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CHAPTER 1
The Bully Game: Then and Now
It's hard for some people to equate what they see as "harmless" even "playful" bullying on the kindergarten playground with some vicious street thug berating and beating down a little old lady for her Social Security check or with your horny boss trying to cop a feel every time he catches you at the copier. But it's all bullying.
First and foremost, bullying is about invading another's personal space — from snatching your lunch money with a sucker punch to the gut, to coughing up a degrading off-color racist or sexist punch line every time you happen to walk by, to pouncing on you at your local ATM.
Right off, we can see that bullying varies in its level of sophistication and its level of intrusion. So whether it's the kindergarten bully yanking on the little girl's pigtails, or your boss patting your behind, it's still an invasion of your personal space.
As in war so in bullying. First comes "the invasion" of personal space (often hand in hand with varying degrees of violence), then comes "the domination" (of both your mind and body) as more and more of your day — and life — is taken up with you trying to avoid the bully in your life and/or to please and placate him even as he becomes emboldened in direct proportion to your diminishing escape options.
Remember that bullies feed on fear and hesitation. For every step back you take trying to avoid trouble, trouble takes two giant steps forward.
What do you do?
First, take a deep breath and remind yourself that you have more in common with your bully than you might at first suspect — or be ready to accept.
The odds are you were both introduced to the "Bully Game" early on in your lives — if not as bullied children in your own home, then in school. Early on, before we learned to tie our shoes, some of us learned to be bullies and some of us learned to be victims.
Take another deep breath and relax, and remind yourself that in the same way we learned to be bullies, or learned to be victims, that we can unlearn to be bullies, or unlearn to be victims.
We begin to do this by giving the monster a name, by defining exactly what we consider to be "bullying" and what actions clearly label another person "a bully."
By taking this preliminary step, that is, focusing our attention on the problem by clearly defining the parameters of that problem, we, in effect, draw a line in the sand — that beyond this point of common decency and civility, thoughtless or intentionally hurtful words and actions that clearly qualify by anyone's definition as "bullying" will no longer be tolerated!
Thus, following Sun Tzu's advice, we'll dedicate ourselves to stopping little problems before they become big problems. We'll accomplish this by getting a handle on where the bully came from and figuring out what motivates the bully mentality in general and our bully's three pounds of tainted gray matter in particular.
Finally, rounding out our study, we'll study how the "Bully Game" we first encounter on the playground all too often follows us up through our troubled teen years, into adulthood — bullying us from cradle to grave. And through our study we will learn to finally take responsibility for our own safety of body and peace of mind. The buck — and the bullying — stops here!
WHO YOU CALLIN' A BULLY?
"Let no man think lightly of evil, saying in his heart, It will not come nigh unto me. Even by the falling of water-drops a water-pot is filled; the fool becomes full of evil, even if he gather it little by little."
— Babbit (1936)
"There was something mean about this boy. Troubled kids get drunk and jump off buildings. It was the meanness that bothered me." That's how Cho Seung-hui's Virginia Tech poetry teacher described him, elaborating on her initial assessment that Cho was "a bully" (Gibbs, 2007:42). "He was very intimidating to my other students," explained another Virginia Tech teacher.
"A bully" and "intimidating" indeed. Cho's April 16, 2007 rampage across the peaceful Virginia Tech campus left thirty-two of his fellow students and teachers dead, before the madman turned the gun on himself.
And he was a "madman" by anyone's definition: angry "mad" at the world for what he saw as its refusal to recognize his genius, "mad" in the more clinical sense of the word — his fevered brow dripping beads of schizophrenic sweat.
But was he a bully in the traditional definition of the word?
We know now that, within his own mind, Cho saw himself, not as a "bully," but as a "victim," bullied (or at least ignored) by his fellow students, or else shunned by them for his bizarre mutterings and bouts of acting-out.
Counterbalancing his contention that the world — or at least his fellow students — were shunning him are numerous examples of both students and staff at Virginia Tech who tried reaching out to Cho long before that tragic April day.
And there were warning signs. Two years before, campus police had investigated Cho for "annoying" a female student. Here was a disturbed soul with a documented history of mental illness who, at one point, had been temporarily confined to a psychiatric facility by a judge's order, an order that warned in part that Cho was "an eminent danger" to himself and others (Gibbs, 2007).
But was he "a bully"?
As already noted, Cho saw himself as the victim of bullies — the "rich kid" bullies on campus who shunned him — and who knows what other real or imagined "bullies" bounced off the padded walls inside his skull.
