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Bullying Affects Social Status?
An anonymous reader wrote to mention a ScienceDaily article about the social status effects of bullying on mice and men. From the article: "The results reveal neural mechanisms by which social learning is shaped by psychosocial experience and how antidepressants act in this particular brain circuit. They also suggest new strategies for treating mood disorders such as depression, social phobia and post-traumatic stress disorder, in which social withdrawal is a prominent symptom ... He and his colleagues also discovered that social defeat triggered an upheaval in gene expression in the target area of the circuit, the nucleus accumbens, located deep in the front part of the brain -- 309 genes increased in expression while 17 decreased."
In extreme cases, such as people with actual social phobias, being able to better control their disorder with anti-depressants sounds fine, but I hope this doesn't get turned around so that the "treatment" for bullying is to medicate the victim and ignore the actual cause (the actual bully)
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
But.... Bullying is what made me the man I am today. I can easily pick out the "bully" in a group and then I can use intelligence, postioning, and execution to cull that person (or personality) from my work environment. It makes my life easier and the workplace easier to go to.
On a side note, if we can treat true depression and PTSD with a gene therapy, GREAT! It will allow Veterans who went through a horrible situation to undo the psych damage and return to a normal life. Same with clinical depression. Remove the behavioral restrictions and open that person up again. I see a much happier world if this actually comes to pass!
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
Improved anti-depressant treatments are nice and all, but how about a treatment for the source of the problem: the bully. There are enough cases of kids picked on past the breaking point, that we should learn to focus on treating the cause not the symptoms of social abuse. Give the drugs to the jerks who feel the need to dominate and humliate.
We are all just people.
I'm a nerd or certainly was for one for sure. A number of years ago I started studying Buddhism (no seriously). One of the more difficult concepts of Buddhism is something called Emptiness. Basically its a philosophy that none of this crap really matters because, well, it does really exist - hence emptiness. At least not in the way we think it does.
It is our attachment to what others think (social status) that causes our unhappiness, shame and embarrassment. So if it doesn't exist then there's nothing to be attached to and nothing to be fearful of. Once I came to deeply realize this I was able to exploit it (OK, it is not what the Buddha had in mind) and achieve a much elevated social status. Even though I don't care about it, it does make my life a little easier.
So the next time someone put you on the spot just shrug your shoulders and say "what ever".
I'd also argue just the opposite. Conservatives appeal more than anything to fear: fear of racial and ethnic out-groups, fear of crime, fear of terrorism, fear of things that go bump in the night. They are quick to choose safety in the "safety vs. liberty" debate, even when the tradeoff itself is an illusion. Their prediliction for harsh and preemptive treatment of everyone they percieve as threats masquerades as strength, when in reality it's more like the weakness of a frightened child, crying from under the bed for a parent to protect him from the monsters in the closet.
They say a conservative is a liberal who's been the victim of a crime, and maybe there's some truth to that.
Why is it that the bullied person must change? They are harming nobody through their actions. It is the violent bully who harms others. 'Fighting back' makes you feel better, but does nothing to solve the inherant problem: bullies.
In your own words, you thought less of yourself until you changed your behaviour to match that of the bullies who did you harm. You became one of them, in a way.
I think you are cheating yourself.
Blar.
Violence that begets violence never ends. Violence that results in financial and social penalties has a limited life span.
Pining for the fjords
Yes, namely you. Which is why must change: otherwise, you'll keep getting bullied.
Fighting back (succesfully) solves the problem of getting bullied. Doing it in a brutal enough fashion might also discourage the bullies from picking a new target out of fear of getting the crap beaten out of them again, neutralizing that particular source of evil permanently.
Succesfully defeating your tormentors will also fill you with confidence, since you have proven that you can take care of itself, and therefore refer to that incidence whenever you need reassurance; on the other hand, not being able to protect yourself makes you avoid social situations because you (correctly) learn that you have a good chance of getting physically harmed in them, and that the institutions (such as courts) of the society won't help you (they're too busy making excuses for the bullies, trying to make the little demons seem like unfortunate victims of broken homes or some other bullshit like that).
People who have been bullied often have problems with social situtations, feeling threatened in them, and these problems are often treated with medicine. However, what these people really need is to learn some particularly nasty fighting techniques, and do so before the bullies disappear from their lives - they need to prove to themselves that they can handle an attacker, and the only way to do that is to actually handle one. The bullies are an ideal target, since they deserve to get beaten up by their victim.
