“Banter training” my pal tells me, that’s what’s going on in his workplace now. Holy fudge what an notion. Let’s destroy it..
Right, firstly we can easily dismiss the idea that ‘banter’ is something that can be defined. That a person can draw a line in the sand that says “this is banter up to this point, and beyond it is offence”. Now what could we use to draw this line, the feelings of a certain person, could they be the definition of the averagely reasonable as well as the averagely resilient person? I don’t know that person and neither do you, but we have all met the overly sensitive person that ruins the group and the extremely resilient person who has little to no impact because he/she has no will to change the interaction.
Each one of us is tempted to use ourselves as the measuring stick, this is because each of us thinks, falsely or otherwise, that we are reasonable. Each one of us holds a deep belief that we know what we mean when we say something, we know the intention of our words and we know the impact we wish them to have. So for words to have meaning to others we must convey not only the information in those words, as representing concepts or things in the world, but get the intention across also. When others receive these words they must interpret them and hopefully come up with the same thing in their mind that we attempted to deliver. This is where it often goes wrong, what is intended as frivolous or funny is often thought to be malicious. Language is currently far too inexact to fix these misunderstandings and misinterpretations.
The one person that becomes the lowest common denominator is the one person who’s need is being met, the humourless person creates the situation that there is no humour at all, the person who does not swear inhibits all swearing, the religious person prevents the group from scrutinising religion itself, the vegan prevents the discussions on food or environmentalism. Every group is constrained at the level of the most self restrictive person, and I personally think that is unhelpful. We think in averages, this seems reasonable to most of us, but in a modern setting where there is a group of people concerned we tend to throw away that logic. Why not allow that some persons may be offended, and say that this may be true but it does not matter, might we even go as far as to say that they should “grow a pair”?
I started work at 17 years old in a garage, this caused me to be exposed to banter quite quickly, I was the butt of jokes, the fool that had the pranks played on him, I coped and grew and became harder. Hard enough to say now that my tolerance is quite high. I went on to become rather more resilient as an adult than I had been as a child. I’m not dented by these experiences I’m actually thankful for them. Part of growing up is learning to cope better in an unfair world, learning that it is unfair and living in it anyway with a cheery spirit and a hopeful nature. This doesn’t mean that we can’t be angry, it just means we can be both happy and angry at the same time and not have that conflict eat us up.
So we have a proposed situation, one where the spoken word of a person, let’s call them Dave for now, is teasing and playful towards another person in their situation, and this situation is not voluntary, it is in a workplace (you can leave other situations if you chose that you do not like the vibe in them). Dave is speaking to Paul, in the room also are Mark and Jenna and Sam and Tom, these onlookers are not joining in but let’s say for now that they are all titillated by what is going on. Dave continues his teasing, and at some point Paul starts to think that he is being victimised, or painted in a bad light, or represented unfairly. Now at this point Paul might object in some way, like to say that the thing that is being said about him is untrue, and that would be a fair line in the sand I’m pretty sure. What if nothing untrue had been said, yet something derogatory had? I’d say that might be objectionable also, maybe a debatable line in the sand yeah. What if the banter goes on and on? Again I’d say there is a case to be made that enough is enough, maybe there is too much teasing happening for a comfortable relationship to be maintained. What if the ‘banter’ is all one-way traffic? What if the ‘banter’ is only ever directed upon a person who is perceived to be too weak to respond well?
So far we have asked a lot of questions, and each answer is debatable, some clearer than others to reasonable persons. Yet who is the reasonable person that could be the measuring stick of all this? If there are to be rules then there must be one? JS Mill struggled badly with this one, to him it seemed sensible to make rules of the expression of power relations between people concerning freedom, but very difficult to make rules that define what people can and cannot say to each other. The solution to defining the legitimacy of power relations is named The Harm Principle, and it is not easy to argue with, the proposed solution to prevent words that do harm is The Offence Principle. Intention is not an easy thing to prove, I could really take offence at anything I like and how could you say I had no right to?
Every teen movie contains the group of popular persons who tease the less popular person or outsider, and in each movie we see the enacting of a corrective behaviour by the wider group. Bullying is where an unfair amount of attention is given to a weak or unarmed individual in a derogatory way, this is different to teasing, the line that is crossed is defined by the group each time, not any particular individual. Sometimes it can be delivered by a person, the words or deeds that we could say to be corrective, but it will be the expression of the will of the group. We could rightly assume that any acting individual has surmised that they are able to do so after some form of assessment, even if that is just a look.. Banter Training is the attempt to say that bullying starts at point X regardless of how the group might feel, that what is really important is how the victim may feel, and how any single member of the group may choose to feel. So in reality, the changing nature of teasing means that if any person feels that there may be offence, not even if they have taken it themselves, or been hurt in any way, then banter has become harmful.
