[/caption]Carol Forsloff - Larry ran home from school with six boys chasing, egged on by one of the louder, more aggressive of the boys, the leader and the bully whose popularity attracts power, as happens not just in schoolyards but in life and politics, a tactic that is used to do great harm to individuals and communities.
A new science study on birds reveals that not just humans grow up to be bullies if they have been victims themselves. The finding that abused Nazca bird babies become victimizers later on verifies the social science research that has found the cycle of abuse in humans means the child who is bullied and abused is likely to victimize his/her own children.
The bully is often an anxious, fearful individual whose poor self concept is elevated by exerting control over others. The bully boy finds chasing Larry a way to secure a following, to ensure he has a base to make pronouncements after all. The crowd of children he attracts finds being part of the bully’s gang keeps any of them from becoming a target, as the “in group” members would thought of as safe.
People give power to bullies because of their own fears. They see how the bully exercises power and worry they may be next. The bully’s target particularly lives in fear because he or she never knows when and how pain will be delivered.
While many people think of bullies only at work and at school, these individuals are everywhere, using a variety of mechanisms to control. For some, a terrible silence added to the look of contempt can hurt every bit as words hurled in high decibels across a playground. Barbara Coloroso tells us in “The Bully, the Bullied and the Bystander, “Bullying is not about anger . It is not a conflict to be resolved, it’s about contempt –a powerful feeling of dislike toward someone considered to be worthless, inferior or undeserving of respect. Contempt comes with three apparent psychological advantages that allow kids to harm others without feeling empathy, compassion, or shame. These are: a sense of entitlement, that they have the right to hurt or control others; an intolerance towards difference; and a freedom to exclude, bar, isolate, and segregate others.”
Multiplied by many, bullies can become a group, a powerful group with members attracted to the controlled sureness of the leaders, the aggressive speech, and the resolve to be one of the powerful in association with the bully to avoid becoming a target. This can help form extreme political parties or individuals who attract followers who act out what some interpret as rage, sometimes in violent ways.
The bully is therefore a Hitler, Stalin, Osama bin Laden, or the neighbor, and to end the behavior, experts tell us, adults in authority and peers need to get involved. In other words, it takes a village to end bullying, so that people become aware of its harm to communities and to themselves.
