1. What is bullying?
Like most
of the terms we hear or read and sometimes use, “bullying” – like “selfishness”–
is another one many of us feel we understand when we hear it or read it.
“Bullying,” however, hasn’t always meant what it now means. And these
days it’s being used frequently and in important contexts.
You may be
startled by differences among some specialists when
it comes to defining “bullying,” and startled especially by the implications for identifying bullies
and for making practical decisions and
recommendations about bullies.
When it comes
to practical decisions and recommendations you’d make
regarding individual human bullies:
Would
you hire or
recommend a babysitter or elder caregiver that
you believe (or know) is a bully? Would you knowingly retain or recommend a
bully as a teacher, or as a coach, or a young women’s athletic team
doctor? Would you knowingly marry and have
children with a bully, or would you recommend against it?
Should sperm banks accept sperm from bullies?
Should you knowingly assist a bully in his or her
bullying by making financial donations to that
bully?
1. The Merriam-Webster definition
of bullying says that bullying is “abuse and mistreatment of someone vulnerable by
someone stronger, more powerful, etc.” The same source says the transitive verb to bully means to treat (someone) in a cruel, insulting, threatening, or aggressive fashion.
A bully is
a person who teases, threatens, or hurts smaller, weaker, or more vulnerable persons.
To bully: To make timid or fearful by, or as if by, threats.
These definitions deserve high marks for several reasons, including:
They do suggest
the kinds of reasons we’d probably
give for answering “No!” to those important conduct-related questions
just listed: “No, I wouldn’t hire or recommend a bully as a
doctor for a school sports program, or to provide eldercare, etc., because this
individual is a bully and therefore he might
well abuse or mistreat the vulnerable people – the children
or the old folks, or the youth — he’d be dealing with.”
And beyond
highlighting those reasons, the definition also captures what distinguishes bullies
from those on the receiving end – those who are bullied:
By definition, the bullies are “stronger, more powerful” than those bullied;
those on the receiving end are, by definition, “vulnerable.”
But it is
important to bear in mind both that none of us is totally invulnerable,
and that conducting oneself in a civil, humane and caring way itself can make
one vulnerable to those who lack civility. Wasn’t this
exemplified in the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth?
Because of
decisions and policies of their leaders – organizations (not
just individuals) can count as bullies. Organizations and
their leaders – whether they realize it or not – are sometimes
bullies.
Clearly
illustrating that important point is Amazon’s treatment of its
warehouse (“Fulfillment center”) workers. Amazon’s
“mistreatment of someone vulnerable by someone stronger, more powerful,” is
brought out in a detailed, sustained way by the revealing and
important 2020 Frontline investigative documentary: Amazon
Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos.
Of course other types of
organizations as well, including nations, can bully.
Do bear in
mind that in order to see — to recognize — that
an example of bullying conduct (whether by an individual or by an
organization) is wrong, one need only apply
the test of that pair of Ancient Imperatives: Would those agents –
including organizational agents — want to be on the receiving
end of such conduct, or have their loved ones in that position?
2. The Wikipedia site on bullying
is full of information: By its definition, bullying
is the activity of repeated, aggressive behavior intended to hurt another individual,
physically, mentally, or emotionally. This
definition, too, seems to square fairly well with my own understanding of what bullying
is. But why insist on “repeated”?
3.
A third website – namely the US government’s
website: stopbullying.gov — often came up at the top
of the list of sites when I searched for sites
about bullying.
It presented
this definition: “Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school
aged children that involves a real or
perceived power imbalance.” (Emphasis added.) To amplify that definition,
the site says: .Bullying includes
actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically
or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.
Do
notice that this definition very narrowly limits
who can count as a bully (and just as narrowly limits who can count as
someone who has been bullied) — to “school aged
children”!
Here are
some straightforward undeniable logical implications of
that definition that appears at stopbullying.gov: No rape involving only persons beyond school
age, would count as bullying by
this US Government’s definition of bullying! That’s because, by
this official definition, no bullying of any
kind whatsoever occurs among those
who are beyond school age!
