In Praise of Childhood Bullying
The long-term consequences of short-circuiting childhood challenges.
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Hot take, I know, but hear me out.
Later this month I’m going to be leading a discussion on one of my favorite movies, Cool Hand Luke. If you haven’t had the pleasure of watching it yet, it stars Paul Newman at his peak, both as a handsome rascal and as an actor. He portrays the titular Luke, a petty vandal and war hero doing time in a Southern prison farm.
Luke is not exactly a cooperator.
Through the course of the movie he’s given a rigid list of rules he’s expected to follow and receives arbitrary harsh punishments even when he abides them. This injustice prompts him to escape. Google AI says his resilience is portrayed through Luke’s unwavering spirit and refusal to be broken, even in the face of adversity.
While Luke is definitely framed as a larger than life figure, as a character he does evoke real life figures like Audie Murphy, a veteran I fear most young Americans don’t know. I did a web search on ‘war heroes 2025’ and the top returns were video game live streams.
While we don’t learn much about Luke’s childhood, except that his mother loved him best and he had an absent father, given the time period we can safely assume he wasn’t coddled. In prison, we watch him endure the worst kind of bullying: violent, unjust, and relentless.
That’s the meat on this bone.
Suffering is Par for the Course
Few wish hardship on anyone, especially children. But outside the rarefied peace of the modern West, hardship is not the exception—it’s the human condition. A child shielded from all adversity today can expect to still face it as an adult, just without the practice.
When I became a parent, zero tolerance policies were sweeping through the schools. Between the Columbine massacre and high profile suicides, administrators cracked down on bullying, violence, drugs, you name it with the best of intentions. No child, they promised, should suffer the abuse that once passed for normal.
Pair that with rising rates of IVF, older motherhood, and the era of the one-child household, and you get a new parenting class—one that understandably views their child as irreplaceable. Many fought hard to conceive, endured years of shots, doctor visits, and heartbreak. It’s no wonder they’re unwilling to risk any harm befalling their hard-won miracle.
But as with all things, this trade off comes at a cost.
Missing from these calculations is the developmental value of hardship—the formative power of playground politics. Kids deprived of the sting of peer conflict don’t learn how to manage it. They don’t get the gritty lessons of standing up to a taunt, shrugging off a shove, or outwitting a rival. They grow up anxious, fragile, and easily outraged, constantly scanning the world for someone to fix their discomfort. They are also unable to recognize their own out-of-bounds behavior.
In focusing so intently on avoiding rare tragedies, we’ve failed to ask: what kind of people do we want to raise?
Resilient? Resourceful? Determined? Tough in the face of adversity? Wise to their own shortcomings?
Unintended Grad School Lessons
I saw this firsthand when I went back to grad school. Anxiety was as common as dandelions and not the quiet, internal sort. Students weaponized it. Minor discomforts were treated as existential threats. Faculty often rewarded the behavior in the name of social justice or vying to be crowned, “favorite teacher.” Under the banner of compassion, fragility was rewarded and bullying rebranded as righteous indignation.
That’s not resilience. That’s armed learned helplessness with a moral halo.
None of this is to say that cruelty should be tolerated. Vicious, sustained bullying needs intervention. And investigation into conditions that support such sadism.
But when we treat a cafeteria jab the same as a coordinated campaign of abuse, we rob kids of the low-stakes conflicts that teach strength.
Even when bullying goes further, the answer isn’t always elimination, it’s preparation. Indeed, if a bigger battle among adults is required, that’s all the more reason to bolster kids against hardship. Interventions that don’t empower kids to face future adversity are just Band-Aids on a growing vulnerability.
Think again of Audie Murphy. Dirt poor, short, and orphaned, he faced unimaginable odds. In WWII, he earned every American combat award for valor, including the Medal of Honor, after single-handedly holding off an entire German company for an hour, then leading a counterattack while wounded. Even the French and Belgians lavished him with medals of bravery.
He didn’t become a hero because he was protected. He became one because he learned, early on, to face fear and do the hard thing anyway.
When the war ended, Murphy struggled with nightmares, depression, and insomnia—classic PTSD. But he didn’t hide it. He used his fame to speak out, helping others face their own demons. That too was courage.
I don’t know what exactly made Murphy who he was. But it wasn’t bubble wrap.
Wisdom from the Veldt
And this isn’t just about heroes or even humans. Years ago, I watched a documentary about a pride of lions. After the dominant male was killed, the lionesses protected their cubs from roaming males—who were out to kill their young—by going into hiding. But during their exile, the females still allowed the cubs to face danger. At just three months old, the cubs took the lead confronting hyenas, while the mothers watched from behind.
Why? Because this was the right level of threat. Enough to teach necessary skills, but not an imminent, unrelenting danger.
That’s what today’s kids need: manageable adversity. Teasing. Rivalries. A scuffle or two under watchful eyes. Not prolonged stalking and hostility—but not sterilization either.
You can argue we don’t know exactly what made Luke so unbreakable, or Audie Murphy so steady under fire. But really, does anyone believe a world of padded corners and perpetual adult supervision is forging the next generation of self-assured, competent adults?
The world, like Cool Hand Luke’s Southern prison farm, is full of arbitrary rules and rough justice. Utopia isn’t coming, that dream is a nightmare. There’s just life—and how we choose to show up to our struggles.
By sanitizing childhood, we aren’t saving kids. We’re setting them up to shatter under pressure. A little bullying, handled wisely, can just be the fire that tempers their steel.
For what it’s worth, I was bullied as a kid too.
Housekeeping
The antitrust series has made a few waves, and there will be some podcasts coming up that I will be a part of. That exciting. I have sewing that I want to do, I need new clothes made just for me, but I haven’t found the time. I think if I can get a few weeks worth of writing knocked out, I might be able to make some progress there too.
On the Bookshelf
I’ve been relistening to the Licensing Racket, but generally speaking, I’m still catching up. I expect in the next week or two, I’ll be making headway on this list again.
Accreditation on the Edge: Challenging Quality Assurance in Higher Education by Susan D. Phillips
The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan
The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who Is Allowed to Work, and Why It Goes Wrong by Rebecca Haw Allensworth
Moral Calculations: Game Theory, Logic and Human Frailty by Laszlo Mero
The New Know-nothings: The Political Foes of the Scientific Study of Human Nature by Morton Hunt
The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard by Marc Brettler, Carol Newsom, Pheme Perkins
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman
We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of the New Elite by Musa al-Gharbi
“Whatever It Is, I’m Against It”: Resistance to Change in Higher Education by Brian Rosenberg
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About
Diogenes in Exile began after I returned to grad school to pursue a Clinical Mental Health Counseling master’s degree at the University of Tennessee. What I encountered, however, was a program deeply entrenched in Critical Theories ideology. During my time there, I experienced significant resistance, particularly for my Buddhist practice, which was labeled as invalidating to other identities. After careful reflection, I chose to leave the program, believing the curriculum being taught would ultimately harm clients and lead to unethical practices in the field.
Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to investigating, writing, and speaking out about the troubling direction of psychology, higher education, and other institutions that seem to have lost their way. When I’m not working on these issues, you’ll find me in the garden, creating art, walking my dog, or guiding my kids toward adulthood.
You can also find my work at Minding the Campus