OPPOSITIONAL CULTURE Part seven, on-going

Oppositional Defiance “disorder” is related to “oppositional culture”.  Wow, do I know about that!  It means deliberately defying attempts at “enculturation” or “education” in order to preserve one’s identity.  Like so many things, it originates as a formal concept with blacks and then appears among the Native Americans, who were already doing it anyway.  They recognized early that a subtle kind of conquering is “assimilation,” meaning that the invaded should become like the invaders.  This is often achieved through “education for success” like Pratt’s military-structured boarding school. 

For a while in the Seventies we turned to our uniqueness and the value of independence.  Now, of course, things have turned around again.  Preserving the identities of minorities is a diminishing value and we are insisting that the immigrants should become just like us -- though we were the former invaders.  In short, the strong and advantaged people still insist on conformity to their standards.  Ironically, the originally advantaged people -- land-owning white males -- are now the minority and a little desperate to defend their category.  They are losing because time is changing everything.

Those who are different, almost by their existence, engage in erosion of the mainstream.  So that today the old white rich men accurately feel embattled and undermined.  Both sides become enraged.  Neither side understands the other.  The old white rich men are hampered by their inability to see or understand anyone different from themselves, including their own children.  The young still can be diverted by the belief that being like an old white rich man with power is a pleasant phenomenon, something effective -- which it only is under certain circumstances that have a funny way of disappearing.

I gather from reading an entry someone composed for Wikipedia that the idea of naming resistance to conventional education an “oppositional culture” comes from blacks in the Seventies but turned out to be useful enough for it to persist.  The main theorist, a guy named Ogbu, seemed to think that the phenomenon of opposition should be opposed -- that people SHOULD try to be like the main and dominant culture, whatever it might be.  While sociologists were thinking about this, the oppositional attitude of the Seventies has now spread from race to gender stereotypes and sexual preference and has splintered into individual defiances.  Some are defying society to make them marry when they only want to live together, kids or not, at the same time that others are defying society to prevent them from marrying, whether they include a female or not.    

This is an agonistic society.  Our law and government, our stories and editorial pages are all based on two forces in conflict, while in the background for decades now we’ve been having workshops about “getting to yes,” and marches for peace.  The discussion and negotiation movement that once seemed so promising has been trampled underfoot by debate, one side against the other in the style of a trial.

Most of the information I’m finding on google addresses the defiance of parents by children.  I do not see much (so far) about stupid, inept, undependable, and destructive parents -- just children who are disobedient in disruptive ways.  The main responses advised, even by so eminent an authority as the Mayo Clinic, is either drugging or manipulation, including the use of the “ear bug” we see on cop movies, where someone sits behind a one-way mirror and second-guesses the parent, not the child.  Making a parent into a puppet does not solve the conflict.  So many of these ideas are based on the assumption that the parent’s desire to dominate the child is legitimate.  That’s because the parent is the one who picks up the tab.  Maybe there ought to be a trust fund for children who are unjustly dominated by parents trying to make their kids achieve as surrogates for themselves. 

A woman sends me a “comment” asking what books or treatments would help her because she’s pissing everyone off and they say it’s because she opposes them unreasonably.  That is, they don’t see why she should oppose them, which suggests some kind of negotiation or referee from outside is needed.   But maybe not.  Maybe she’s right.  Or maybe she really does have the knee jerk reaction of opposition to everything.  What causes the oppositional defiance attitude in adults that’s strong enough to make trouble?

Why does one kid need only a rebuke to quickly shape up and another one be like the boy whose mother demanded why he didn’t obey even after a vigorous licking.  He said, “It’s worth it, Mom.”  We’ve heard a lot about priests who take advantage of children sexually, but what about bishops who screw their priests metaphorically or psychologically -- or, more likely, nuns.  The ghost of the Roman Empire persists.  Is God’s other name Nero?

Nevertheless, there is something essential in a human’s physiological substructure that makes some people inclined to defiance.  In an earlier post I suggested addiction to the adrenaline of it all.  Many of our most intense military movies address the usefulness and the tragedy of individuals wanting combat, NEEDING combat, even though withdrawal imposes PTSD.  The rule of evolution is that anything that tends to survive will drive change, fitness is always defined in retrospect.  The defiant individual is a change agent, often destroyed in the effort, but sometimes saving a whole community of people who will persist into the future.  It is a case something like the stotting Tommy, the Thompson’s gazelle that goes leaping out from the main group, to be eaten by lions and by so doing saves the herd.  

People who are wired for defiance whether they are Irish or Arab, cannot be forced to conform by imposing obedience.  Anyway, once the dominant group has identified them as enemies, once the subordinate group has achieved solidarity enough to submerge their individuality in the alternative culture, a “cause”, there are few ways to get to yes except by separation.  This has not proven to be a useful strategy in the long run -- how long can you endure a “time out?”  Or a hunger strike?

What is most often identified as ODD in kids is lying, stealing, disobedience, cursing, and -- among the more alert -- passive aggression or secrecy.  But I’m not reading anything about WHY the contempt for authority, the identification with an outlier group.  I think it is a problem that will recur in any society hooked on dominance, even if they impose public flogging and draconian amputations.  It’s a little like our insistence on sex-obsession and then complaining about inappropriate sexual acts.

I did find a reference at this link that looks interesting: http://www.livesinthebalance.org/about-lives-in-the-balance-and-solving-problems-collaboratively   This “method” was recommended by a man who was aware that his grandfather, his father, himself and his son were all people who flared up and resisted.  The strategy is very sensible, sitting down to look at a problem from both sides in order to generate some options.  The trouble is that if things have gone very far, sitting down calmly will have become impossible.  Witness the United States Congress, an illustration of oppositional defiance if there ever was one, and as mainstream as it gets.  Maybe it’s because they’re all lawyers.  Maybe it’s because they all feel like losers.  At least the Republican side, which is pretty solidly white male property owners.