Those
infamous and appalling 2012 Steubenville, Ohio, high school gang
rapes, and the rape of Christine Blasey Ford (who accused Trump
nominee to the US Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, of a rape that took
place when she and her rapist were both of school age), would certainly
count as bullying.
Bear in mind that by that definition, bullying is
something that occurs among school age children.
So, no bullying of any kind whatsoever occurs
among those who are beyond school age!
But surely inclinations to make threats,
spread rumors, steal from or attack someone physically or verbally, and to
exclude someone from a group “on purpose” do not cease to be present when young people pass beyond school age!
Because at least some of
those school-age persons become more sophisticated, more “worldly-wise,” more
skillfully devious, and have attractive, tempting, new targets and
options, etc., doesn’t it make more sense to suppose that
bullying takes on some additional new
forms as young people — in and beyond their twenties and
still with bullying tendencies — have new experiences and new
opportunities – perhaps as influential
participants in, or leaders of, organizations. These may
well enable them to continue (or resume) “to treat in a
cruel, insulting, threatening, or aggressive fashion” but in a more
sophisticated, more knowledgeable, worldly-wise, devious, and/or powerful adult way
– and with much MORE TO GAIN than a schoolmate’s lunch money
or his chocolate bar!
As for that third
definition – with its clear implications that no
individual beyond school age, nor any government or corporate or religious or news
and information organization, could qualify
as a bully — you may be inclined to laugh
– or maybe cry — to see this far from sufficiently mindful example
of our US tax dollars at work.
4. Recent Republican Bullying
My main source for this section is McKay
Coppins’ 2018 article, “The Man Who Broke Politics,” in the Atlantic,
November 2018. What follows is drawn from the link: “My Republican
Party Lost Its Way.”
From childhood
on, Newt Gingrich had been impressed by evolution’s predatory savagery. You have
probably seen that predatory behavior yourself in nature
documentaries that show old and weak members of one species being
cooperatively attacked, killed, and devoured by members
of another species. Newt was certainly not the
first to notice that there’s violent, predatory behavior to be seen in
Nature. You may be reminded of Tennyson’s phrase from the nineteenth
century “Nature, red in tooth and claw.”
Republicans had been out of power in
the US Congress for decades when Gingrich was
elected to the House of Representatives. It was 1978.
Newt deliberately stirred up a lot of very strong and continuing partisan
political conflict by distributing to
fellow Republicans influential lists
of words for savagely attacking – not the
old and weak members of a different species — but for savaging their elected Democratic colleagues!
This lifelong,
zoo-frequenting fan of evolution publicly urged
his fellow Republicans, in what Newt himself termed
their “war for power,” to use such uncivil warfare words as anti-flag,
traitors, radical, corrupt, pro-communist, un-American, and tyrannical – lists
of words he actually distributed to them to use when
speaking about their fellow American Democratic Congressmen
and Congresswomen!
Gingrich pioneered a style of partisan
combat—with name-calling, conspiracy theories, and strategic obstructionism (including
government shutdowns)—that has poisoned America’s political
culture.
(Perhaps you’ll wonder: Is there some “antidote”
for that poison? What about effective teaching of
that pair of Ancient Imperatives, and outspoken public criticism for
dangerous violations of them?)
For their party – the Republican
Party — to succeed, Gingrich said, the next generation
of Republicans would have to learn to “raise hell,” to stop being so “nice,”
to realize that politics was, above all, a cutthroat “war for power”— and
to start “acting like it.”
And those who’ve been paying attention will
agree that many – indeed most — Republican congress people have been
“acting like it.” Prominent exceptions are
Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Liz Cheney of Wyoming, and Mitt Romney of Utah.
Of course the definition of bullying at stopbullying.gov COULD NOT apply to
Gingrich’s “political” conduct in Congress, because his treatment of his colleagues
was not conduct among school-age people!
But the Merriam-Webster
definition of bullying clearly would apply
to the conduct Newt was urging: It says bullying is treating
(someone) in a cruel, insulting, threatening, or aggressive fashion.
