You confuse courage with stupidity and/or brutality. Getting into a fight for no good reason is stupid, not brave. If you’re sure you’ll win, it’s brutality; if not, it’s stupid. Or cowardly; if you fight because you don’t want to look cowardly, that is cowardice.
Then you probably shouldn’t have formed a fraternity, or joined one. Judging from their behavior, fraternities are an excellent argument against the idea that hazing is good for society - the point of the OP.
Both are stupid; being proud of it is even stupider.
When the inconvienience is unnecessary. Consider the grueling marches mentioned by Alessan; that toughend them up, made them better able to do their job; it was also no worse or humiliating than necessary; it’s not like the commanding officers spat on them afterwards or urged them on by beating stragglers unconscious. How does having beer thrown on you make you a better college student ?
Uh…I don’t know guy. It’s called “harmless fun”. Maybe you need to lighten up a bit. Not everyone is traumatized for life when they get hit unexpectedly with a water balloon.
It makes you a better college student because IMHO being in the right fraternity makes you a better college student. I expanded my social circle. I was a house officer. I was involved in community service and intramural sports. I made friends who I am still close with 10 years later as well as an alumni network. I also have a stronger connection to the college than I would otherwise. What’s the alternative? Being one of those wierd, bitter “I didn’t have a lot of close friends” guys who just drifted through college?
I’m kind of biased though because Greek life was such a huge part of campus life at my college. The guys who didn’t join fraternities tended to be a bit on the antisocial side. I can certainly concede that on campuses where the Greek system is not strong, you can have a lot of shitheads.
You’re going out on a limb here, unless you can provide cites to back the claim that hazing (as the term is commonly understood) occurs universally and is more common than other “traditions” such as racism.
I am amazed that in this day and age, John, you would seem to think that rape is just an extreme form of sex, and not an act primarily intended to gratify urges toward violence, hatred and sadism. That’s the point.
I welcome anyone to provide a cite proving that even one society exists in which hazing isn’t found. And I’m confortable with saying that “racism” is part of human nature, not simply a mere tradition. As intelligent beings we can choose to accept those things which are part of our nature, or try to ameliorate them with social institutions of our own invention. This goes for both racism and hazing. We’ve found no useful purpose for racism in our society, and we’ve taken steps to deal with that. Hazing, on the other hand, can and does have positive effects as long as it is done in a safe and controlled way. Certainly some people use hazing as a way of satisfying sadistic inclinations, and if you want to argue that we haven’t taken enough steps to deal with that, then I’m with you. We probably haven’t. Note that I’m including all kinds of initiation rites as forms of hazing. If you want to define hazing as only those forms with negative outcomes, then I think that’s a different debate.
Note that I purposely clarified that rape is the use of “the sex act” for ill purposes, not that it is sex. I think that addresses exactly what you’re trying to say.
My alma mater felt the need to radically alter the Greek landscape around the end of my time there, after a seemingly endless string of negative incidents, some of them hazing related. I was a runner, and hence certainly not a jock by conventional standards, but I and many others who I would not describe as “anti-social” wanted no part in it because the frats did little but drink and abuse. We liked our beer without quite so much of the brutality, and living in squalor didn’t appeal. They did not dominate the social scene quite so completely as they do at larger schools, so it does seem the quality of Greek life can vary considerably from place to place.
I can only describe some of the stories I heard about frat hazing as accounts of criminal sadism, among the most repugnant involving penetratively violating pledges with appropriately-shaped vegetables and disturbing the peace of animal corpses. I guess being out in the sticks encourages some extra creativity to break up the small-town monotony. At any rate, it’s difficult for me to see anything beneficial coming out of a society that demands inflicting or tolerating such treatment as a condition of membership. What possible positive influence can out of encouraging sexual and physical assault, against not only women outside the fraternity (not that that isn’t bad enough), but even the new fraternity membership?
None, IMHO. The reflexive “rah-rah-fraternity-go” ! stuff we see in this very thread is an example of the destructive nature of group loyalty. Personally, I’d be happy to see all fraternities banned/dismantled; I certainly don’t see them as a good argument for hazing.
