Vivat Libertas

Every day, teens attempt suicide over being bullied. Many fail - the American Association of Suicidology reports that for every successful suicide 25 failed suicide attempts are made - but many succeed. And out of those thousands and thousands of teens, every so often one's death becomes a cause célèbre . Twitter and Tumblr flock to mourn their newly-minted martyr and decry the evils of bullying - but within a day or two that dead teen is forgotten as quickly as they rose to fame, to be relegated to the ranks of all the nameless suicides. Meanwhile, people preach about how bullying is bad. I won't ask you to forgive me my cynicism, but I will ask you to hear me out. I don't jump to eulogise each dead teen, because I know how many there are. I know that this is not a unique event, that this is endemic. And while I hate bullying, I won't join in the preaching. Let me explain why. I was bullied from a very young age all the way to about 15 years old, which socially iso...

Something a lot of people say to me to encourage me to remain passive is that action doesn't work. Since those same people also say to me that action is dangerous (and since it wouldn't be dangerous due to government crackdowns if it didn't do something , no matter how trivial), I am forced to conclude that they really need to take a look at the flaws in their argument...but I digress. There are many problems with the "action doesn't work" line, but really they can be boiled down to to major ones: 1) what does work and 2) the mass of evidence flatly contradicting this position. Action is, put in the simplest possible terms, doing stuff. If doing stuff doesn't work, what does work? Wishing really, really hard? Depending on the kind of action taken, where you live, how many people are doing it with you, etc., yes, some actions may be more effective than others. Some actions may be ineffective or counterproductive, but any action is pretty much guaranteed...