Tale of a Blue Whale: not a fairy-tale
The world of the 21st century shocks and at times terrorizes us. As it does our children, the most vulnerable among us in a rapidly developing/rapidly deteriorating global society.
A sinister phenomenon within social media that is coming to light is the Blue Whale Challenge. This “game” is said to have originated in Russia in 2013, where 130 deaths, between November, 2015 to April, 2016, have now been attributed to it. Those who dare to play are given a series of tasks over a period of fifty days — such as watching scary videos and moving on to self-harming tasks such as cutting one’s lip. A requirement is to carve an image of a whale on the forearm. The game encourages secrecy and social isolation.
And on day 50 — the task is to commit suicide by jumping off a high building.
The name Blue Whale refers to the phenomenon of beached whales, which is linked to suicide. Suicides all over the world have reportedly been linked to the challenge, although solid evidence of the game is hard to find. Some teens have posted to social media to openly express interest in playing the game.
What would compel our youth to make a game out of dying? To embrace so fully the imperative for suicide?
Influence of Environment
It would be folly to underestimate the influence of our environments on us. Take, for example, the environment created by the advertising industry. No elaboration of that influence is necessary here because its message has become part of our inner landscapes. We buy, upgrade, compare our stuff with others’ stuff, keep up with Joneses.
It behooves us to consider the environment in which our children are growing up. The intensity and impact on them of a violent world are so much greater than we experienced, because it has become upfront and in-their-faces. A school lockdown because of a shooter breeds a terror that we did not imagine when those of us who lived in the 50s hunkered down under our desks every time the monthly Conelrad signal wailed. A nuclear bomb seemed so far off and unlikely, and we giggled at the absurdity of it. The shooter is in the next room. The threat is real.
The inner angst begins early in their lives. Elementary schools have lock-down protocols and rehearsals. As they grow up in a broken world, our kids begin to discern that the very structures of the institutions that were developed to maintain order and create a framework for their lives are failing them. Education is passing tests, medical care may be unavailable, politics is a circus, families are falling apart, churches are irrelevant to them, and the media blasts out the news that North Korea has tested a bomb that can reach the United States.
We bewail the grip of social media on them. But think about it. This virtual world is for them a place of connection, of safety, of friendships, of respite from inner panic. It’s a place just to be a kid. A place to get away from it all. We have a generation of youth who simply want the crazy in the world to end, because if it doesn’t there is nothing left for them. Hope for and excitement about the future easily devolves into anger, despair, hopelessness, helplessness.
They are technologically savvy and some seek out the darker side of social media. A game such as the Blue Whale Challenge activates adolescent confusions. To be part of the crowd/to be different. To be taken care of/to be independent. To comply with rules/to rebel. To care about life/to see life as useless. It’s an easy seduction for so certain scared kids whose sense of self is not yet formed. What could be a more dramatic way to show a middle finger to the world?
What Are They Thinking?!
They’re not, and that’s the issue. The social media environment opens the door to succumbing to persuasion and infatuation with ideas never before considered. And teenagers, being who they are, focus immediately on action, bypassing thought and inner protective mechanisms. The “player” enters a bubble that is outside the normal day to day humdrum of life. Within that bubble they are as if hypnotized. The sense of purpose and inclusion, and the tangible means to end it all, speak to the detachment and emptiness of their inner worlds. Their participation in something so secret and so unique makes them feel clever, special, part of something.
It’s not unlike the psychology of a terrorist or suicide bomber. In both cases, the “gamer” becomes satiated with and addicted to the desire of another person or group, and being connected to that desire becomes more important than life itself. It offers freedom from life’s sorrows. It is the gripping onto a shadow that promises to lead to something higher, something better. Relief. Connection. Symbolism. Following the crowd. Drama. All values dear to the hearts and souls of our adolescent children.
Harpooning the Whale
In India, in response to at least one suicide attributed to the Blue Whale Game, the Baleia Rosa, or Pink Whale Challenge, is being circulated on social media. It too challenges fifty actions in fifty days — writing affirmations about self, drawing positive images on the skin with markers, forgiveness and so forth, and the final act on Day 50 is to help another person in need. The focus is on connection and support. This response to an alarming craze is necessary in the face of the toll on the life of our youth. However, it is reactive, and to solve these kinds of trends we need to be proactive.
