OK... so as an example of insider/outsider behaviour, my cartoons
starring Doug are a form of ribbing that has the same quality as
practical jokes. I feel I know Doug well enough on and off list to
know what he would find rude or hurtful and what he would not, so I am
comfortable poking a little fun at him. For example, I know that
Doug's self identity includes that of being a Skeptic (Zhiangzi
reference) and of being tenacious (as stated).
I also know Stephen well enough to do this, but he wisely (or out of
boredom with us!) stays out of the fray here, so he is relatively
safe. I'm getting to know others well enough that I think I could
parody some of you with impunity and possibly with appreciation by the
recipients as well as the audience.
Glen and I have not finished our back-n-forth about technology, but deep
in that conversation is another subconversation about insider/outsider
and language...
- Steve
Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 01/18/2013 10:12 AM:
I think there is a distinction. Organizations that seek to endure need
to prevent bully cliques if for no other reason than so that their
officials maintain their authority, e.g. The President needs to tell the
Generals what to do, not the reverse. I think it's a scale-free thing.
That means holding individual and emergent group behavior to some
standard. People at all levels in the organization need to be able to
agree that so-and-so went wacko and behaved inappropriately, that they
don't need to tolerate it. Individuals can help this to happen just by
acting consistently with the implicit standard, especially when it is in
their interest to do so.
Hm. So can we use practical jokes as an example? That domain should
bring us back to Nick's original issue.
Practical jokers are on the cusp between [im]polite behavior. If you're
established as part of the clique (say in a cubicle dominated office),
then it's considered polite to, say, smear another clique member's phone
with vaseline. But it's considered impolite to do that to someone who's
not in the clique, even _if_ that outsider might want to be in the clique.
The practical joker clique can easily turn into a bully clique by
recognizing the wants of the outsider and as they test her to see if she
fits the predicate, if they determine she does not, they may play
exceptionally cruel jokes on her in order to clarify her out-group
status. But they will maintain that, had someone played those jokes on
them, they would have taken it in stride because that's what they do to
each other "all the time".
In an office setting, the boss has an obligation to set the standards
for the practical joke boundaries. But by their very nature, the
in-group practical jokers purposefully push those boundaries because
that's what the clique is defined as ... that _is_ the predicate. The
boss also has a competing constraint to encourage camaraderie.
How do the in-group practical jokers define [im]polite?
I submit that they must have at least 2 definitions of [im]polite, one
for members and one for non-members. And they'll likely have a 3rd for
the boss.
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