The Passive Agressive Tactics of Bullying

       Bullying is an educated habit. The children who bully other kids are taught bullying from parents, adults, the teachers, television and their fellow classmates. Through this bombardment, they learn that it is acceptable behavior. If anyone read that list and chose one of them as the answer, you are wrong! All of those people teach bullying equally, reinforced and tolerated. It is not one person, individual or singular action that can be solely blamed for bullying. Unfortunately, we do it to each other often. When we can’t get our way, we result to threats of lawsuits, blackmail and extortion. The fear of a bad review, a snide comment, an ugly publication of private information… You may feel justified but it is a form of bullying, passive aggressive and vengeful. You are teaching to each other and to your kids.

     Bullying is not a new thing. It has been going on since the dawn of time. Cartoons have made fun of it; “the caveman with the club dragging his wife by the hair.” Wars are a form of bullying. Taxes are a form of bullying. Penalties, fees and foreclosures are bullying. Turn on the TV and watch a cop show; the police officer bullies the innocent victim or maybe guilty into coughing up details to a crime.

     Passive aggressive bullying is far worse, a type of invisible toxicity that creeps into the veins. It is harder to identify, especially in a group where everyone is part of the mob action. At least in physical harm, there is something to point at and someone to blame. In the emotional and mental games that people play it becomes more difficult to discern, and more importantly, a lot easier to shift the blame on the victim. They call the victim paranoid, tell them to calm down or ignore the person’s calls for justice. Call someone “trivial” to make people avoid taking him/her seriously.

     At worst, the bully, or bullies, start acting like victims themselves to spin the truth into their favor. These are predators who are empowered by their ability to manipulate misery into someone’s life. They do not feel guilty for their actions. They feel vindicated when the victim is attacked again with false accusations.

Such actions can be frustrating and impossible to break through with the truth. No one will hear it, especially if they do not see you as bullied victim. In some cases, the bully has convinced themselves so thoroughly that they are victims that it is unlikely they will not see their actions as mean spirited or even unfair.

      Bullying is power; a control over other people. It makes the perpetrator feel empowered, strong and gleeful for the misery that they can inflict over other people. It gives them a false sense of importance; a belief that the ruined world revolves around them. They do not need to work hard to do anything and can pass the burden of guilt onto someone else until they do the work for them.

     When the Bullied becomes tired of being a victim, he/she stands up for themselves. This usually surprises the bullies and they step up their bullying, making Bullied lives even worse and turning more people against them. The resultant attacks forces the Bullied to become a recluse, closing in on oneself. On rare occasions, they fight harder. The harder that the victim fights; the more vindicated the passive aggressive bully becomes. When they stipulate that the Bullied are the perpetrator, people see the victim as the culprit and it makes the situation worse.

     In bad situations, the victim becomes violent and then the bullies stand higher on their high horses of justification.

     Best way to defend or identify the bullies from the victims is to watch actions, not the words. The words are misdirecting. The tears are masks. So often, the person running away is the victim and not the terrifying bully. It’s easier to build up rumor, start gossip about someone who is not there, which plays into the bully’s hands.

      Sometimes walking away is a choice, but corruption thrives on these choices. Bullies survive through apathy and complacency, giving them a free hand to do as they please and spin half truths that keep them in business. The weighing of choice against bullies can be a heavy burden on the mindset of a victim but sometimes you have to stand up against their cruelty. After all, the real choice is to save their next victim, if you care about such a thing.

      Unfortunate for most physical brutal bullies, the mass of cameras and media devices available in the hands of the average person can scare away these people from doing physical harm when their actions can be displayed all over the internet. The ugly innuendo, the pervasive gossip or the subtle passive comments are the impossible things to record. How can you take a picture of a darkened heart?

