Why we ostracise - the failing Cat’s Cradle

Individuals may be reasonable and caring citizens but due to the cult of the individual, the fall of the notion of a common good, of highly individualised communication technology and the creation of the 24-hour workday, there has been a fall in positive regard and empathy for our friends and workmates.

We have become like atomic clocks divorced from the sun and moon; divorced from the land and the tides. And when we feel slighted or angry, when someone rejects our belief systems and we can’t defeat their arguments through emotive appeals, we resort directly to the howitzer of the homo sapiens world - ostracisation.

Ostracisation is a complex process. The famous ancient Greeks Thermistocles and Pericles were ostracised - and Thermistocles saved Greece against the Persians. The Roman poet Ovid was banished for life by Augustus Caesar because he had had a gut full of his licentious poetry about his daughter, Julia. There are some things a father and Roman Emperor won’t tolerate.

Kipling Williams says in his book, Ostracism - the Power of Silence, that the simple act of being ignored simultaneously attacks four fundamental human needs.

“Our sense of connection and belonging is severed; the control we desire between our actions and outcomes is uncoupled; our self-esteem is shaken by feelings of shame, guilt or inferiority; and we feel like a ghost, observing what life would be like if we did not exist,” Williams says.

“Most people claim the act is empowering. It gives them a sense of control over their targets - control they may not otherwise experience. But there’s an ironic twist to these feelings of ‘control’. Some say that at some point they themselves are controlled by the ostracism and find it difficult to stop using it. The use of the silent treatment becomes self-perpetuating,” Williams says.

One person I interviewed was ostracised by his “friends” after the drug overdose of a mutual friend at a Bali beach party. He was blamed for not keeping an eye on him. He had fallen asleep while his friend overdosed on alcohol and heroin. He said it took the death to make him realise his friends were simply acquaintances or to quote Malcolm Lowry “wolves at our heels”.

“They smiled and smiled but once the going got tough, they took off like Double Bay housewives who’d found a Prada garage sale around the corner. The phone stopped ringing.”

He in turn cut them dead. That’s a rare case of double ostracisation, from which there is no return.

It is a unique form of bullying. Williams says that unlike other forms of aversive interpersonal behaviours, for example, physical or verbal abuse, ostracism can be characterised as a non-behaviour. So it’s enveloped in several layers of ambiguity.

For instance, targets may notice that they are being ignored and think to themselves “It is actually happening to me or is it my imagination?” And it’s precisely this ambiguity that makes ostracism uniquely powerful.

One could conceivably ostracise another without having to admit doing it or having to apologise for it.