Mean Does Not Mean Strong: A Revelation

As readers know, I have been wrestling with the concept (and actuality) of meanness for months. I have experienced it personally (don’t get me started on my neighbor); I have witnessed it; I have heard more stories of meanness than I can count on all my fingers and toes – five times over.

I have suggested that kindness is meanness’ kryptonite. I have suggested the myriad of causes of meanness which include mental illness, trauma and familial and societal dysfunction. I have shared that the VUCA world in which we live (volatile, uncertain, chaotic and anxiety provoking) is contributory. Social media contributes also. So did/does COVID’s masking and isolation.

But it is only recently that I have realized that the deliverers mistake their meanness for strength. The listeners/recipients also may have the same mixed up correlation.

Think about that for a moment.

Mean people feel weak and then being mean makes them feel stronger. Think politicians who thought they were winning an election and now see their lead diminish. They lean into meanness because they want to project strength when they feel weak.

And the listeners too often mistake the meanness they hear or experience as character strength in the speaker. (Not the case with me and neighbor to be clear; her meanness didn’t fool me; it aggravated me.)

When that meanness occurs, the speaker/actor appears strong and we can feel weaker. Think parents who are mean to kids. So we cower; but if we could see meanness as a sign of weakness, we could fight back more easily. But oft-times, the meanness is so virulent that it silences us and even endangers us.

The sad part: mean people often know that their meanness scares others while simultaneously being aware that they are masking their own weakness. How powerful is meanness then? It makes the speaker feel stronger when they actually are weak and it makes the listener/recipient scared or weak when they could be strong. This is most true when there is a size or age differential. Men use meanness against women and adults use it against children. Just examples.

Watching both Trump and JD Vance lately made me realize that they want to project strength because they feel weak. And they then believe their own meanness, thinking it makes them stronger. So they ramp it up. And some listeners hear strength, not weakness.

Now self-awareness and self-reflection are not the strong suits of mean people. But one form of kryptonite is for listeners to walk away or not be taken in. Now that can lead to increased meanness which can be risky, especially for children and in some cases women exposed to abusive men. I sadly know about both.

But what if an audience simply walked out when the speaker was mean, rather than applauding? What if we literally turned our backs on a mean person and walked away, muttering to ourselves about their weakness.

I get that this is fanciful.

But let’s break the equal sign between meanness and strength. Meanness does not equal strength. Period. Full stop. To think otherwise is to empower meanness and diminish real strength.

What this means, too, is that the mean people are weaker than we thought. And even with hindsight, maybe that lets us process the past meanness in our lives. And those of us on the receiving end had and have more power than we realized. A revelation for sure, even if we didn’t realized it way back when. Knowing it now has power too.