Humiliation Ritualized, in Childhood and Politics
My experience in academia and many other realms of life has shown me that the desire to humiliate others and thus putatively raise one’s cache of social capital—an impulse I can honestly say I’ve never quite understood—is a cardinal trait of many human beings, most of whom are desperately and futilely trying to use these public demonstrations of would-be dominance to very fill large affective holes within their spiritually empty selves.