Silence

I never read Lord of the Flies - I had to go and look it up on one of those GCSE pass notes sites today to clarify what I thought I knew about it. (And isn't that weird - how is it possible to know so much about a book you've never read? In the same way as wondering how you know all those bits of classical music you could never identify?) I did this because I was thinking about bullying. Bullying exists as part of a whole spectrum of behaviour, among a whole group of people. It isn't usually just one-on-one agressor and victim. Around those two are a widening circle of others and I'd range them from one end to the other. Aggressor over here on your left, victim on the far right, let's say, and spreading between are the others - starting with eager followers, moving through those who might join in and those who will take advantage of the atmosphere created. As you pass the midway point, you head into those who stick their fingers in their ears and go la-la-la ... the ones who aren't here. They don't want to get involved. But they are. By their silence, they normalise the behaviour of those on the left side of the spectrum. They isolate the victim, out there on the right by themselves. 'It must be me,' the victim thinks. 'They're not attacking anyone else, so this must be my fault, for attracting it, or for being unable to stand up to it. I must be reacting wrongly. In fact, I must be over-reacting - no one else seems to think it's bad or they'd say something. It's my fault.' So he or she is also silenced. I read through the background of Lord of the Flies, most of which I knew by this weird cultural osmosis, and it left me feeling even more bleak than when I started. I like to see the good in everyone, or life would be altogether too dark. But there are times when all I can see is that vision of children escaping civilisation and the good ones going under. Then I remembered: 'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.' Edmund Burke, Irish political philosopher from the 18th century. It cheers me up to think that three centuries ago someone was able to say it so elegantly and succinctly, because of course that means it's not just me who thinks this way, and rages against it, and then I start to remember all those who have spoken up, at great personal cost, and I decide the world isn't so bad. It's a spectrum, still.