The Sin of Mediocrity

       For some of us, we have heard of the seven virtues and the seven vices.  There are two vices that are in abundance in the world today, greed and sloth.  The formal can be the cause for the latter in others.  When the greed of the few outweighs the needs of the many, submission takes hold among those many.  People become complacent to their hard lives, they are apathetic to other people’s suffering because they are selfishly only worrying about their own dread, their own suffering.
Settling for mediocrity, out of failure or those people who have shunned you, is a form of sloth.  You are complacent to exist as bland and boring life.  You settle for the routine of misery and then vent those pains onto other people.  Eventually you will find yourself alone, because those same people have miseries of their own, and selfishly desire to avoid sharing your discomfort.  “We have our own problems.”  Or we have the classic game of “That’s nothing, let me tell you about my life.”  Every person trying to “one up” each other to prove how horrible things are for them, a game of ego pyramid.
There are several words that are thrown around to create this cycle of mediocrity.  One word is apathy.  In essence, Apathy sounds benign.  It doesn’t look like an offensive word.  Apathy develops when people turn off the valve to their emotions.  Apathetic people no longer care for other people, their feelings, their situations.  Apathy is passivity.  Instead of feeling for someone’s plight, reaching out giving a helpful hand, you withdraw into yourself, you look the other way.  It’s easy, and a lot of people do it, especially considering the many horrible things that we are bombarded with on a regular basis.  If you don’t believe me, turn on the News.  But apathy leads to a selfish desire to stay safe and never interact with other people.
Complacency is another word that is thrown around.  This is different from apathy because instead of turning the valve that allows you to worry about others, you are turning the valve that allows you to care about your own life.  It is a form of defeatism.  You have given up.  You have surrendered to the devil and the devil likes you staying in your little hole, not caring about others or yourself.  In complacency, the devil can stay in his chair and laugh at your demise.  And you let him.
Mediocrity is the combination of these two words where you settle for what you got and what you can get, and do not push yourself to achieve more.  Someone, or many someones, have programmed you to feel nothing and therefore you settle for what you can get.  It could be family; it could be friends.  For one reason or another, those family and friends have scared you into your current state.  Then you bought their lies.  Or maybe you are so lazy that you just don’t care and don’t want to.  You want to live and die and that’s it.  If a meaningless life is all that you want then this article in not for you.
For the others who want more, all of those people are wrong.  You are following the vice of sloth.  The same way addicts follow their bad behavior; you are following that routine because it is easy, selfish, “do not bother others and they will not bother you.”  It doesn’t matter if you work 40 hours or 80 hours a week.  Just because you do the manual labor does not mean you are not lazy.  The physical burdens are not the driving force to dispel  mediocrity as well.  You are settling for what you can get and what you can do.  You are not challenging yourself; you are allowing the devil to pat your pillow.
The first barrier is to realize that all of those people are wrong.  They cannot define you, no matter how many opinion polls and how many prejudices they sling at you like piles of crap.  Gossip and rumor will continue to fester; you just need to realize that those “words” have no affect on your destiny.
If you are making excuses, this is the next barrier to break down.  Those excuses are the same triggers that brought you there in the first place.  They are lies intended to break your hopes and dreams; they are weapons to destroy your desires and the opportunities at a better you.  You carry around excuses to justify your recluse behavior to avoid taking charge and staying in mediocrity.
Expectancy also becomes part of this sin of sloth.  Family expects you to produce children, acquire a “good” job, achieve something specific that is in league with their desires or their expectations.  All of these things are distractions.  Having babies does not mean you are breaking mediocrity and achieving something great, contrary to the expectations that anyone may have.
Financial and monetary gains also do not count as a counter to mediocrity.  Acquiring more wealth and the “status of economic power” does not count as overpowering mediocrity.  If it’s easy and it requires no effort then it is too easy, and therefore a form of mediocrity.
I am not saying that someone who pursues their dream and starts to feel comfortable in their skin is suddenly falling prey to the vice of sloth, or mediocrity.  I’m saying that mediocrity is waiting for you if you become complacent and fall trap to doing the same things over and over without a shred of desire, passion or ambition.  Eventually you will forget being a human being and become a robot.  There are enough robots in the world, break the chains.
The only way to break the chains of mediocrity is first to recognize it.  Then you have to do something about it.  The simplest techniques is to start small.  Break a simple habit.  You can always start by asking why?  “Why am I doing this?”  If the answers sound like excuses then turn away and start again.  If the excuses sound like “this is how we do it and that’s that,” this is the devil’s special lie.
Just to throw a monkey wrench into my own logic, doing something contrary to the status quo every single time is also another tripping into mediocrity.  Bucking the system again and again is another routine that can set into the mind and cause you to fall trap to mediocrity.  The essence of staying passionate is not to stop feeling and thinking about your choices in life, not finding new routines to satisfy your ego or justify your image among other people.
To break these chains, the most radical thing to do is quit jobs or change addresses, to run away from your old ways.  It is a difficult choice, a dangerous choice and not recommended for many people.  Such radical changes can have devastating effects and affects, so be prepared for them if you make that choice.  For most people, it is the simple things that need to be fussed about, changing attitudes and behaviors, figuratively knocking your head against the wall.
We all need to be kicked in the buttocks on occasion to wake us up. We become complacent to our lives; we stop caring about anything else except the next program on TV.  We need to shake ourselves out of this mediocrity and find a passionate direction, a revival of energy that can bring us closer to our dreams.
No one can achieve this goal except you.  No one is going to come rushing to your side to help you through it.  Very few will encourage you; they are a rare breed.  If you haven’t been paying attention, most people are too selfish and egotistical to care about others, so you are going to have to pull yourself up from your boots.
People who achieve awesome goals, great music, beautiful art and fantastic inventions, most of the time, bucked the system, challenged others and themselves, and veered from the status quo.   I won’t lie; it does hurt.  Galileo is an immediate person that comes to mind, he suffered the consequences for challenging the general perception of the universe.  But the overall long-term effects can benefit society and the affects can inspire others.  What do you have to lose, other than missing another year’s of rehashed TV programs?   I dare you to veer off the road and take a look around at your life.