The attempt to teach what is and isn’t acceptable can only be defined as the teaching of what is most acceptable, what is least harmful. So we must define things that are not harmful and stay within them, this makes us all HR people in our work place. Let’s say I wish to laugh and I wish others to laugh with me, I have two choices. I can either make a joke of myself, or I can make a joke of somebody else. I think all comedy, in every situation, must have a victim for it to be funny. If you don’t think this is the case then I ask you to give me a comedy that doesn’t have one… While I wait for your failure I’ll continue… If comedy must have a victim then somebody must be that victim, and in a fair situation that’s going to be a different person at different times. Unfortunately life doesn’t really work that way, there are some folks that just lend themselves to being the butt of a joke, you know the guy in the office who terrible, yet very funny, things keep happening to because they put themselves in situations, or make decisions, that make that reality possible. Maybe they are a risk taker, promiscuous, unlucky?
The optimality of any situation where a body of people are involved is thought by most people to be some sort of average, an evenness of sorts. If banter was even, then we wouldn’t be having this current conversation (the one where for now I am doing all the talking, I get that) and we wouldn’t be facing this nonsense training. Life isn’t fair, that’s the reality, and because it isn’t fair it can never look fair nor be made fair no matter how hard some people try to enact rules that attempt that outcome. It can however be improved for many if the power of a few greedy swine is reasonably restrained, history has taught this many times. Is it fair that you go to work 40 hours over 5 days out of each 7 and for 10 years just to earn the same amount of money in that period that some person who happened to be born with well coordinated feet might be given just for one week of kicking a bag of air around a field that has straight lines on it in an effort to put it into a metal rectangle on one end? And is it fair that the world lavishes praise upon this sporting individual and moots him/her as a hero, often describing him/her using hyperbole indicating great worth, maybe even taking that to ridiculous lengths and saying “genius” or “god-like”? I think not… So fairness, or any notion of it, can be of little use to us here.
What must happen is that everyone but one person must be unsatisfied. This is where the rules created to prevent ‘banter’ moot all words that exist outside of the predefined notions of good conduct, as potentially ‘bullying’ and as a necessity they are removed. In this we find a great problem. If we contend that words have a useful nature, and we further say that words convey ideas that may liberate us from oppression, as they often do, then to restrict words that are uncomfortable is to restrict the freedoms that words could potentially bring.
We are an animal that is improved by the use of language, it separates us from other animals, it allows us to understand each other in ways that animals could not, and over distances that they could not realise. The polar bear knows nothing of the penguin, the whale knows not the eagle, the kangaroo has no awareness of the mountain lions of the Americas. We however, know much and often want to know more. If language is to be restricted, and this is the implication implicit in this and any other campaign that seeks to define what cannot be said, then who is to set the bar for the restriction? Who, if given a choice, would you nominate to tell you what you could not use your own judgement in saying? We said earlier that there might be corrective forces within each group, why would we now not trust that natural occurrence? Why would we now say that there is a person, or there are people, that can better decide for groups they are not a current member of, what can be said within those groups. This is the premise of ‘banter training’, that it can be ubiquitous, that it can guide all in the absence of a referee or umpire.
Surely what constitutes ‘banter’ is a judgement call, and to go too far is a misjudgement rather than a deliberate attempt to harm, whereas ‘bullying’, I think we may all already agree, has an attempt of harm built into it. Intention, and the reading of it, is the most important factor. If the victim of ‘banter’ does not appreciate the banter, or is obviously become uncomfortable because of it, then often those delivering it will cease on their own, and if not the group may restrain or defend in some fashion when they read the situation well. I will tease anyone, right up to the point where it may slightly annoy them, and only if they can give it back, to do otherwise would be unacceptable to me personally and I wouldn’t need the restraint of the group. I think most people are the same, you are likely the same, you do not seek conflict unnecessarily unless you are some sort of asshole, and if you are that type then no amount of officially delivered banter training will curb your behaviour anyway.
