Elements of hazing also enter into different professions in the form of extra work and unpleasant conditions for novices. I include the field of medicine (judging from the bitter reactions I’ve heard from surgeons over the prospect of residents working slightly less onerous hours, I suspect there’s more going on here than concern over adequacy of education).
I’ve always felt that hazing exists because human beings derive gratification from abusing other, more vulnerable human beings, and that it serves no useful purpose.
However, given its stubborn persistence in supposedly enlightened modern societies, is there something I’m missing? Is there anything besides anecdotal data, for instance, that demonstrates that hazing fosters a necessary esprit de corps and toughness that cooperation and a nurturing attitude cannot provide?
Ritualized adversity might serve a purpose, but the problem with hazing is that it inevitably spins out of control. With no oversight, those who were once victims of hazings who get a chance to perform it go out of their way to make the experience worse for the newcomers. Eventually, someone is killed or seriously injured, making it impossible to keep it secret from outsiders, and there’s a big public kerfuffle.
Military drill instructors, by contrast, are professionals who must report results to their superiors. It’s rare, but not unheard of, for things to get out of hand. I’m rather more suspicious of college organizations where the only qualification the perpetrator might have is being past their freshman year.
Bullying is quite fun for the person doing it, but no fun at all for the being it’s done to. Benefits to bullied: zero. Benefits to bullier: also zero. Societal effects in terms of protection of moral sense: zero again.
Bullying is quite fun for the person doing it, but no fun at all for the being it’s done to. Benefits to bullied: zero. Benefits to bullier: also zero. Societal effects in terms of protection of moral sense: negative.
Having gone through a mild sort of hazing myself I would like to make the observation that it definitely builds a kind of solidarity between those who “survive” it. It makes for a tightly knit group of people who take pride in what they are and are devoted to each other, albeit in a rather twisted way. Pat Conroy’s book Lords of Discipline is a good example of how this system can work to strengthen a group. (Not that I support hazing, but I don’t agree that it’s just about taking pleasure in abuse.)
The putative purpose, I suppose, would be that it demonstrates the strength of will on the part of the hazee to undergo temporary unpleasantness for the sake of long-term benefits (acceptance by the hazers, in this case). It makes sense if the tribe is likely to encounter circumstances that will require people to undergo more of the same, and worse, for the long-term good of the tribe.
I have trouble believing that hazing produces a feeling of solidarity in everyone; I know I’d be more interested in massacring people who hazed me than cooperating with them.
Well, the whole point of hazing is that it’s a means to a greater end. If you are enduring a hazing, it’s because you want to be part of a certain group, and that you are willing to bear pain and humiliation if that’s what it takes to be accepted. If you don’t like it, all you have to do is leave the group. Why would you want to be part of a group that feels like it has to torture its members in order to prove they’re worthy?
I can see this point in the case of a fraternity - but one doesn’t really have much choice in the case of certain occupations (or elite organizations within a particular field).
I might be convinced hazing has value if there were, for example, research studies showing that excellence correlates with early hazing episodes and that having a nurturing mentor was no valid substitute for ritual abuse.
Well, regardless of how much one is opposed to hazing, it’s impossible to deny that there are some benefits:
To go through any challenging experience as a group brings that group closer together. An example of this was two of the contestants on this years survivor who spent a miserable few days in a rainstorm without shelter or fire on exile island. They both commented about how much closer together that bonding experience brought them. Hazing has the same effect.
Hazing is a barrier to entry. If the only way to get into a group is to be hazed, then you are assuring that only people who really want it are getting in. To eliminate hazing would open up membership to anyone unless some other mechanism was put in place.
These aren’t really benefits to society, more just benefits for the groups doing the hazing.
Well, it discourages pussies from joining.
“Hazing” is somewhat of a loaded term which can mean anything from having to “pay your dues” through particular work, challanges or chores up to and including stupid stunts and various forms of what can only be described as “torture”.
The difference between a fraternity or secret society and just a bunch of guys living together is that you are expected to show some commitment to the organization. You are expected to take care of the house you live in and support the guys living in it, at least outwardly.
“Pledging”, the period where potential members undergo various challenges prior to becoming full-fledged members, is supposed to test that commitment and develop a bond between the pledges. Sometimes those challenges are unpleasent (like cleaning the house). Sometimes they are merely uncomfortible.
Pledging/hazing serves a useful purpose in that they help to weed out people who basically want to join the fraternity to receive the benefits (social network, reputation, etc) without offering anything in return.
My fraternity doesn’t do much in the form of hazing. Interestingly, our pledges would often do things to provoke a response from the active brothers because they felt like they were missing out on a big part of the fraternity experience. Done correctly, pledges should come away from their experience with a lot of “man I can’t belive we had to do that shit” stories they can look back on and laugh at.
But as people mentioned, unlike military drill instructors, fraternities and scholastic sports teams are not populated by professional adults. It is easy for hazing to get out of control and become counterproductive by building feelings of anger and resentment.
And the article by the way is completely stupid. It takes an example of a bunch of girls carrying on with strippers and then blows it completely out of proportion with implications of how “deadly” that kind of behavior is (30 deaths over three decades? please)
In Science of Discworld II - The Globe (link), the authors suggest that rituals such as these (specifically coming-of-age rituals) have helped humans to evolve a greater intellect.
