"NO BIFF....YOU GET YOUR DAMN HANDS OFF HER"
McFly, just before he whacks Biff the bully in "Back to the Future".
News reports running headlines such as this, "Bullies may actually enjoy the pain they cause others, a new study using brain scans suggests" merely confirm what people of good conscience have known since the first proto-human tribal hordes roamed the Savannahs of Africa.
The second paragraph of one such news article said that, "The part of the brain associated with reward lights up when an aggressive teen watches a video of someone hurting another person, but not when a non-aggressive youth watches the same clip, according to the University of Chicago study, published in the current Biological Psychology."
They do it because they like it---and nobody stops them! Did anyone ever doubt such a thing was the motivating force behind the behavior of bullies since time immemorial? They like what they do! Whether it was a James Bond-like master criminal, Josef Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Idi Amin, Slobodan Milosevic or the cartoon character who pummels Calvin or Bart, they are sick people, sadists who revel in other's pain and misery.
It might have been the bigger kid in elementary school who always budded in line in front of you, daring you to stand him down. It might be the linebacker-sized real estate developer who tries to scare you out of calling an inspector because he's violating building laws. It might be an elected official who thinks she or he is above the law. It might be the priest who intimidates you into succumbing to his will. It might be the entire hierarchical bureaucracy of an institution such as a church or business that crushes you under its thumb.
It's Mao against Tibet. Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The US Marines in Iraq...and elsewhere. Japan in China. The USSR in Hungary or Russia in Georgia. It's Putin, it's Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld, Ahmadjinehad (did I spell that right?), Max Smart against Zigfried, it's Osama Bin Laden....it's the punk at the school bus stop.
Don't let bullies push you around. Stand up to them. Tell your children, your schools, your community institutions, and your governments to stop bullies. But most of all, in every day life, you can take a stand.
Bullies survive and grow threatening when those of us who don't take pleasure from hurting others refuse to stand up for ourselves or inflict pain back on the bullies. All they respect is power and force. Sometimes speaking up and speaking loudly--speaking truth to power is all that is needed whether it be a mayor, the head of the chamber of commerce or whomever. You might get hurt.
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1 Comment:
Damn right! Too few grownups teach their kids these important things. If more grownups had then there would be fewer bullies.
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