I imagine the person charged with creating the training, developing the guidance and having to him/herself imagine what differences there are in the conversations between a group of soldiers and a group of primary school teachers. I have been a soldier, it is a position that doesn’t really allow for a thin skin. People who might potentially face the gallows, and soldiers each know a bad end might be coming some day, exhibit what is called ‘gallows humour’. This is the same for police, firemen, and those in the medical profession. Sometimes the dark humour and the darker comedy between these folks is a mechanism for psychologically coping with what is mentally tough. A group of teachers may not need this, they also may be more educated so as to use different language to say the exact same thing, or make the same criticisms.
I could say that someone is “a fucking liar”, and a well educated man might say the same person was “being disingenuous”, these are the same thing. You might say of someone that they “lacked the intellectual capital for most tasks”, I might say that “if they had two heads they’d be twice as stupid”. You might describe someone as being “overweight”, I might say they are “fat”. You see the difference between terms? The way we speak can be interpreted, by those that wish to interpret, as being inoffensive or offensive based solely on the language used and not the intention within the statements made. So the control of language so as to control people, can be made to restrict persons solely using the matrix of their own linguistic ability, and that is a class based restriction under normal circumstances. We might suspect that fancy language, created by and used by the high brow, a tool of the well heeled and moneyed classes, might allow them to remain unrestricted, while at the same time restricting the masses greatly. Now what a realisation that is guv…
It would be said by some people that swearing does harm by causing offence, but where is this harm, point to it, how is it tangible? Surely this is a decision on the part of the receiver, they have decided to be offended because they have decided that some words harm them in a way that does not harm others? Then it cannot be the word that does harm, it is not an accusation or a claim, it has no meaning to add “fucking” before a noun, it merely acts to strengthen the noun in the eyes of the person saying it. What is the real difference between referring to something as “suboptimal”, or referring to it as “shite”? But we could say, and justify, that words misunderstood, and with deliberate intention to have that happen, might actually be harmful to the social fabric. If we cannot understand each other we cannot relate and cooperate. Slang is more harmful than swearing when looked at this way.
Is the goal in all this, as this ‘banter training’ is just another part of an already growing urge within the workplace to control the narratives that might cause the workforce to discuss liberation, to further reduce the language and the interactions of that workforce (the working classes), to fit into a simplistic and unharmful framework? If so then unharmful for whom, who benefits from appearing to protect the people they say they are protecting at the cost of the people who wish to speak and laugh and interact as if they were able to regulate their own relations with each other, as if they may be self aware adults that don’t need such paternalism? I would suspect it’s likely the rule setters, the censors that are the greatest beneficiaries. Extending these efforts out into other communications that happen in the workplace, we find that relatively smart working class persons are silenced so that nitwits aren’t ‘offended’. This, I suspect, is merely a result, it is not the goal to protect the weaker members, but to greatly enhance the power of those that get to sanction and set lines in the sand which must be crossed lest there be a penalty.
I blame these edicts for turning the narratives of our lives into sedate interactions with little protest in them. It is the right of people, as defined in many texts on emancipation that are the nominal foundations of our liberal societies, to give testimony against what they perceive to be less than optimal circumstances. Put simply, we need to complain, we sometimes need to wrap that complaint in humour so as to be palatable and understandable for others and not seem like just a whinge, we need to use the corrective intervention of the group to restrain us from going too far. What we do not need is a rule that says that only high brow language can describe and decry the times.
Now you may say that I have gone too far into the rabbit hole on this one, and you may be correct, but I would argue that we know that there are powerful people, and these people’s power hangs by the thin thread of consent between them and the masses they rely on for their wealth to mean anything, and part of the mechanism that allows that thin thread to hold despite the ever increasing weight of inequality that pulls on it, is controlling what we see as in our best interests. To prevent revolution you prevent the language of revolution, you prevent collectivism, divide people and convince them that every way they have been disenfranchised is a necessity. When people talk they arrive at collective conclusions, when they banter they are expressing comedy, and comedy is often a vehicle for criticism.
Primary school teachers, and I class these particular people as being worse than the greedy fat rich, start this process. They have the greatest role in inhibiting the freedoms of the mind. They act upon the young in what is seen as a corrective measure, against all natural urges for learning and creativity. These supposed educators do not bring the knowledge of the world to the young mind, they prevent it from being discovered by inserting falsehoods before the real learning can begin. The child absorbs nonsense knowledge and behavioural rules prior to learning the truth that all things were not made by a deity, that there are no “bad” words just ones that some people do not like, that sexual urges are not shameful they are evolutionarily necessary yet other people hold the right at all times to resist yours, that greed is a natural evolutionary human urge from a time when survival was guaranteed by strength but one that must be tempered so as to live amongst other people in a civilisation, that striving so that someone else can accumulate things and money on the back of your efforts is not a noble pursuit but an unfortunate societal necessity for those that cannot go it alone, that laws should not be blindly followed but revised continually, that there is nothing more important than being happy, that there is no real royalty because there are no people born to be better than others, I could go on forever…. Once the primary school teachers are finished there is little chance that the growing human can ever break free from this programming, and the successive institutions that he/she will encounter will use this learned behaviour to great effect going forward.