Shunning, the Greater Sin

Shunning, the greater sin

      Unfortunately, some of us have been there. I wish that it wasn’t true, but it is. It happens in school, it happens in the family; it happens at work. We have family members that don’t understand you, don’t respect you or just don’t like your choices in life. They attempt all forms of persuasion from intimidation, threats, bullying, lies and then the secretive shunning. It’s the worst form of manipulation in my opinion and it is a form of passive aggressive bullying. It entails silence.

      Now, don’t get me wrong; I do believe that silence is a weapon. It can do great damage to an opponent. Too many times (especially in today’s world), people talk first before considering their words. Everyone has an opinion on something and with the use of the internet, everyone’s opinion is thrown at you. I personally blame Reality TV that instructs people to act badly and loudly. A silent response can leave your opponent more curious than a devious lie.

       Shunning is a weapon that leaves the (let’s call it the anti-recipient or AR, since there is no personal contact) anti-recipient wondering, wanting; curious about a response. Communication is part of the civilized person. We need that resource to receive feedback, to know our boundaries, to feel wanted, a soundboard to bounce off ideas, a person to vent our problems, a comrade to share with…

      Some people take advantage of these facts to shun other people from the group. The shunning that I am most concerned about is the mob against the individual, not mono-e-mono. Individual to individual is not necessarily a harmful recipe for disaster. Oh yes, a lost love, a scorned friend, an upset colleague can do limited harm. Stress levels teeter, anxiety increases, nervousness ensues, nails get bitten… “Should I pretend to not see them?” “Should I grunt?” “I have no more nails to bite off.”

     But “group shunning” is a greater harm to the AR. These people know this. That’s why they do it! Of course, the limited outcome is that the AR will give in to their wishes to make them happy so then everyone will talk to him or her. The long term problem has not been resolved. If the person wants to be an artist and the family shunned him so he would be forced to consider a more “responsible” job, then the artistic desire gets buried but never lost. That skill, that talent becomes bile. It leads to drinking, drugs; misery that AR may punish onto others. This bandaid solution makes the family happy but leaves the individual in an internal mess. The mess will come out. It will get worse. The mid-life crisis will excel into rebellion.