So Newt’s advocacy of
using those “warfare words” to characterize their
Democratic colleagues, and his equipping them with lists
of names to call them, was clearly a call to
bully them.
Gingrich
was on candidate Donald Trump’s 2016 short
list for the Vice Presidency. The long list of their
past wives would not have made them
popular with many traditional Republican – often
white, rural, evangelical Christian – social conservatives,
who were attracted to the apparently strong, tough, and apparently financially
very successful Donald Trump, who had sometimes spoken like a pro-life advocate
– and who favored punishing any woman who had an abortion, and promised to build
a wall to control both illegal drug trafficking and heavy
immigration (mainly by brown immigrants). He wanted to ban
Muslims from immigrating, and promised to Make
America Great Again.
Donald Trump
already had a long history of bullying.
For details see Trump expert David Cay Johnston’s books: The
Making of Donald Trump and It’s Even Worse Than You
Think, and more recently: The Big Cheat. And
Maggie Haberman’s Confidence Man should certainly not
be neglected. You might
search the web for: (businessman) Donald Trump’s long history of “stiffing” –
swindling — small contractors.
The “perfect”
phone call for which Trump was impeached (the first time) was a clear case
of bullying because in it Trump in effect threatened Ukraine’s
President Zelenskyy that he’d withhold millions of dollars of US taxpayer aid
already congressionally approved to go to Ukraine, if Zelenskyy didn’t grant
him a favor.
Trump’s admiration
for autocrats like Russia’s Putin (recall that meeting in Helsinki),
his habitual insulting of America’s professionally trained, remarkably credible
free press – as “the enemy of the people,” and his frequent public
insults and repeated lies about any candidate running
against someone he wants to see win an
election — all illustrate the tactics of a powerful and clearly dangerous
bully.
By inciting
organized followers on January 6, 2021 to bully Congress (“if you don’t fight
like hell you’re not going to have a country”) – and by seeking to have
hundreds of his armed followers proceed to the Capitol — he attempted to
retain political power as US President despite the repeatedly court-confirmed
voters’ choice of Joseph Biden.
Subsequently
he is being copied by such far-right elected Republican members of Congress as
Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz.
I firmly
agree with Thomas Zimmer’s conclusion in the April 13, 2022 The Guardian:
What we are witnessing is one party rapidly
abandoning and actively assaulting the foundations of democratic political
culture. Every “Western” society has always harbored some far-right extremists
like Greene. But the fact that the Republican Party embraces and elevates
people like her constitutes an acute danger to democracy.
5. My fifth source about bullying: In
a Feb. 28, 2022 editorial in the Toronto Star,
Tony Volk, a faculty member of Brock University who has been studying
bullying for about 20 years . . . a developmental scientist whose research focuses on
bullying, parenting and anti-social personality, wrote:
“In my lab, we define bullying as aggressive, goal-directed
behaviour that harms another within the context of a power imbalance. . . .
“They’re aggressive, arrogant, selfish individuals
who prey on those who often can’t or won’t defend themselves. They scheme and thrive
on power imbalances in service only to themselves. . . .
“Bullying rarely stops on its own. It
almost always ends in one of two ways: either the
bully realizes the benefits of
co-operation, or someone stops the bully.” (Emphasis
added.)
Readers may be interested to learn that the
title of Volk’s late February 2022 editorial is: “Vladimir Putin is a classic schoolyard bully who must be stopped,
not appeased”
I find Tony
Volk’s editorial both interesting and credible for many reasons. Volk realistically
works with a far more credible definition
of “bullying” than the one presented at stopbullying.gov!
6.
And finally, a sixth source: Another scientist’s
very different perspective on bullying.
Hogan Sherrow,
a Yale PhD, is an evolutionary primatologist who has studied chimpanzees,
bears, and other primates on several continents, (but doesn’t hesitate
to generalize about groups of human toddlers).
You can see and hear him in online videos. What follows first are
extended excerpts from his Dec. 15, 2011 guest blog in the Scientific
American. (Emphasis added.)
