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Sunday, November 28, 2010

Bullying!


Bullying is criminal


This is a very serious matter that has always been understated, and has always been with us. Mainly it is thought of as a young person’s problem and it tends to be fobbed off as "kids will be kids." Lately there has been a rash of teenage suicides due to bullying, therefore it can no longer be ignored.

I recently viewed a programme on Larry King Live that focused on the bullying syndrome. Larry King asked the question: Why do people bully, and what do they get out of it? The answer from his panel was that nobody knew the answer.

Fundamentally, when one person puts another person down it is done for the purpose of enlarging his own image of himself in his own mind. That seems to be the classic definition of racism, prejudice, and discrimination, no matter who is victim and who is perpetrator. In Nazi Germany the Jews were the ones who were the underdog and they paid a terrible cost that allowed the Nazis to believe that they were superior to everybody else. History has certainly confirmed that those “superior” people were only so in terms of the evil that they did.

Bullying in schools has been always a part of the society and it was never funny. It is both unacceptable and ingrained as it is a part of human nature. One step at a time ,bullying, in its various forms are under constant attack and we are seeing success in one sector followed by a rise in unsocial activity in another.

Once women in America could not own land nor vote, but that prejudice was swept away and discrimination against blacks rose to a national level. Grown men were referred to as boys, but now, even if the child is a boy you take your life in your hands if you call him that. As blacks continue on the journey to full respect another group is targeted, and so forth and so on.

This is even practised by countries that went around the world colonizing other nations. Britain once boasted that the sun never set on its colonies. How a country could think that there was anything right with invading another person’s country for the purpose of simply calling it their own completely escapes me.

The aggressor, or bully is never right! This is borne out by the fact that intelligent people will almost always distance themselves from “those people.” In the United States white people didn’t want to be associated with white power supremacists, calling them Rednecks, white trash, and trailer trash. Even within the oppressed groups discrimination is practised against one another. Light skinned blacks are seen to be of more value than a midnight-blue coloured person.

Clearly, at the base of it all is stupidity. The solution is always education. Have I ever suffered with any stupid conceptions about other people? Yes I have. Do I still have any issues to be resolved? Yes I do. At least I have the mechanisms in place to help me through my problems.

Fundamentally, the answer is the same in every case. Whether it is a nationality, a group, a political ideology, sexual orientation, a religion, etc, it is a matter of live and let live. The line is drawn when people start to hurt others to establish their own points of view. That is an intolerable state of affairs that is beyond acceptance. Bullying of any kind falls under this heading and we must appeal to those who are bullies to stop the practise……..or else!


Copyright © 2010 Eugene Carmichael