I haven't actually watched the video and have no intention of doing so, nor do I mean any hostility in writing this. But I find the whole affair troubling and symptomatic of a far larger problem; namely, the mindset by which certain subcultures seem to maintain their social cohesion.
I'll start by saying I'm not "siding" with either the parents or the daughter here. This isn't about who's right, it's about how all players are part of the same problem and that their solutions all seem to rest on "more of the same", reinforcing the very ideas and outlooks that led them here. That's one reason I dislike the parents' response; not because their daughter wasn't poorly behaved, but because they're just reinforcing the message and unable to see that they're the same, only with "bigger guns" (so its apparently "okay"). This is sadly common, in my opinion; people are by nature highly conservative (that's not a political statement, it covers "liberals" and "conservatives" alike) and think that if your donkey won't move when you bash it over the head with a stick, it's best to bash it with a sledgehammer and see if that works. So often the response to social problems is to just assert the old ways harder in the mistaken belief that it will serve as a patch on your sinking ship; instead you'll just punch through the hull. And this isn't about one family in my opinion; this is about their culture as an entirety and its manner of holding society and family together.
Do communities in these places actually hold together through love and mutual support or by intimidation, obligation and imposition? Saying "well, the parents tried everything else and this is a last resort" is a justification I find highly suspect.
Did they try everything else, or did they themselves embrace a selfish, domineering outlook from the start, only to be offended when their child eventually embraced the same? To be frank, this is something I've noted about these (sub)cultures - there's nothing actually keeping people together other than moralizing efforts to control. The natural urge to social cooperation is reduced and the natural drive for selfishness is enhanced, and such a society can only function so long as people reinforce each others' behaviours in an overt, assertive way. Hence why this part of the world has so many political or religious extremists, I imagine, and why so high a percentage of the populace are in prison. Imposing on each other, demanding that other people acknowledge obligations, responsibilities and duties while in no way yourself acting in a manner that recognizes the need for communal support. The unspoken message is "my needs and wants first, all the time, and "go me!" when I assert them", but when, surprise, surprise, the young take that message to heart, the elders have the
spoken message: "no. MY selfishness is fine and good and proper, but yours is wrong, wrong wrong. YOU must submit".
And the thing is, it's of course right and proper that parents have control and authority over preadult children and assert that authority when they feel they must. The problem, in part, is that technically the parents here
are not doing anything at all wrong; but their social mindset is such that the parenting is lost amid a ideology that embraces selfish assertion and aggressive imposition on others. No wonder the young rebel - they're being raised amid messages of selfish aggressiveness, but when they immitate they're suppressed.
I've seen something reasonably similar play out in my own experience, observing the teachers and other students at my old school. The teachers (who often had my sympathy) moaned that the students just weren't listening to the message, and I was thinking "but
they are. The problem is, the message that comes from your mouths is
not the message being sent by the society they live in and the systems you are a part of. So it's dismissed as not worth listening to, being clearly at odds with all the unspoken lessons they've learned". I sympathised entirely with what the teachers went through with some of these students, but they didn't seem to realize that the young, while they like to
look "rebellious", are rarely anything of the sort. They are picking up the message quite well. The government tells you to say "green", but the students can see quite well that the wider context of society is yellow. So you can say "green" until you're blue in the face; they won't listen because it doesn't match what they're being "told" every day, all day from other sources. You'll be bypassed entirely.
Is the child in this case a self-centred "brat"? I have no doubt. I'm sure her behaviour was shameful. But where did she learn that from? A (sub)culture that promotes an almost primal, aggressive selfishness while maintaing cohesion and stability only through the constant reinforcement of controls on other people's behaviour. The word "respect" is a favoured one in these (sub)cultures, I notice. It comes up an awful lot - demands of "respect". Entitlement lies at the very heart of the concept of respect - when there is no real attachment, humility or wisdom, there is the demand that others show "respect" to you. Even
SPOCKED says:
His dose of tough love will help assure that this child will one day actually BE THERE for her parents in their old age...
suggesting that the father's own eventual gratification is his motive (though I don't see how this is supposed to make her
less likely to say "f**k it" and leave them to rot. Would she be right to do so? Unlikely. Should I care either way? They're all symptomatic of the same problem). The daughter is what her society and parents made her whether they like it or not. And again, while they will quickly insist that everyone and anyone
else stand up to their responsibility (particularly if it involves an obligation benefiting
them), you'll not see them imposing such on
themselves. And their flawed solution is, as is so often the case, "more of the same".
It's aggression, bullying - he or she who imposes the most control or power, wins. If parenting is coupled with humility and cooperative ethos, then when authority is asserted it is effective. I for one would obey my uncle instantly if he gave me The Look, in part because most of the time he wasn't imposing or controlling at all.
How can a social structure built on obligation, moralizing demands, mutual public humiliation and pushing for number one remain stable? People will claim that the father is teaching his daughter not to be selfish and entitled, but in my opinion that's not so. He's just reinforcing the unspoken lesson while hoping he can assert control over her and "win" by throwing the harder punch. The lesson she'll learn is either "I must submit" or "selfishness is still good, but I need to assert power and control more effectively if I am to reap the benefits". Or both, which will make her dangerous indeed.