The more the education system evolves to do the work of the powerful, the less they have to do it in might and violence and propaganda, in fact the better these other considerations will work. The modern 20 something adult is the product of the 90s education system, and I think this adult has a set of linguistic tools that reflect their conditioning. We listen to them speak, they have hundreds of ways to praise themselves and each other, but they lack in many ways the language to be dissatisfied, the language of protest and complaint. This is because they are much more stoic than my generation which precedes them by 25 years, and we may also lack the language of our parents too. In the early part of the 20th century certain persons used language to persuade the masses to stand up for themselves, to form collectives and take action, this happened right up to the 90s and the poll tax riots.
We don’t see this anymore because we lack the language to protest, somebody might get the butt hurt if we aren’t overly and overtly positive about everything all the time. Businesses talk of their “brand” as if that is a collectively agreed position on all things, CEOs speak as if they speak for a workforce that they assume is in agreement with what they have decided. We assume that people who work in a place support what that place nominally stands for as if it were a real thing rather than, like every other capitalist endeavour, just another trick in the marketing designed to make you comfortable and to make more money for the shareholders. Most of the businesses I have worked for have some sort of pretend notion that they exist for the good of the community, the tribe, the nation, or even the customer, and none of this is actually true. They make up origin stories where their emergence was a necessity where they are the heroes of something. Bill Gates didn’t want the people to have a computer in every home because it would be of benefit to that home, he wanted to sell computers simple as. Gucci does not care if you smell good to the opposite sex, they wish to sell their products and be richer today than they were yesterday. We are co-opted into being part of a propaganda about a falsehood because we are paid to be compliant employees, and we lack the language to get to the truth of it. The guy in Starbucks might not even like coffee, the woman at the perfume counter might smile and tell you great things about a scent she would never wear, the cattle farmer might prefer tofu, but the language they all will use is one of persuasion that they appreciate the product just as much as they wish you to.
I think this all leads to a question, it makes us ask where real harm begins and ends. It makes us question whether we value an increase in resilience or an increase on restrictions of most of the herd to acomodate better the needs of the weakest members of the herd. If 99 people in a room can hear a joke or banter and be perfectly unharmed by it, and one person feels that they have been offended, they have chosen to feel a certain way about what has been said, and the larger group has witnessed no malice and enacted no correcting behaviour, then do we still go on to hobble the landscape of the person who spoke? Have we created a society where being ‘offended’ is a position of authority, that by using the ‘offence’ defence a person can prevent the spoken word in any form it may be delivered?
Being offended is not a real objection to a position proposed, being hurt by words that are true is being hurt by truth itself as if one might not wish truth to be apparent. If I say you are fat and you are fat, have I in fact hurt you, or have I been insensitive by pointing it out? What we decide hurts us may be other people highlighting what we have struggled with, and in this there must be some sort of societal force that stops everyone from hurting everyone else, because we all have truths that we do not want to be pointed out all of the time to us, we all have things we are embarrassed about. So I’m not unsympathetic, I agree there must be a line somewhere and I agree that people need to refrain from crossing it. But I think when they do cross we should dig into the intention and not just look at the words in isolation.
One time I was telling students how in the army there used to be the idea that women could not be soldiers, I repeated what I had heard said as a young soldier, “the difference between women and toast is that you can make soldiers out of toast”. Now what I was doing was trying to say that this was the old view, that there was nothing wrong with women serving in the army now. The students took me to be telling a joke, they decided to collectively be offended by something that I had quoted, something that someone else had said, not my words with my intentions in them. This was a reach at being offended, from a generation of people who have been taught to seek offence as a power enabling tactic. After this I stopped talking to students because it’s too dangerous a thing to do, if they are going to try to be offended then they will succeed of course. In my mind we both lost out.
People interact all the time, and most of the time these interactions do not descend into violence and dispute. I would say we’re already pretty good at regulating our own spaces and this ‘training’ is unnecessary, just another way of controlling people made real and justified on a false argument, a solution created to address a problem that doesn’t really exist. Argue with me…
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