically changes with ever experiences -- new connections are made, connections are severed, or altered), are crazy complicated and there is still much we don't know.  But we do know that these things hurt and we know can many times have negative effects on people. We live in a society and culture where these things happen and breaking the cycle is not something we know how to do yet.

 

We have a long way to go as a species.  We are still young.

 

Just my thoughts....

Edited 21 Feb 2013 by Du5t1n (see edit history)

[Teto 2609]

I'm not going to argue that we all need.to be better people but as a species we're probably going too far. Biologically we probably weren't built to be this moral. We get angry or scared, adrenaline builds up so we can fight or run away. Since we can't eat and kill traffic wardens the adrenaline just stays around I guess. Mentally we're not really suited for the 21st century. So 'as a species' we're already stretching our limits.

I'll come back later to give more of a reply but I'm on my phone so I can't read it all very comfortably. Bbiab

[Ganny 285]

I saw this, it's really cool and has a great style and I think his voice is amazing! I especially like how it doesn't really rhyme consistently, but during some of the quick parts, you catch a few fast ones, like you're at Disney World and you keep seeing the hidden Mickeys in the corner of your eye very good performance poetry

One of the big points of this was that being bullied is something that sticks with you, maybe because it usually happens during your formitive years; even if it never was as bad as you remember it, how you remember it has a much bigger impact than how bad it really was! If being bullied while you're so young and impressionable has such a big effect, then it makes sense if bullying others while you're young has a big effect too! So while giving someone a meaty nickname might not seem too terrible, having fewer child bullies would mean having fewer adult bullies (who have a lot more bullying potential! Think of all the bad things grown ups can do - ew!!)

Because look at what you're saying when you tell a kid to grow up: "be an adult and accept your oppression" -- that's no good. Maybe an adult can take a t-bone namesake, but that's not what you're going to have to deal with when you grow up. You might have to deal with bullying like bank fraud and murder (two things I don't like to think about!)

Sorry if some people disagree with me; I do think laughing things off is one of the best defenses against bullying, but that's not so easy for some people! Still, you all have great points too and I'm sure you would never bully anyone.

[Cirt 612]

I liked it. It was powerful, but it kind of lost me with the abstract language for a few moments there. Like it was all happening too quickly for me to really absorb it. Also, his voice. He sounds familiar. I'm pretty sure I've heard this guy's poetry before

[Du5t1n 57]

That's a really good point Teto. We really have placed quite a lot of "higher level" morals, ethics, rules, culture, etc on top of our natural ways.  I don't have much knowledge in the area of modern day sociology compared to how we evolved.  I do have expertise in the similar situation with regards to food and it's well known scientifically that our modern food (well here in America at least where it is anything but food) is quite literally killing.  We evolved for over 10 million years with a diet that was completely different from what we eat now, resulting in type obesity, 2 diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, hardening of the arteries, depression, etc.  We KNOW it's the food as we can control for that variable and when modern humans are fed a paleolithic diet all of that improves and even goes away*.  I could certainly see that our mental health could be directly tied to all that we've burdened ourselves with in trying to conform to certain standards that push us against our natural ways.

 

 

* If anyone is interested in learning about how our diet is killing us and how much of current young people will have these diseases by the time they are 30, I can share what I know on that in another thread.

Edited 22 Feb 2013 by Du5t1n (see edit history)

[Teto 2609]

I'll come back later to give more of a reply but I'm on my phone so I can't read it all very comfortably. Bbiab

 

I just realised now while coming back to this thread that I actually said I'd reply more later on, but I didn't.

Also that is interesting, I do wonder about the effects our decisions have on us in relation to how evolution has built us to be.

 

Reason I came here though: The guy who did this appeared on TED to talk about it and perform it on stage.

http://www.ted.com/talks/shane_koyczan_to_this_day_for_the_bullied_and_beautiful.html