Bullying comes to Top Comments! At least as a subject!
Bullying is in the news lately, of course, so it is a good time to visit it. Sadly, bullying in one manifestation or another is ALWAYS in the news.
Per wikipedia:
Bullying is a form of aggressive behavior manifested by the use of force or coercion to affect others, particularly when the behavior is habitual and involves an imbalance of power. It can include verbal harassment, physical assault or coercion and may be directed repeatedly towards particular victims, perhaps on grounds of race, religion, gender, sexuality, or ability.[2][3] The "imbalance of power" may be social power and/or physical power. The victim of bullying is sometimes referred to as a "target".
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Further (from the same article)...
Bullying ranges from simple one-on-one bullying to more complex bullying in which the bully may have one or more 'lieutenants' who may seem to be willing to assist the primary bully in his or her bullying activities.
And ...
Bullying can occur in any context in which human beings interact with each other.
I included that because it is my belief that it can even occur in the context of a blog. Direct physical contact between individuals may not be an element of it, but they still ‘connect’ in meaningful ways, and bullying is possible, in my opinion, even then.
Where does bullying originate? I guess there will always be a debate about whether it is nature or nurture ... Rodgers and Hammerstein said it was nurture, plain and simple, in their ultra compelling song, "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught."
(Lyrics from here.)
You've got to be taught
To hate and fear
You've got to be taught
From year to Year
It's got to be drummed
in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught
You've got to be taught
To be Afraid
Of people whose eyes
are oddly made
And people whose skin
Is a different shade
You've got to be carefully taught
You've got to be taught
Before it's too late
Before you are 6 or 7 or 8
To hate all the people
your relatives hate
You've got to be carefully taught
Of course ... Hating and bullying are not the same, bullying being a totally different
energy level entirely, but perhaps the seeds for the behavior are sown in learned and cultivated hatred and fear.
Is hatred always carefully taught by very young age? Of course not. We see it taught every day in the political process, in the struggle for the hearts and minds (and votes!) of our citizenry. How could our children NOT learn hatred with the standards of behavior and civility we see in the political arena? How could they NOT learn bullying behaviors when they are so prevalent in our political world?
Some of the most interesting work on human conflict was done by a British social psychologist, named, Henri Tajfel.
He wrote a great deal on the ‘psychological dimensions of prejudice’ (as the wikipedia article calls them), on the intricacies and nuances of group interactions. The results of his work have been called ‘social identity theory,’ (developed together with American social psychologist, John Turner).
Per wikipedia:
They proposed that people have an inbuilt tendency to categorize themselves into one or more "ingroups", building a part of their identity on the basis of membership of that group and enforcing boundaries with other groups.
Social identity theory suggests that people identify with groups in such a way as to maximize positive distinctiveness; groups offer both identity (they tell us who we are) and self-esteem (they make us feel good about ourselves). The theory of social identity has had a very substantial impact on many areas of social psychology, including group dynamics, intergroup relations, prejudice and stereotyping, and organizational psychology.
Group behavior seems often characterized by viewing members of our group (in-group) positively and viewing members of other groups (out-groups) with varying degrees of negativity and hostility. And that a major way to display in-group loyalty is by demonstrating clear hostility to the out-group or an out-group.
Tajfel apparently believed that social identity was built in to our human make-up, and that it tended to determine our behavior in group interactions.
Of course, on Daily Kos, our group is Democratic, our goals are Democratic, and these are countered by our primary out-group, Republicans and conservatives. We count among our most important allies some of their worst out-groups: human beings of color, human beings of different gender identity or orientation, human beings who have a different religion (or, worse, in their view, no religion), human beings who are disadvantaged economically, human beings who work in public service (full disclosure: I work for our local municipality), and many other sub-groups and iterations.
In many ways, their political behavior toward all of our sub-groups can be described as bullying. Their political condemnations are withering, deeply hostile, they blame victims of prejudice and discrimination, then go beyond and kick them while they are down, then try to kick them again. I don’t know of a clearer explanation of bullying behavior than the bullying-writ-large we see and fight against here every single day.
Is ‘our side’ free of this kind of animus and behavior? In many respects, no. A visit to a diary featuring hate mail will show you examples each week of people demonstrating in-group loyalty by expressing out-group hostility. On the program and policy level, by and large, Democrats don’t target specific groups, with the exception of working to insure decent corporate citizenship, and that those who reap the greatest benefits of our society (the 1%) pay a fair share of taxes for those benefits. The political approach is not intended to discriminate or condemn, but rather to encourage responsible citizenship and tax rates proportional to the societal benefits they reap.
Does our ‘in-group’ speak and function with one voice? No, we’re Democrats! We have many sub-groups, too many to count, each with its own set of truths and beliefs. One of the most difficult things to stomach within this blog are the ever-evolving out-group determinations and hostilities which happen within the blog, often turning on a single comment. Sometimes the degree of hostility then brought to bear is chilling to behold, real bullying in verbal garb.
If there are 341,989 human beings on this blog (per jotter this am), there are 341,989 totally unique views of the world, of truth, even if we all generally fit under the Democratic umbrella. None of us will ever find another person who agrees entirely and in every particular with our views and beliefs (this is a GOOD thing!). But it isn’t a good thing if their divergence from our view results in our relegating them to an out-group, which we then regard as fair game for attack and bullying behavior.