Think a moment and you’ll realize that nobody wants any kind of scientific inquiry into something like this. Those who don’t believe in hazing would have an awful lot of explaining to do if it turned out to be beneficial, and if it turned out not to be, those who do believe in it would be in the same position – and be deeply, deeply pissed off. And the kind of people comfortable with the free exercise of violence and authoritarianism are not the kind you want to piss off.
Well, not really, in my case and probably others. I’m arguing about it’s beneficiality because that’s the OP’s question; if the answer was “yes”, I’d just say “Interesting. It’s still disgusting and immoral however, and if you try it on me you’ll get a baseball bat to the back of the head”.
We’re up against two very different definitions of character here, I think:
a) Character defined by msmith as the willingness to put the group before yourself, because to do otherwise is selfish. True character is not to be found inside yourself, but as part of something greater than you are.
b) Character defined by Der as the unwillingness to give yourself up to the group, because to do otherwise is weak. True character is not to be found outside yourself, but as part of your own soul.
“How are you?” is a greeting. “How old are you?” is just an artificial construct.* I’m not talking about the process of aging, that’s about as natural as it gets. I’ll don the Slippery Slope Cape and take it to its extreme. If this is accepted, who says it can’t extend to race, creed, or gender?
“Nice to meet you. How old are you? You’re not Swiss, are you?”
There’s a progression there and a line that gets crossed after the first question. The relationship from one person and the other just is. It’s one person interacting with another. Any differences after that are imposed, implied, transferred, etc.
*I’m talking about the number affixed to it, and more importantly for purposes of this discussion, the importance unnecessarily attached to that number.
There are degrees of it, I’d assume. It’s not just one or the other. Some people don’t like being fucked with, harrassed, or chided into taking an action they wouldn’t normally take on their own volition. Some people have a strict line of what they will or will not do and it’s not necessarily being a self-righteous pussy. Of course, taken too far, and that label sticks nicely. The problem is that our own boundaries tend to influence our view of others.
Some people are very touch-oriented and initiate a lot of interpersonal contact. Some people are driven bonkers from the same thing and don’t want to be touched in the middle of a normal conversation.
If we do accept these two definitions of “character”, I can see some wiggle room. I can see a person that is their own soul and treasures their autonomy, but wants to form a group of like-minded indviduals on a particular topic and get this topic recognized. In this case, the giving of self to a group is a great gift and shouldn’t be taken lightly because of that person’s views on that topic.
Part of college is to gain experiences outside of your comfort zone. What I’ve seen is that the people who are the most rigid in their definition of what they “will or wont do” have the worst time in college. They often don’t join groups, go home every other weekend and/or hang out with the same three guys for their entire 4 years. They can often be difficult roomates because they are high maintanance and overly sensitive. That’s fine if you want to be like that, but it seems like a waste.
The thing is, if you absolutely don’t want to be fucked with, harrassed, or chided into taking an action you wouldn’t normally take on your own volition, a fraternity might not be for you.
When I refer to “character”, I mean basically who a person is. Their sense of right and wrong. How they interact with others. That kind of stuff. Hazing and initiation activities test your character for the very same reasons mentioned above. Is this too excessive? Do I go along with this because I want to be part of the group? Am I right in refusing to do this or am I being stubborn and difficult? Why do I really want to be here? It tests your character because there is no hard and fast rules or absolutes. You have to make your own decisions.
I don’t know if it necessarily makes you a better person. But it certainly gives you a better sense of what kind of person you are and from there you can make your own decisions.
60 km in 14 hours through a desert at night seems reasonible (well…plausible) according to my calculations.
It would tell you if you are such a follower that you would allow someone to shove a carrot up your ass to gain acceptance into their group.
The “stories you heard” about hazing rituals are largely urban legend told to freshmen to scare the crap out of them during pledging. I hardly think millions of people would join an organization where having sex with a sheep was required for membership.
First, people are injured or die from hazing; that’s not an urban legend, it mentioned in the OP’s link. Second, there is no limit to the stupid things millions of people will do.