Episode 58: How To Really End Bullying (Anatomy And Plan of Attack)

Ah there you are, dear readers. I have to make a bit of a confession. I haven't exactly done the smart thing lately. See on my official facebook page, I actually posted a link to Penn And Teller's Bullshit episode regarding gun control. Both sides were represented pretty fairly in terms of guests but thanks largely to Penn Jillette's ad hominem attacks on those with dissenting points of view it really came out biased. Keep in mind even I don't agree with everything that Penn Jillette calls bullshit as a matter of fact my chiropractor has helped me immensely when doctors just wanted to medicate and be done with me, I find a special kind of peace with Christianity, I firmly believe that gun control means hitting your target and our tax system taking a whopping 40% of everything we make is complete and utter crap but what I have found on my facebook news feed as of just a few minutes ago just flat offends me. It got me to thinking.

You know we say an awful lot about bullying these days and it has been one of the biggest and most controversial subjects floating around these days. Just about every organization has some huge burly tough guys stressing to kids how important it is for them to stop bullying each other but what I can't understand is why it's okay for us to do it to each other.

Still not getting it?

We slap a kid and tell them "Don't hit Johnny! That's not nice!" Yeah we're pretty much hypocrites as far as adults go. We tell kids to stop bullying each other while we go about it pretty damn freely. How? Well allow me to illustrate.

Anatomy of Bullying:

Let's take me for example. I spent a lot of time being bullied in school. We're talking from Elementary School all the way up through adulthood. During the course of my grade school years I didn't quite have a social aptitude for most things and didn't have a taste for dealing with people who weren't into the same things I was into. I didn't necessarily mind that other kids were more into Go-Bots than they were Transformers and vice versa, hell, I liked them both but oddly enough I found that some like to ridicule Go-Bots fans. The ridicule started out harmless enough but over time...it grew. As the kids began forming into cliques or just groups of kids who gathered under common interests, the same little group of small-minded, overprivileged overachievers began to intensify their efforts on fewer and fewer select targets. They refused to find the common ground that we all shared and we did share some common ground, they just wanted to spend their time making everyone else miserable.

Getting a little past that, I grew into books, comic books, music and the other normal interests of those in junior high. By then, the comments just became hateful and the social ostracism came. Aside from a few solid friends, you could expect that no one else wanted you around. About that time, I had carefully weighed my options and figured it all out. Why should I have to defend the choices I make? Wasn't it enough that what I was into was harmless to everyone around me and, dammit, I'm entitled to it. I made my decision and I was standing by it. I tried to do things their way but they always found fault with me. Well that means they just didn't like me. Fine. I gave them the good old college try and now I would find what I liked and truly just dive into it.

And that's when it really amped up. Now it wasn't just ridicule. From a socioeconomic perspective I've had to fight to keep jobs, arm myself, train myself to defend myself and develop attitudes to carry around with me to deal with people who were attempting to get me to conform to the status quo so that they would find me socially acceptable. Eventually, after many rounds of fighting, many rounds of just trying to survive and it's true that my parents don't know the half of what I'd been through including people calling me in the middle of the night with "We Gon' Kill All You Freaks" to which I'd reply, "We'll be here...just remember the door is locked for your protection, not mine, zipperhead." and hang up...yeah after all that I just left. I literally left the state in which I'd been living and moved halfway across the country. About the only thing to which people take exception to around here is when I wear my Jersey Devils cap or jersey. They're Flyers fans down here. This paragraph would be a lot longer if I detailed the scars, both physical and mental and what caused them. Know that several times, my very life was on the line and in some instances, thank God above and the people who provided the instructional videos that helped me train that I didn't have to take a life to save my own...trust me, in those times...trying to keep both lives in tact could have cost me my own.

The point is this, at first the bully feels a need to make a person feel bad over something. Even if that thing is shed and long gone, the bully will make that person feel miserable about themselves. If the person decides to ignore the bully then the bully will escalate things until  eventually, things get really ugly.

