Life is traumatic. To quote Sartre, "Hell is other people." Remember that I have already mentioned that our brief epoch of lovely liberalism is but a wee aberration on the vast sweeping map of our human history. Until less than one hundred years ago, people living in the majority of countries lived in peril of their lives being taken by the state. Only in the last fifty years or so are there more countries (103) that have completely abolished the death penalty, than those (58) that still practice it. This is to say, that until recently, within my own lifetime, the vast majority of the world's citizens lived in danger of being killed by their own governments. This is what I would call passive collective trauma. The actual cause of trauma is not self-evident, but a hostile, chronically unsafe environment that contributes to a state of perpetual unease. Torture and other harsh punishment were also a constant threat. I believe that this in itself would have been sufficient for creating a vast, global experience of collective trauma from people having to coexist under harsh governments and in unforgiving societies.
Let me reduce this to the personal. In schools in my province, British Columbia, corporal punishment was only abolished in 1973, when I was in grade eleven. The strap was the most popular form of punishment. The offending student would be whipped on the palms of his outstretched hands by the principal or vice-principal with what resembled a truncated leather belt. This was a punishment that I believe to be consistent with the UN definitions of torture. I remember vividly the sense of chronic dread that many of us coped with at school, of the importance of avoiding this harsh punishment. We were controlled and ruled by fear, very consistent with the spirit of the times. This was at the height of the Cold War, in the shadow of the Second World War and everyone lived with an impending sense of danger from nuclear annihilation. Being threatened by educators with physical harm for misbehaving was merely part of the fear machine that was normal life.
We all had to watch our backs and we all lived in a state of subjugation. Have you ever noticed a dog that has been beaten, perhaps a spaniel, wagging its tail with affection, but head lowered and trembling as though anticipating the first sudden and unexpected blow or kick. This I think would describe us when we are kids in school, living in this shadow of fear of physical harm and humiliation from our educators. This also suggests the muted and ongoing sense of terror that people have almost always lived under, accepting as normal that for stealing a loaf of bread they could be flogged one hundred times, and for sleeping with the wrong person they would be hanged or burned to death.
This legacy of oppression and trauma still lingers in our society, only right now it is the power of our employers to deprive us of our livelihood, or landlords to throw us out onto the street that keeps many of us afraid.
I remember my own fourth and final experience of being threatened with being strapped at school. It had already happened three times:
In grade one I got it for brawling at recess. In grade three I was strapped for not finishing writing a test on time. My mother was very angry about this punishment and harshly rebuked the vice-principal afterward, though naturally he never apologized to me. It happened again in grade eight, for the part I played in encouraging a fight between two other students.
Whether I deserved the punishment or not, there was something about being intimidated to the point of tears, physically harmed and openly humiliated by two heartless unfeeling old men in suits that had no relation to the offence committed. I was simply a spectacle for the sadistic enjoyment of those bullies in suits.
In grade nine, shortly after turning fifteen, I appeared again in the principal's office. This time, I had missed a detention which I had assumed had been cancelled, as my name was not announced with the others. My offence was rather small. A particularly disagreeable math teacher exiled me from class when she caught me yawning openly and loudly. To cut myself slack, I wasn't sleeping well, and my parents were in the middle of negotiating their protracted and bitter divorce. I was so pissed at the old bag (my math teacher, I mean) that I slammed the door loudly on my way out. She clicked out on her little high heels and ordered me to the principal's office, and the rest is history.
The next day my name was announced on the school PA and I went to the office. In the principal's office, with the vice-principal standing by, the principal, who was an oppressive bully of the old school, took out the strap and told me to extend my hand palm upward. I was not going to give him the satisfaction of humiliating me. He was not going to see me cry. I said, "I don't believe in the strap, and neither does my mother (she didn't!) and I walked out. I was told I wouldn't be welcome back in the school until I took my punishment and I replied, then I'm not coming back. I spent the day with my Jesus Freak friends. When I came home in time for dinner my mother interrogated me, then acknowledged that even though she didn't like my taking off into Vancouver like that (we were living in Richmond), neither had the principal any right to strap me.
Two days later, Mom tarted herself up in her best clothes, make-up and perfume. Already an attractive woman, she made herself Hollywood beautiful. She drove me to school and chatted for half an hour or so with the principal in his office, while I waited outside. When she emerged it was announced I could return to the school. I was not going to be strapped. I also overheard the principal, in his thick New Zealand accent, tell Mom, "Mrs. Greenlaw, you are a remarkable woman!"
The next day, I returned to class. There was a substitute teacher in our English class and anarchy ruled. I swore at a student who'd insulted me about something, and the sub (now known as supply teachers) dispatched me immediately to the principal's office. When I arrived, all he said in his thick New Zealand accent was "Greenlaw, I don't know why you're here and I don't want to find out. Go home. Now!"
When I arrive home twenty minutes later my mother snarled, "I was just on the phone with your principal giving him shit and now I'm going to give you shit."
I was back in school that day after lunch.
Almost forty years later, by the way, one of the case managers I was working with, it turned out, was the son of my former vice-principal. When I found out, I told him about how I walked out on his dad and the principal that day when they were going to give me the strap. He seemed quite gobsmacked. Apparently, he had heard about me!
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