This article has been reprinted from The Birmingham Times of June 19, 2010
| The Cause of Hazing and
How It Can End |
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by Len Bernstein Over the years, hazing in our nation's high schools and universities has taken many forms, from the seemingly harmless to severe forms of mental and physical abuse that are criminal in nature, including forced binge drinking and beatings. Yet in spite of the fact that fraternities and sororities caught hazing are condemned and there is public outrage—hazing persists. What motivates someone to humiliate and hurt another human being is explained in this principle stated by the American educator and founder of Aesthetic Realism, Eli Siegel: "The greatest danger or temptation of man is to get a false importance or glory from the lessening of things not himself; which lessening is Contempt." Contempt explains every instance of hazing, including the one told of in the Detroit News article of April 30, "Student: Frat hazing put him in hospital." Eric Walker tells how:
Kappa Alpha Psi is described in the article as "a prestigious, African-American based fraternity," but hazing, of course, affects the lives of students regardless of race or cultural background. And for this brutal phenomenon to be successfully opposed, we need to see that it is related to a state of mind people have in general. In "Art versus Cruelty," an issue of the international periodical, The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, Editor Ellen Reiss writes about the cause of hazing and bullying rampant in high schools and universities, and where it begins:
We can never like ourselves for having contempt, and that is why those who defend hazing have to give it a noble purpose saying it builds character, loyalty, endurance. It often becomes clear to a pledge too late that the purpose of the hazing was not that noble. Mr. Walker describes how, in the hospital recovering from the beatings that almost killed him:
While I never hazed anyone, I remember an instance of cruelty on my part that I regret to this day. While I was in college, I studied karate, which I thought would add to my self-esteem. In training, you had to fight with a partner, while "pulling" your punches. Once, by accident, I knocked my partner down. He was a friend, and yet I felt a rush of power as I stood over him watching blood flow from his lip. I was having contempt for another human being, but I had no idea then, as today's mental practitioners do not, that it was my contempt that made me feel, at times, so anxious, and loathe myself. For brutality to end, contempt must be studied, as well as the alternative, embodied in this principle stated by Eli Siegel: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." Ms. Reiss comments on this in "Art versus Cruelty":
This is crucial knowledge for educator and student alike. In one of the professional classes I attend for Aesthetic Realism Consultants and Associates taught by Ellen Reiss, Chairman of Aesthetic Realism, I asked about hazing and why people often submit to it, not just once, but over a period of time, enduring mental and physical punishment that robs them of their dignity and endangers their lives. I'm grateful to Ms. Reiss for the way she placed hazing culturally, and enabled us to learn about ourselves. She said that while each instance would have to be looked at, "hazing is of a certain—if you want to see it that way—tradition," referring to the many initiation rites that are documented in anthropological studies. "But tradition can be corrupted," she continued, and asked me, "Why do you think a person might submit to hazing?" I answered, "A person can want to prove themselves, to show whatever the world throws at you, you can take it." She then asked, "Do you think there's something in a person that wants to be humiliated? Can people feel, 'There is something in me that's selfish, mean, and conceited, and deserves to be punished'?" She explained:
However, Ms. Reiss said, "Low and high," present in hazing and in social life "are tremendous opposites, and they can be put together beautifully." In my work as a teacher of photography workshops in high schools and colleges, I've shown how a good photographer yields to the meaning of his or her subject in order to assert their individuality as an artist. I've been moved to see the relief and excitement on the faces of my students when they learn how beauty is as real and as tough as a Mack truck, and that it has the answers to our most ordinary and troubling questions. When educators and students learn this, colleges will no longer have to pass regulations banning hazing. It will simply lose its appeal. Len Bernstein began his study of Aesthetic Realism in consultations with The Kindest Art, and later with the founder of this philosophy, Eli Siegel. His study continues in professional classes taught by Chairman Ellen Reiss at the not-for-profit Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York City (www.AestheticRealism.org). His articles have been published in the U.S. and abroad, and his photographs are in various collections, including The Library of Congress and Bibliothèque nationale de France. |