Know thyself.
*lolz
Just kidding: it’s all good.
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You have no idea.
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That is the point of most of the ritual ceremonies, like the Shellback thing, and for me, lots of rituals associated with military school. But I never got the idea that any of it was about the joy of inflicting pain or humiliation on others. I would say that the severity of it was more because the people in charge did not want to fail us by making it too easy. That would have diminished the importance of the experience. I have to assume that others have endured those experiences at the hands of those who enjoy cruelty, and so their experiences would have been different than mine.
But on the larger topic of hazing rituals. from my perspective, there were three goals in the process. Firstly, shared difficulty bonds people. Secondly, making achievements difficult weeds out the less committed. Thirdly, some ordeals were designed to show us that we could endure more misery than we likely had previously experienced.
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So don’t work on a ship. Problem averted.
Decrying this type of hazing as male bullshit misses the point: It’s egalitarian. Everyone there has been through the same thing, nobody gets a pass due to being wealthy or connected or psychologically indisposed. You don’t want your life potentially in the hands of anyone who’d try to weasel out of a bad haircut and a spanking.
I’ll be crossing the equator for the first time next summer, and I can only hope that Air France stews have something planned.
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You didn’t know that? Must be a regional thing.
I never said anything about “male bullshit”. But hazing to be accepted is, indeed, bullshit.
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Citation needed.
If I can’t count on you not to flip out about your head getting shaved, how am I supposed to count on you to risk your life to save your comrades? That’s how it works. If you don’t like it, stay home on your sorghum farm or in your ivory tower or whatever. Nobody’s shanghaiing you into the Navy or Merchant Marine.
What is wrong with Sorghum? 
It’s involved in a pretty rough early Meat Puppets song.
I think it really depends on what you are out there doing. If your job is filing cards in alphabetical order, then whether or not you are likely to freeze or panic under pressure is irrelevant. If your job might involve entering an enclosed space which might be on fire or flooding, or treating injured soldiers on the battlefield, then all the little rituals that test your ability to withstand physical and mental stress might save lives. But, in my experience, all of the hazing is expected, discussed, and completely voluntary. I would never want to inflict such things on any person who did not feel challenged by them. That is part of the point of it. There are people who instinctively run from the fire, and others who run towards the fire. It is important to know which group you belong to, especially if you plan on being the person in charge of putting the fire out.
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What about the folks that allow themselves to be hazed to join some frat or sorority or some H.S. sports team?
People should have more self respect and less herd mentality.
I can’t speak with any authority on either of those situations. I would assume that any hazing there would be more symbolic, but people do take such organizations pretty seriously. I am sure that they would want to weed out those who don’t want it enough. I also don’t think self respect has anything to do with it. All of my people are highly motivated, Type-A personalities. But the ability to endure hardship with patience and a sense of humor is also a highly valued characteristic.
I don’t want to start speculating on areas of psychology where I don’t really have the knowledge to write intelligently.
Well those Type-A personalities do put a high priority on conformity.
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