Cho's solution to these perceived slights turned out to be eerily similar to the twisted answer arrived at by the Columbine killers (who also saw themselves as victims, "bullied" by school jocks): to become the ultimate bully himself. It seems easy to bully a whole campus when you're waving around guns!
Yes, the bully game is alive and well — and undoubtedly will be for some time to come — because we all help perpetuate bullying in one way or another, either by actively contributing to it, or else by passively turning a blind eye to such abuse. Oftentimes, society even encourages and rewards bullying, accepting "a little heavy-handedness," a little "running roughshod over the troops," so long as the job gets done.
Some of the more renown go-getters in history have been accused of being bullies — and not just bad guys.
For instance, General George Patton (1885–1945) was accused of bullying his men; he was nearly court-martialed for slapping an enlisted man he thought was showing signs of cowardice.
Likewise, the author Bob Deans says of Captain John Smith (1580–1631), "He was a bully, a braggart and a rebel with a big chip on his shoulder." (2007:61)
Deans's contribution of "braggart" and "big chip on his shoulder" to our bully definition segues well with the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of a bully as: "A blustering fellow oppressive to others weaker than himself." Merriam-Webster goes on to define blustering as "to talk or act with noisy swaggering threats."
The American Heritage Dictionary defines bully as "one who is habitually cruel to smaller or weaker people."
Ironically, our modern English word "bully" comes from the Middle Dutch word "broeder," meaning "brother," and is linked to the Middle Dutch "boele," meaning, of all things, "sweetheart."
Notice the word "weaker" keeps cropping up in any definition of bully? That's because bullies "pick their shots" by carefully choosing their targets with an eye toward those who appear weaker, and the bullying itself often stems from the bully's fear of appearing weak himself, thus he must mask his own weakness from others — lest he appear to other bullies as a target.
Michael Martin and Cynthia Waltman-Greenwood, in Solve Your Child's School-Related Problems, give a brilliantly succinct definition of childhood bullying, which just happens to also apply to all other types of bullying as well:
"A child is bullying when he fairly often oppresses or harasses someone else, either physically or verbally." (1995)
It's not hard to see how this definition can fit every bully in your life, from the annoying playground Bart Simpson to the boss who can't keep his horny hands to himself, to the street thug lurking in the shadows.
For the purposes of this study, the word "bullies" is defined as "those individuals, situations, and sundry forces who besiege, belittle, and/or batter us on a regular basis." This could be a stranger, your boss, your spouse, or another troublesome family member.
And here's something even worse to consider: If your personality is such that you tolerate one bully in one aspect of your life, there's a pretty good chance you have — or will soon have — more than one bully in your life.
Relax. The same principles you can teach your kid to effectively deal with playground bullies will also work for you when having to deal with an overbearing boss or some intimidating punk in the street.
"Whether it's a grade school threat of 'Give me your lunch money or I'll give you a wedgie!' or 'Mess with me and mine and we'll nuke your whole friggin' country!' the playground to the battleground, the 'Bully Game' is alive and well."
— Lung (2006:51)
TYPES OF BULLYING
In Mind Control (2006), I describe two types of bullies: mental bullies and physical bullies, with much overlap between the two.
Mental Bullies
Mental bullies first use the threat of intimidation (personal space invasion, verbal threats, etc.) to get their way.
"You'd be surprised to learn just how many psychological 'bully ploy,' some subtle, some more overt, are aimed at you every day." (Lung, 2006:52)
These include everything from the news media terrorizing us with on-the-spot atrocities, to ad campaigns using ploys such as "limited time offer" and targeting specifically to our age, gender, and any and all other identifications we may have.
These kinds of socially acceptable instances of bullying rely on the same type of threats as do cults who threaten us to hurry and get on board before "The Big Payback" at the end of time. How is this any different (beyond the obvious delusions of grandeur!) from the playground bully threatening to punch your lights out at recess, or your boss threatening to fire you if you don't "play ball"?
Physical Bullies
G. Gordan Liddy understood the equation: "When you have them by their balls, their hearts and mind will follow." In other words, "where the threat of force fails, there's always the force of force" (1997:56).
Either way, being bullied is painful — whether mentally (anxiety-wise) or actually physically knuckle-to-eye painful.
Pain is classified as either acute or chronic. Acute pain is a sharp, stabbing pain, like stepping barefoot onto a piece of glass, or the instant, intense pain we feel when breaking a bone — our bones, not the other guy's bones. This kind of pain soon passes. On the other bruised hand, chronic pain stays with us. The pain of an impacted tooth when we're unable to get to the dentist, or the type of pain someone with a spinal injury might experience. Dull, throbbing, keep-you-awake-at-night pain.
Bullying can also be classified as being either acute or chronic — with much overlap.