      The AR loses perspective, stress levels mount. The path that was meant for the shunned becomes lost. The shunners are interfering with the plan of the Universe or God’s. But we all know they have their excuses, their reasons for the abuse; their justification to collectively attack a single person.

     However, the other outcome is far worse. Your shunning isolates the individual from everything. No love, no compassion, no communication… The person turns inward, and feelings drift into negative resolutions. With no one to talk to, he is left to his/her own decisive thoughts, his own imaginings. His soundboard becomes the television, the radio; the internet. Every positive aspiration turns into a negative outcome. Thus, the eventual disownment of the family, or the AR. Which secretly, could be what some of the members wanted in the first place since it was too hard to understand the person.

      But then again, it turns into far worse, the lone wolf. Whenever I see the lone wolf on TV, I always wonder about the family and the friends. Where were they? What happened? Too easily, we blame the loner and feel sorry for the family. We blame drugs or mental disease. What happened? Where were you? I am not excusing the violent behaviors of lone wolves; I am asking that we be more considerate of those we isolate. The best defense against lone wolves is compassionate love and understanding, not stronger gun laws.

     Ironically, in this world, it is easy to be isolated. Sure, there’s more phones, email, internet, mail…instant gratification. But there is less physical human contact and there is a sinister side to all of this; a quicker means to shun someone. Block user, ignore phone, report spam… A lack of patience leads to a panic attack in the AR. “Why haven’t they answered me yet.”

     It’s easier to dismiss someone, ignore them, label them “too weird” and then decide that it is better to avoid them. That’s where it starts. One person and then another person turns their back, and then the AR becomes reclusive by mob choice and then retreats from meanness. What other choice does he/she have? Did you offer honey or vinegar?

      Shunning is not and never will be a responsible way of dealing with a person. A mob against one person is not fair game. It may be empowering to the shunners but in the longer scheme of things, it is disrespectful to yourself as well as others. Not only are you teaching the AR bad behavior but you are teaching members of your mob the same lesson. Sure, you’re in power this time, but next time, you are the black sheep. What will you do then? Commit suicide? Grab a gun? Or wait for your turn to do it to someone else?

      Hiding in the breadth of the mob does not equate that your sin is divvied out in smaller percentages dependent upon the size of the group. There is no “spin” that God will buy and he will not tolerate your blame game.

     The reason that I am sharing these thoughts is because I want you to “Stop it!” There’s nothing that shows your immaturity more than when a group of people shun an individual to make his/her life miserable so they can instill power over them. The real power is being compassionate, understanding, opening your heart to the person rather than closing it off. Your soul is important; not the perception and acceptance in a group. I know that it’s the harder route.

      It’s easier to be a baby brat and stick out your tongue at the person. You may feel empowered for the day but in the long run, things will turn over. Thus, in the end, you will be the loser.

Good luck with your choice.

A Society of Violence

    Guns aren’t the problem. The society’s culture is the problem. It sounds almost cliché but guns do not kill people; people do. The American society is based on the idea of dumping one’s problems on someone or something else, an institution like an elderly care home or asylum. We spend too much time making excuses as to why we cannot take responsibility for our actions and finding easy solutions to solve them, like drugs and PR. These solutions solve nothing. The problem resurfaces. They are quick fixes that dissolve when the money runs out or the “high” runs out.

     Guns and drugs are tools. Used appropriately, they can be useful tools. Used incorrectly, they can have tragic ends. There is no question to that. These problems happen because people are searching for easy solutions to their problems. Or they feel that there is no resolution coming through any means from the current society.  You cannot deflate anger or depression by removing certain guns.

    The solution to many problems with violence is compassion, understanding and respect. You cannot regulate these things. The government cannot enforce these things. In a free society, these things have to be culturally fixed. The media cannot wag its finger at the citizens. You cannot burden churches, synagogues and other religious institutions to fix it for everyone. It has to be a voluntary group effort. Otherwise, it is not freedom; it is conformity through fear.

