Friday, September 29, 2006
bullying
As I've read various people's snarling remarks about how (or how not) to fight terrorism, I've been reminded of those immortal words that people say to women who are being emotionally or physically bullied. (I have no familiarity with men who are bullied but the same may well be true for them.) "What did you do?" they ask. And, indeed, one's first impulse when attacked is logically to try and apply sense to the situation. How can you lessen or remove the person's annoyance? Can you stop doing whatever you were doing that (seems to have) caused the outburst? This is a huge fallacy, however, because the real cause of bullying has nothing whatsoever to do with what factually happened except in a proximate way. The real cause of bullying behavior is a desire to exert domineering power in the only way they know how which is to cause fear. Sure there are psychological factors like the abuse suffered by the abuser and how to get under the resulting anger so as to change things, but that's not the responsibility of the recipient of bullying. In fact, rational discourse never softens bullying behavior and even may exacerbate further and greater rancor. Tony Blair recently pointed to the idea that fighting terrorists provokes terrorists, and said that fighting bullying is actually the only way to reject, deflect and get rid of it because otherwise you just sit and wait to be attacked again, to be yelled at, slapped, punched, terrified. Again and again. It won't end by itself and it won't stop because the bully suddenly feels bad. Cajoling and trying to convince amount to sitting around and waiting to be attacked again, at which point one will simply have to bandage one's physical or emotional wounds (or those of one's citizens). It is as false on a global stage as it is on a personal one to think that rejecting bullying actually provokes it. Bullies don't want to work with anyone or change anything. They just want to frighten people and rule however many people they can get their hands on. If it's a wife, great. If it's also a child, great. If it's political cronies, all the better. If it's a whole country, even better. If it's a culture, better yet. And if people try to work with them (wives, countries, whatever), best of all, because then the bullied people will be sitting there all unsuspecting and be even more astonished and miserable when the bully returns with renewed vigor.
Labels: reflections
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