by flyfire on Tue Feb 09, 2010 1:05 pm
Good point Shawn, and it raises a very complicated topic that many in the education system as well as psychologists from all sorts of different fields continue to tackle.
Apart from the very occasional born psychopath, you are right in that bullies themselves have suffered bullying and other more vicious and pervasive types of trauma in their young, developing lives. Now, before everyone accuses me of taking the side of the archetypal bully, I need to clarify that a persons past is no excuse for their current behaviours, and never will be, but will aid understanding objectively where it comes from. Hell, I was a victim of bullying myself, and like you Shawn, took a stand as a high school kid (Put one guys face through a locker door, and broke another's nose and ribs. The last one was bad, my friends had to pull me off the guy).
Bullies like all of us are subject to learning via conditioning. So if you take stand, yes you will reduce their bullying behaviour, but ONLY TO YOURSELF. Their defensive aggression (usually as guards against low self esteem, as a guard against feelings of humiliation and shame, as a means to shore up an illusory sense of control, as a means of displacing destructive impulses on unwanted aspects of themselves that are projected onto others etcetcetc ) however is not addressed, and thus usually displaced onto the next submissive victim.
SO, the solution is by no means an easy one. Some are lucky enough to have corrective, affirming life experiences ( including in some cases, good psychotherapy) that enables them to modify their behaviours, some will sublimate their psychological needs through a socially sanctioned activity where bullying type behaviors are rewarded ( I will not comment on administrators and the like hahaha), many will unfortunately descend into a criminal lifestyle and spent a lot of their lives in incarceration (and rightly so).
In other words, we do our best to protect ourselves, but I suggest we do not fall into vigilante, hero-complex mode. One could unwittingly make things worse for others. At least a lot of schools now are implementing reasonably thought-out policies that address the many facets of this complex social and interpersonal problem.