Bullies don't have to get physical. We know bullies can use the net to post embarrassing photos or blackmail others. For those who think locking down the internet is a viable solution, keep in mind I lived in a town of about maybe 2500 people and it was just simply local town rumor and word of mouth that had nearly killed me on several occasions. Trust me when I say the internet had nothing at all to do with it so unless you're ready for Amendment One to go, you're barking up the wrong tree here. They can belittle and demean someone into ending their own lives. They don't have to shove you into a locker or pull your hair or do anything that kids are known to do. To be honest, you've probably bullied someone in your own life and if you really think about it...chances are you have. Most of us never realize that we do because we don't think of it as bullying. Let me show you an example.

Why is the action of the WBC supposedly such bullying while...

 this is NOT considered bullying?

In the example above we see that a group (the same group that have attempted to cow hundreds of groups including members of their own "church" that have questioned them) bullying the Hanneman family while trying to lay their loved one to rest. It's disrespectful, it's wrong, it's definitely not Christian and it won't bring anyone to God or give anyone peace. In a word; it is bullying. Keep in mind I found both of these on my facebook page's newsfeed. Then a friend of mine posted the second picture. 

The man pictured with Charlie Sheen is Alex Jones, a radio talk show host, Award-Winning documentary filmmaker and journalist. How do I know this? I was listening to his show and watching his videos long before InfoWars.com was a household name. If you're not familiar with him, watch the film "A Scanner Darkly" in which he appears in true Alex Jones style, on a bullhorn doing a street protest. Then he gets beaten down and roughed up by government goons but that's beside the point. Alex is known for his firebrand style. He's passionate (and believe me that's putting it mildly) often going on tirades after presenting facts. In Alex's defense, his reaction to many issues and his all out rage toward those issues have never once landed him in any serious trouble. He doesn't go home and take it out on the wife and kids. The times he's been arrested have been for misdemeanor charges and they're mostly disturbing the peace. Not exactly reflective of anger issues. His audience has grown nearly exponentially in the past ten years and no doubt it's because many of the issues that he addresses turn out to prove that what he's saying is right whether you want to believe it or not. By posting this the original poster seems to think that this will be enough to discredit Alex Jones and turn people away from being audience members.

...not so fast. See, Alex has a way of even turning ME off as an audience member. Sometimes, it is absolutely painful to get through episodes of his show without wanting to just say, "Alex can you just calm down and lay the news on me so I can research it and get on with it already?" Yeah those tirades he goes on can be pretty tiring. His recent verbal salvo on Piers Morgan, while funny at times, was a good reason he really should not have been selected to have the debate with Morgan at all. All it really seemed to be was two bullies locking horns. Other conspiracists have gone up against Jones and Jones himself has done the same in turn.  Jones has a lot of critics even in the Libertarian arena and I don't mean the political party.

How is one form unacceptable while the other is completely acceptable?  So cowing Slayer fans is unacceptable by a group claiming Divine Right but cowing Alex Jones' fans is completely acceptable?

The answer is a fat, resounding No. It's not acceptable by any means. 

How To Stop Bullying And Really End It:

This is where it's simplest but also the hardest. The structure and shape is extremely simple, however, the act itself is where you're going to have a problem. 

Admit You Have A Problem:

1. Look at any issues that you might address on a daily basis. If you have to resort to name-calling or ridicule or belittling and demeaning comments then you're bullying others. 

Solution: Try attempting your argument from a logical perspective and leave the emotion completely out of it. 

2. Look at your circle of what you call friends. If they ahve to resort to the tactics above, attempt to logically take the other side. If you find yourself being attacked then obviously these are not your friends and you should not associate yourself with them. If you start attacking your friends...perhaps they should dissociate from you. 

3. Realize that this is America and under the Declaration of Independence you have the rights to Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness. You don't ask permission for those things. If you don't like guns, don't purchase one. If you don't like gay people being married then don't marry one. If you don't like religion of any kind then simply don't participate. It's really that simple. 

4. Leave everyone else the hell alone. 

That's all there really is to it, people. There's no reason why world peace isn't achievable as long as we treat each other this way. 

That's it, that's all I have. Hope you're not too disappointed.