     In a free speech society, anything and everything goes. Even with the FCC’s attempt to ban certain “unethical items” from TV, violence and language surfaces in these shows, even through innuendo and suggestive means. It is not the programs fault. It is your fault for not turning it off or being able to understand the violence within context; your failure to take the information and not askew it to justify bad behavior. Controlling these things will not alter the fabric of society. There will always be a Human drive to learn and experience these things.

     There was no TV during the Wild West of 1800s. There were no video games to teach violence. Even in the early 1900s, shotguns were hung in the back cab of peoples’ trucks, but rarely did people seek out to mass murder. The society accepted certain habits and they became common place. The same goes for violence. When it becomes part of society, it is justified by an apathetic waving of the hand.

     People like to have simple solutions to problems, so they blame guns or the random “mentally ill” person. Identifying the person as mentally ill allows people to deconstruct them into a category, disconnect from their actions, make an excuse for anything learned from the actions, set them aside to pretend there is something wrong with “them” and therefore are not conducive to live in a civilized society.

     What people do not understand: how we treat each other causes the general suffering of other people. Or more importantly how we ignore each other. They are subtle attacks, usually passive aggressive (maybe another overused set of words). These subtle attacks are meant to harm each other and empower ourselves. Then we go to church to wash away our sins and return to the streets to do it all over again.

     The other way we harm each other is to ignore people until they completely fall apart. We can wash our hands, saying that we had nothing to do with it because we saw something that we didn’t like and ran away. Anything that puts a buffer between us and them is a satisfactory solution. That way, we absolve ourselves of responsibility.

     Another ugly sign is that we justify our behavior by emulating other peoples’ behavior. We see someone get ahead by hurting someone else; then we decide that emulating that behavior can help us do the same. We’ve created a cycle of bad behavior. This behavior creates a self-centered, egotistical society that we beg the government to save us from. But we forget that the government is made up of people who are just as self-centered and driven to excel at the expense of others. After all, they are Human as well; like the “mentally ill”.

    Very slowly, we are finding ways to suffocate one another, sometimes through silence, even if we dump the problem on someone or something else. We strip rights from each other one by one, trying to find a quick fix solution to the violent outcomes from a free society. This cascade of apathy and over-sensationalized drama has led to the very faltering problem that we are trying to resolve. We cannot blame a random group of people for having problems, box them in and then store them away. That solves nothing. We are victimizing victims for the umpteenth time.

     Arming more people will not solve the problem. If you are not paying attention, the police are not immune from DUIs, violent attacks or apathetic responses to crime. They are Human too. They make mistakes. You don’t like it that they make mistakes, but they do. That’s why we have the Internal Affairs.

     Arming teachers isn’t the solution. They are Human too. They develop problems in their lives like everyone else, and they can lose control. How many hebaphile or pedophile issues have cropped up in your neighborhood? What extreme measure do you want to pursue that arms the teachers who can use their power of the gun as well as their authority to get what they want?

     Completely disarming society will not resolve the issue. Do you really trust a society that centralizes the weapons in the hands of those “deemed” as the select few? In a free society, there is a great responsibility. And we have become complacent to hard work, and are searching for easy solutions to complex problems. The complacency and dramatization has to stop first before a mature conversation can be made to solve serious problems.

     The best “checks and balances” is each other. Not the government, not your local church, not someone else. Each other. We have to help one another out and not find excuses to abandon, ignore, put into a box, toss aside… any obstruction that inhibits compassion, tolerance and respect. There are eccentric, strange, and even weird people out there. And sometimes they are the most fascinating people if you get to know them. Sometimes they are scary because they are scared of you. Sometimes they just need someone to talk to. These are Humans that can, will or may have made mistakes; not checkmarks on a census form. (But be careful nonetheless. There are some bad people out there but that should not be an excuse to be a recluse in the world.)

    Sometimes compassion goes farther than a random regulation. That is the only true way to dissuade and disarm people who feel lost, suffocating or generally forgotten by the “masses”. You can take away the guns but what will be offered as a substitute?