In a tribe of nearly-humans on the savannah, when a young male (normally) is faced with the prospect of some very unpleasant ritual (painful, and often involving sexual violation) to allow him to become an official adult in the tribe. The animalistic reaction is the simple flee from pain, and he is cast from the tribe and becomes an outsider. The more thoughtful males, however, are able to consider “if… then…”. If I put up with this now, then I can become a member of the tribe. Ultimately, I gain from this experience. Oh, and I know that all these older guys, who are doing this to me, must’ve been through it themselves, and they seem to be ok - so I’m not actually going to be permanently harmed.
Those that are able to make the connection and go through the ordeal are part of the tribe, and go on to mate with the women, successfully passing their genes on to the next generation, who (we hope) are even better at this sort of reasoning. Those that can’t see past the pain are outcasts and don’t reproduce (or very rarely). Gradually we evolve into a species that can reason past the instinctive pain=bad, and make investments for the future, so our intellect grows.
This is still part of our species in many forms in different societies - some quite brutal. On the other hand, the authors of this book posit that the linguistic success of Jews is down to the Bar Mitzvah tradition - which, many years ago, not everyone passed. No Jewish mother would allow her daughter to marry a boy who had not passed the Bar Mitzvah, so the successful (Darwinian use of the term) males were those who proved themselves capable.
Therefore “hazing” and other rituals have no real benefit to the individuals involved, but the species of a whole has benefited (and perhaps still is benefiting) from these trials.
I should point out that I say all of this based on my recollections of the above book as my only source - hardly an all-encompassing survey.
I think it could be a hold-over from the past. You still see it quite frequently in tribal societies. Rites of passage must be completed before a boy is called a man, regardless of age, and girls must complete theirs before they’re technically adult women.
Sometimes, these rites include danger such as the boys in the Amazon who must jump from towers with ropes which they have woven themselves tied to their ankles, hoping that they estimated the distance correctly, or they’ll crash into the earth head-first. Sometimes the rites include humiliation or subservience. I remember seeing one rite of passage for girls (though can’t remember the culture) in which the girl was smacked and pinched while she tried to complete a task. There is another culture in which boys are required to give oral sex to all of the adult men before they’re adults. (The group believes a man does not make his own sperm, so a boy must injest enough to last him when he’s an adult.)
Modern churches often have their own forms of rites of passage. The convert must complete training or be baptised before the entire group before they’re accepted as a full member. Some include practices like having the convert confess their sins before the group, or participate in speaking-in-tongues. Gangs often require the new member to comit a crime or be beaten by the members of the group. (Some allow women to have sex with all members rather than be beaten.)
I think that modern hazing practices are in some sense a demonstration of longing for ritual in a society which has mostly been stripped of it, added to the human loging to belong to exclusive groups.
Others upthread have already noted the effects hazing can have on a new member of an oirganization. So the question beomes, do we see that as a social benefit? Obviously we do, because we put military recruits through it. And since we want the military to protect the public from harm, any training we give them is something we, collectively, believe we make them better at protecting us. We might be wrong, but that’s always the purpose.
One other note is that hazing, in moderate degree, can in fact be fun for the hazee. I’ve mentioned on this board before that of my fraternity, my college marching band, and my high school marching band, the fraternity hazed the least, by far. But for most of us in my high school band, the hazing was always a laugh. Doing the skits that we had to perform, scrambling around looking for an upperclassman who was willing to sell us the lyrics to the alma mater so we could memorize it – I certainly got a kick out of that stuff.
Of course, I agree that it’s easy for this stuff to escalate over time, and in the band it was clear that failure to comply with the hazing rituals wouldn’t get you kicked out, so there was always a safety net there. But it’s naive not to recognize that sometimes the hazees are having fun too.
There is also the cognitive dissonance effect. If you make sacrafices to join a group you are not going to abandon or turn on the group as easily because doing so meant your sacrafices were in vain. Its also one of the reasons you make down payments when you buy expensive.
One of my college roommates commented once on his pledging experience. He had an epiphany before my eyes.
He said, “Yeah, it’s really brought us all closer together. I’d do anything for those guys now. It was just us against the world.
[pause as the idea forms and grows in his sleep deprived brain]
Hey, I guess that’s why we did all that? To bring us together?”
It can be a bonding experience. You rely on one another for support. You survive together. It’s hard to break those bonds.
None of this stuff sounds like it provides “societal benefits”; quite the opposite. “Us against the world” isn’t a benefit for the world, or even always for the individual; just the group.
It also sounds just like what I’ve heard about wartime atrocities; that they are often encouraged ( officially or not ), in order to draw the soldiers together and make them unwilling to question the cause. After all, if the cause isn’t justified/the enemy isn’t subhuman, then they have to take blame for the evil they’ve committed. Replace “stupidity” with “evil” and the principle seem the same.
Der Trihs, almost exactly what I was going to say. “Us against the world” Brings that little group together (if at all). That’s a small definition of the world, to say the least. Small groups of people can be prodded into doing some amazing things when led there by a superior that they’ve bonded with.
Back towards the bulk of this thread, can we say that every professional association, with dues and joining prerequisites, is also a fraternity or sorority of some kind?
I guess what I’m trying to get at is where we start and stop our definition of “hazing”. I’d think of hazing as being coerced into doing something you wouldn’t do under normal circumstances. You can also say that’s paying membership dues, because nobody would give money to an organization if they weren’t going to get something out of it, but that can be construed as getting funds to keep the services going from their members a la PBS.