Acute Bullying
When a gang of street thugs crosses over to your side of the street, surrounds you, and "asks" if you have any change to spare ... that's acute bullying: an immediate threat to your person (registered as anxiety). A sudden barroom confrontation, that is acute bullying. Like the sudden, sharp, and stabbing acute pain, so, too, acute bullying manifests as situations and encounters that are often brief.
Chronic Bullying
Chronic bullying has duration. Having to worry about being beaten up and having to go without lunch day after day for an entire school year, that's chronic bullying. Enduring years of spousal abuse (rent the movie Sleepingwith the Enemy), that's also chronic bullying. A boss harassing and belittling you day in day out, that, too, qualifies as chronic bullying.
Of course, all acute bullying has the potential to become chronic bullying. After all, chronic bullying is just a repeating cycle of acute bullying incidents.
Girls and Bullying
Lest you get to thinking our study of bullies is in any way sexist, rest assured that, time and again, longitudinal studies (studies following the development of children sometimes across more than a twenty-year span) have collected data proving that girls are just as capable of becoming bullies as are boys. Martin and Waltman-Greenwood (1995:59) point to the fact that, while boys are still in the majority when it comes to bullying, girls also do their share of bullying.
Likewise, Daniel Goleman, in Emotional Intelligence, calls our attention to the slippery slope leading from childhood bullying, through teenaged delinquency, predictably into adult manifestations of bullying. Goleman refers to it as a "trajectory," as if a missile — or bullet — once set on course, has little likelihood of being diverted:
"A telling difference emerges in this trajectory between boys and girls. A study of fourth-grade girls who were 'bad' — get-ting in trouble with their peers — found that 40 percent had a child by the time they finished the high school years. That was three times the average pregnancy rate for girls in their school. In other words, antisocial teenage girls don't get violent — they get pregnant." (1995:237)
Also sadly predictable is the fact that, just as aggressive little boys raised by arbitrary and harshly punitive parents all too often grow up to be arbitrary and harshly punitive fathers in their own right, it's not surprising to find aggressive little girls, raised by the same type of parents, becoming those parents when they become adults (ibid. 196).
It is to society's credit that it is finally beginning to recognize — and seek solutions for — bullying by the "gentler sex."
In May 2007 the PBS program State of Ohio (WVIZ-PBS, May 11, 2007) reported on a statewide "Conflict Management Week" symposium, part of Ohio's "Safe School Summit," held the previous month.
One of the main focuses of this summit was addressing the growing problem of bullying, by first establishing a working (legal) definition of bullying (they settled on "persistent intimidation"), while addressing understandable concerns for what a school and school administrators can be held (legally) accountable for in instances of bullying. Discussions covered not just student-on-student bullying but also the rising incidence of student-on-teacher bullying.
Students bully teachers in a variety of ways, and not just with physical threats to their person, on and off campus, though there is admittedly a high incidence of these kinds of threats. Student-on-teacher bullying can also include threats to involve teachers in scandal, with allegations ranging from racial prejudice to attempted rape.
Student motivations for bullying teachers range from students who simply take pleasure in discomfiting authority figures (perhaps acting out behavior and/or anger displacement against an abusive home situation) to students attempting to intimidate teachers into giving them good grades and/or passing them to the next grade level.
Many teachers admit to having been so intimidated by a student that they purposely gave the student good grades to ensure that the troublesome student would be passed to the next grade level and therefore would not pose the same threat the following year.
Meanwhile, back at the Ohio symposium, timely twenty-first-century issues of concerns included "cyber bullying," for example, where students bash and belittle classmates (and increasingly teachers) on gossipy Web sites such as Myspace.com.
One of the symposium's topics dealt specifically with "Girls and Bullying," a growing concern that is all too often overlooked.
As will become even clearer in the following sections, when we look at whether bullies are born bullies or beaten into becoming bullies, and where we examine the motivations of bullies, you'll realize how our observations (and hopefully solutions as well) can be easily applied to girls who, like their male counterparts, all too often grow into adult bullies.
BAD SEED OR BAD PARENTING?
"All the progressive parenting classes in the world won't change the fact that, when all else fails, Mommy and Daddy have the power to administer some 'violence' to your backside."
— Lung (2006b:57)
Are bullies just "born evil"? Or does something (or a whole lotta somethings) happen during their childhood to turn the "sweet and innocent" to the "Dark Side"? In other words, is being a bully born into them, or is it beaten into them through a succession of childhood dramas and traumas? Are they the victims of skewed genes or just screwed up parents?
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Mind Fist"
by .
Copyright © 2008 Haha Lung.
Excerpted by permission of KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP..
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