“Bullying
was there during the birth of our species having been inherited from
the earliest of our social ancestors. . . .
“The tendency
to bully, or coerce, others is natural and deeply rooted in
our evolutionary history, and emerges in any group of toddlers playing freely.”.
. .
“It’s easy to get consumed with the impacts and immediate causes
of bullying in the US, and to ignore where bullying stems
from. However, understanding the origins of bullying is
critical. Without the deep understanding the origins of
a behavior provide, efforts to prevent bullying will continue to fail.”. . . .
“Language allows
us to communicate abstract ideas, coordinate behaviors and express thoughts and
feelings to others. Language also allows us to gossip, and gossiping is
a key psychological element in bullying and can have serious,
lasting effects (Sharp, 1995). . . . (Emphasis
added.)
“While nearly
all anti-bullying programs are well-meaning and can show progress in
the short term, they fail to get at the root of the
problem. Addressing bullying through culturally based
social programs is like taking the flowerhead off a milk thistle. You
will slow the growth and spread of the plant, but not for long. It
is only through incorporating a deeper
understanding of the antiquity of a behavior like bullying in
our policies that we can hope to alter its impact on
society.”. . . (Emphasis added.)
Sherrow
suggests that “culturally based social programs” to
deal with bullying fail because they don’t get at “the root of the
problem,” a root – he contends – that’s in human heredity
— and so, apparently, in human genetics.
Sherrow
does not proceed to a discussion of eugenics (the
reader can find wildly contrasting articles on that topic), nor does
he discuss the sometimes horrendous 20th century history of
eugenics, a history in which some efforts to, as
he phrases it, “get at the root of the problem”— spreading from England
to the US to Hitler’s Germany — were themselves examples
of bullying of the most extreme sort.
Sherrow
does, however, state that gossiping is a key psychological element in bullying and can
have serious, lasting effects (Sharp, 1995).
So he allows that what people say – at
least when they gossip — can have
serious, lasting bullying effects.
But without
citing any evidence, this Yale PhD primatologist denies that what
people learn – what we find out –
could, quite apart from eugenics, solve or help remedy –
the bullying problem.
This
puts Sherrow at odds with Volk, who has studied bullying (among human beings)
for two decades. Volk asserts:
Bullying is notoriously hard to prevent, whether it comes from a colleague, a classmate or the Kremlin.
And it’s often successful — but only in the short term. In the long run, Putin (like so
many before him) will learn that co-operation is always
the more beneficial choice. (Emphasis
added.)
Volk contends that bullies sometimes Learn that cooperation –
not bullying — is the more beneficial choice.
Primatologist Sherrow belittles “culturally
based social programs” to combat bullying.
But developmental scientist Volk, on the
basis of two decades of his own bullying-focused studies, has found that bullies (whether
or not their bullying “stems” in part from pre-historic
genetically inherited tendencies to bully) can learn that
cooperation is the more beneficial choice.
7. This “Daring Proposal: A Philosophy of Education
for Everyone” strongly recommends the kind of teaching at all
levels of education that promotes everyone’s insightfully heeding those
Ancient Imperatives for the choices made both by individuals and by organizations: Love
your neighbor as yourself. Treat others the way you’d want to be treated.
As those who teach succeed in that, and individuals and organizations guide their conduct by those
Ancient Imperatives, bullying will decrease. Given
what those imperatives call for, perhaps bullying will be on the way out.
After all, which bully wants to be bullied, or have their
own loved ones – (if they have loved ones) — bullied?
Which bully wants to have someone violate those Ancient Imperatives
when he (or she), the bully, is on the receiving end, and
when mutually beneficial – “win/win” — options
are real?
8. FORM THE ATTITUDE EARLY:
Whether the “latest findings” on character formation confirm
this or not, I believe that the wise course of conduct for those who help shape
the character of the young is not to postpone or delay early instruction in understanding (nor
delay early practice in applying and in following) those
two Ancient Imperatives.