A message from the Publishers

In our unstinting efforts to lift the quality of writing in this site we were given the name Tarquin O’Flaherty.  Subsequent to undertaking our demanding due diligence, we uncovered the following:

Tarquin O’Flaherty, ( Dip.Ed. Lumberton, NC,1969, failed )
Having gone to the sub continent to make his fortune, his career was sadly blighted by a combination of factors which included carious teeth, an aversion to daylight and a less than respectable interest in Eurasian women. He is presently retired and living in a garret in Saint Kilda from whence he ekes out a living repairing dentures.

With qualifications and experience like this we were suitably impressed.
So we asked Tarquin for his thoughts on Passive Complicity.

TARQUIN O’FLAHERTY THOUGHTS ON PASSIVE COMPLICITY.

If we take the schoolyard as a microcosm of society, then, for our purposes the bully is the active part.  Whilst this lout goes about his business, the rest of us, the passive lot, divide off into two categories; those who admire the bully, and those who want to escape being next on the idiot’s assault list.

Despite the fact that we outnumber our oppressor by a huge margin, at no stage is the bully discouraged or his victims defended.  The bully, despite being vastly outnumbered, is seldom if ever challenged.  If it were otherwise, the bully would cease to exist.  In the schoolyard, a general acceptance of this situation seems to prevail.  So,what’s going on?  Why don’t we rise up and defend ourselves against this oppressor?

Let’s look again at the schoolyard.  To begin with the kids are never a cohesive group.  All around the yard there are clumps, little groups, islands of kids big enough to discourage the bully.  Then there are the smaller groups, the pairs, even single individuals who can’t, through choice or perhaps unpopularity, be part of a larger group.  From the smallest to the largest the focus is inward and parochial, usually centred on a popular individual, activity or interest.  This leaves the smaller groups, the singles or pairs, easy targets for the school bully.  When assaults occur, no help or protection is offered.  Not one group or individual rushes to the rescue. Instead the attitude is:

‘It’s about time somebody thumped him’.
Or;‘The bastard deserved it’.
Or; ‘Why should we interfere? Everybody hates him’.

The above are typical ‘passive’ responses.  They are our ‘reasons’ for not interfering, how we justify our failure to deal with the real culprit.  Importantly, not one of the above ‘justifications’ blames the bully; to a man they all blame the victim.  To make the situation acceptable, we still need to blame someone.  If we blame the bully then we cannot maintain our passive position.  We have to (actively) deal with the bully.  This requires us to do something entirely unselfish; interfere on someone else’s behalf.  This course of action is the least attractive, principally because it requires independence of thought.  It is also likely to be complex, messy and dangerous, with no obvious benefit to us.  In general, it goes against everything the selfish, passive world holds dear.  A much easier option is to blame the victim.  The function of society is to create a safe environment where mutual self interest can be served.  People live safely in this environment, and take little or no interest in the world around them.  In other words, we continue to behave precisely as we did in the schoolyard.  Having found our adult niche, guess what our response is when an adult bully appears and people die of their injuries in our police cells?  Predictably, very little.  People are not up in arms about it, not white people.  There aren’t thousands of us blocking the streets, protesting these casual murders. Do you know why?.

Because the bastards deserved it.