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Learned behaviour

Posted: February 3, 2017 at 9:00 am   /   by   /   comments (0)

Common wisdom dictates that when a child throws a temper tantrum, the best course of action is to ignore the behaviour; to avoid any response that could be perceived as a reward for behaving badly.

The same advice is often used for dogs, whose psychologies aren’t too different from our own, in some ways. Any response to bad behaviour, especially behaviour that is apparently designed to elicit a response, is ill-advised.

This is because we know responding to bad behaviour encourages it. Responding, whether with punishment or reward, leads to children— or dogs—who feel enabled to behave badly, knowing this behaviour will definitely lead to a reward: attention.

It encourages bullies: people who will push others, not because boundaries need to be pushed (sometimes they do), but because they get a thrill from the adverse reaction that comes from the pushing.

Like small children or bad dogs, the best response is to ignore bullies, lest we give them the power they seek.

Certainly, some parents, teachers, dog owners and other folks in charge don’t follow this advice. They do cater to bad behaviour. And they suffer the consequences—managing unmanageable beings.

But in general, as a society, we should know better. So why do we continue to acquiesce to this behaviour?

I’m not speaking about playground bullies here. Rather, I wonder about the attention we give those whose bad behaviour has already given them more power than should be considered reasonable, bullies who push boundaries that threaten entire populations, flaunt their ability to behave badly unapologetically to the masses, and all in front of cameras that promise them an exponentially larger audience than any attention schoolyard misbehaviour could have possibly allowed.

For our neighbours to the south, it has led to one of the biggest bullies that country has seen attaining more power—more attention, too—than any other single person on earth.

If that common bit of wisdom wasn’t taken to heart before, the situation that has resulted from ignoring it should have taught us something.

And yet, maybe it hasn’t. As the federal Progressive Conservative Party searches for new leaders, a chillingly similar situation has begun to develop here: of a mess of potential leaders, only two have seen their names played over and over in the media. One is a radical nationalist, calling into question the Canadian values of immigrants in a country that has built itself on diversity; the other is a reality star and businessman who is unversed in politics and prone to using Twitter as a namecalling battleground.

They are the ones whose names we know. They have our attention. And whether we like them or criticize them, they feed on that attention.

Certainly, the sensationalism of it all makes giving to these politicians the attention of our eyes and ears a tempting proposition. Some of the most apt, intelligent political commentators in American politics recognized they should not have been giving so much air time to the bullies. But they continued to do it. And so do we.

When will we learn?

 

mihal@mihalzada.com

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