I don’t know if in-group/out-group behaviors as identified by Tajfel are in-born behaviors. I do believe that human beings are capable of evolving, and that sentience means we can make specific and explicit decisions about that evolution, even about our personal evolution. And I believe that there is no progressive goal well served by bullying behavior and indulgence of deep hostility. And neither would it further our personal evolution toward the human beings we want to become.
Let's treat each other well and differentiate our campaigns from theirs by clear adherence to anti-bullying behavior. Let's win this election (and most of the down-ticket ones, too!), the most important one of our lives (as they all are!).
To finish this essay, I found a remarkable little piece on the Internet recently (a friend led me to it), that I wanted to share. It has been around for a few months, but no search I have managed to construct have located any mention of it on dKos. My apologies if someone has diaried this or commented on it before and I just missed it in my search incompetence. (I have not searched in a few days, so it is possible someone has written about it since I last searched. I’m not searching now!)
Buzzfeed posted a remarkable article about a NY teacher who wanted to teach her students a clearer lesson about bullying.
"Paula - A teacher in New York was teaching her class about bullying and gave them the following exercise to perform. She had the children take a piece of paper and told them to crumple it up, stamp on it and really mess it up but do not rip it. Then she had them unfold the paper, smooth it out and look at how scarred and dirty is was. She then told them to tell it they’re sorry. Now even though they said they were sorry and tried to fix the paper, she pointed out all the scars they left behind. And that those scars will never go away no matter how hard they tried to fix it. That is what happens when a child bullies another child, they may say they’re sorry but the scars are there forever. The looks on the faces of the children in the classroom told her the message hit home."
We know that bullying causes far more serious and far more permanent consequences than abusing a piece of paper does. It’s a good lesson to keep in mind, and applause to ‘Paula’ who found a brilliant (tactile and visually compelling!) way to explain it to her students, who, in my opinion, are being ‘carefully taught’ in the best possible way, to counter examples in our larger, very political world.
On to tonight's comments! (Graciously assembled by one of my personal heroes and role models, brillig!)
I feel the same about you, Ben... and it's always a pleasure to read your words.
Brillig's ObDisclaimer: The decision to publish each nomination lies with the evening's Diarist and/or Comment Formatter. My evenings at the helm, I try reeeeallllyy hard to publish everything without regard to content. I really do, even when I disagree personally with any given nomination. "TopCommentness" lies in the eyes of the nominator and of you, the reader - I leave the decision to you. I do not publish self-nominations (ie your own comments) and if I ruled the world, we'd all build community, supporting and uplifting instead of tearing our fellow Kossacks down. No bullying here!
From KelleyRN2:
Why do I love Daily Kos? I'll tell you why - this comment from highfive in my fundraiser for homogenius epitomizes the spirit of community here.
From Bud Fields:
Here's a winner by Vayle, from an astoundingly good diary by brooklynbadboy.
From aoeu:
Because I can, this one by Patriot4peace.
From BeninSC:
I have a pair of comments from JanF's J Town diary this am!
figbash 'tweaking' the Mayor of J-Town in her den! ;)
WhatEVER you do, don't look too long at this picture posted by ursoklevr!
Top Mojo for yesterday, May 5th, first comments and tip jars excluded. Thank you
mik for the mojo magic!
1) Ari just proved what a lot of us have known for by pittie70 — 138
2) So what was the reason again by ChemBob — 117
3) And we need a better name for these sort of tweets by ontheleftcoast — 103
4) If schools are not people, who grades your papers? by Vayle — 92
5) looks like by TrueBlueMajority — 90
6) It is staggering to think how stupid the NYPD by Observerinvancouver — 81
7) What's so damn funny is the fact that Fischer... by markthshark — 80
8) Wonderful, Wonderful Pics by webranding — 79
9) So we could be just like them by MNsmartgirl — 78
10) My grandfather was in the 101st Airborne by ranger995 — 76
11) In the words of Wanda Sykes: by magnetics — 73
12) To paraphrase the late Flip Wilson by Otteray Scribe — 73
13) It's not like by jamess — 72
14) Rupert Murdoch -- a kettle shaped pot or by ontheleftcoast — 70
15) Staggering by joanneleon — 69
16) I not altogether sure by Mnemosyne — 64
17) Boy, I sure wish that sometime by theotherside — 61
18) Jesus Saves by JML9999 — 61
19) It's not stupity but by gulfgal98 — 61
20) Meanwhile the GOP is stuck in reverse. by political junquie — 60
21) Corporations are People? Show me the Long-Form! by dmhlt 66 — 60
22) Disorderly conduct in their own home? by allie123 — 58
23) Prediction by ActivistGuy — 57
24) edscan is giving up? by PvtJarHead — 56
25) One of us kids must be the reason Daddy by JesseCW — 55
26) Ah, yes. I like it: a stupid-off. How's this: by Eileen B — 55
27) Full weight knee drops on heads and necks. by WisePiper — 54
28) it really is hilarious - by MartyM — 54
29) Word on Romney by Jed Lewison — 53
30) as a former co-worker used to say, by Melanie in IA — 52
31) Not feeling it? by GustavMahler — 52
Top Pictures for yesterday, May 5th. Click any image to be taken to the full comment. Thank you
jotter for the image magic!