There’s a key common denominator at work here. In fact, it underlies the general disorder on our planet — the erosion and downward cascade of our relationships with each other. It’s happening in families, in international relations, and everywhere in between. As a species we’ve morphed ourselves into creatures totally opposite from those on the vegetative and animal levels of existence where interdependence, altruism, and interconnection maintain the elegant balance of nature. Mankind has lost this and we are seeing the toll all around us. Our children may not be able to define the source of their angst, but they deeply feel that something is terribly wrong.
In a small town in upstate New York, an intrepid high school teacher began implementing a unique strategy in response to ever-increasing bullying in one of her classrooms. She organized students into circles, laid down a few simple rules of engagement, and asked them questions about who they are, what they need, and what good things they are able to see in each other.
The results were surprisingly quick and gratifying. Within a few sessions bullying had all but ceased, friendships were blossoming, the classroom calmed down, and grades went up. Students involved in these circles requested that this teacher visit their other classrooms to teach everyone what they had learned. Other teachers took notice and began to request circles for specific class issues, e.g., to create a collaborative attitude for completing a class project. The eventual outcome was incorporating this approach into the Common Core curriculum.
What happened here? A gently-guided and non-judgmental approach created an environment that helped students to build connections among themselves. Questions were designed to inspire discussions about the importance of friendships and to begin performing actions in alignment with that idea. The guidelines for the group included listening deeply to each other, talking in turn, no criticism or negation, speaking from the heart and treating others within this circle as equals. The trajectory of the connections within the group was toward discovering something higher in themselves and in each other.
Worthy of mention is the overall softening and opening up of the school environment. The student population was diverse, in terms of nationality and socioeconomic status, as well as educational interests. This was a trade school and cliques tended to form around areas of study in addition to other commonalities. The staff saw a blurring of these divisions, a common acceptance of each other, a more cohesive attitude, more friendships among kids across previous boundaries.
The healing salve was connecting with each other. These students experienced sensations and insights about themselves and friends that were new to them. And they loved how they felt. They became armed with the kind of inner esteem of self and genuine care for each other required to resist such radical proposals as the Blue Whale Challenge.
Changing the Inner Landscape
This high school teacher did not pull her method out of thin air, but utilized a unique upgrading of the concepts and strategies put forth in the field of Integral Education. This innovative use of the circle has been used in schools, workplaces and families, as well as with participants hostile to each other, such as groups of Arabs and Israelis. Its success in creating strong feelings of connection and unity within the circle setting has been life-changing for thousands.
This part is important to understand. It was not as much the method that soothed the meanness, but what this teacher held deep inside her. She understood that feeling deep connections with others and caring for them changes everything. She had attended these circles herself and took out of those experiences her own elevated sense of her responsibility toward others. It was this inner landscape that she was able to channel to her students. And they received it.
The medical school mantra is, “Watch one, do one, teach one.” It’s the only way. We must be what we teach.
And this is what we must do. As the parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles of our upcoming generations, it is we who need to uplift our worried children. It is how we can save them. Our educational system cannot and will not do it. The system is broken, entrenched in an antiquated model, forced to teach to tests, dealing with unimaginable social problems in their classrooms. Teachers have become warriors, and they are tired. Instilling inner boundaries, self-esteem, strength, caring in our children is on us.
It was rather shocking to me when programs such as Character Counts were introduced into school curricula. Was it not the structure and boundaries within the classroom that would impart values? What happened to being sent to the principal’s office? In other words, why is a special course needed to do what parents and communities have traditionally done? Concerned teachers saw the encroaching changes in families and society and took on yet another battle by creating such a course.
Some shape-shifter has twisted things around in our world. And in this arena of our children’s successful segue into a strange and unpredictable new global society, we have to untwist, to bring back one segment of the “good old days” of which we are capable. It is up to us to instill in our children the confidence, hope and sense of self and of others that resoundingly rebuffs the Blue Whale Challenges of the world.
This is imminently doable if we have the will. The method is developed and researched in many different arenas. There are teachers available. Anyone can learn it. It can be used at family meetings, when siblings or friends squabble, at slumber parties as a game, parent-created circles for elementary kids, using as an entrée into this endeavor a solution to bullying. The possibilities are endless and the potential is huge. Our upcoming generation of fresh new faces needs this inner clarity and stalwart confidence to lead our world into a less scary and more loving place.