Getting beaten up daily is a pretty inconvertible proof that you're less than whoever is beating you up, since if you weren't, you could stop them. Becoming strong enough to stop them, or even to beat them up in turn, is proof that this is no longer the case.
As long as society refuses to put bullies to prison where violent criminals belong, any claim that the ability to win a fight doesn't make you a bigger man than others directly contradicts observed reality and will thus be rejected as bullshit. As long as the law of the jungle is allowed to reign supreme, it is foolish to except anyone to care whether or not something is right or not according to some other law. After all, it might be illegal for others to beat you up, but that won't stop them; beating them up, however, does. What other conclusion than "might is right" can be drawn from this ? Why would anyone who lives under the law of the jungle believe anything else ? They can, after all, see for themselves that it is true in their lives and that no other law can protect them.
No, he has adapted to the situation in a way that enables survival. The method of adaptation (getting tough enough to whitstand it) may or may not be ideal, but it has nothing to do with self-deception.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
And it is children of parents like you who I will refuse to train.
Instead of sending your children to take martial arts, you should go yourself. Learn what martial arts is and what it isn't. Learn what self defence is and what it isn't.
The absolute last thing I want is for my students to use their skills to "defend" themselves against bullies in the playground. You think being bullied will give you a complex? What happens if you kick the crap out of someone and they hit their head on the ground and die. Don't think that will fuck you up some? What about the resulting police investigation and lawsuit? Will that allow you to integrate better? What happens if you get into a fight and get *your* head pounded in? Great for self esteem that is.
Martial arts is great. Self defence is great. Training kids to knock each other's blocks off is bad. Really, really bad.
Just like you can't solve a social problem with a technical solution, you can't solve a social problem with a violent solution. Avoiding being bullied is waaaaay more complex than learning how to beat someone up. It's even waaaay more complex than self-defence (i.e. avoiding getting beaten up). It's about learning to interact with a highly complex and screwed up social dynamic. It is something I have never seen taught in a martial arts class.
This is speaking as a shodan in karate and someone who was bullied every day for 6 years in school. Just as an example... People would wait for me every day on my way home from school (usually 5 to 10 guys). One of them would start trying to fight me. I would thrash them (and this was before I had training). The next day someone else would want to fight. Like I said, this went on for 6 years. I later found out that in order to join their gang you had to fight me -- to prove how tough you were. Fuckers never told me though. The abuse only stopped when I refused to fight them and let them pound me into the ground.
But I choose solitude. Is it not the geeky thing to do? I don't mean, fortifying myself in my room, switching off the lights, and avoiding outside contact with the universe, I mean, generally keeping away from the "ordinary populace".
I'll be honest, normal people annoy me. Perhaps it is elitism, or maybe I just see myself as "different", although that seems to come straight from a book on politically correct speech. I don't like normal people. I don't like interacting with them, not because I fear them, but because they're just SO boring. I don't care about football, or "like, how totally scandalous Sarah's new hairdo" is. Normal people seem shortsighted and keep nothing below the surface, and have an interest in whatever the media and pack mentality pushes on them.
I go to a school for "gifted" children, or supposedly the top ten percent in any case, an English Grammar School, and I was bullied, I really was, but it taught me so much about humans and how society operates. I saw how countless "leaders" of packs coerced and forced others, who I could see did not want to bully me, get pushed into it, and happily tried to apply pain to me, simply to save their own skin, stay popular and not stand up for their own opinions. Over time, I could see them get intoxicated with the power over me and happily coerce others into it. Some people are such simple creatures, that socialising with them would just be boring. The bullying stopped once I just stood up for myself, because, hey, no bully has any real courage when confronted, they enjoy picking on the weakest in the largest possible pack, which they're always attempting to increase in size, after all.
I have friends, but I choose a few good, non-normal friends over the armies of "friends" everyone else has, who are nice to each other simply to save face and not be socially outcast, the worst possible punishment of all.
I would be seen as socially outcast, and perhaps with a "social phobia", but this is all by choice, to avoid people I just don't care about, and I'm not the only one, there are more than a handful in my school. For example, one of my female friends and I were discussing something geeky, along the lines of whether stargates were physically possible, when some girl swanned up to her (because she was female and OBVIOUSLY part of a pack, by standard) and said,
"OOhmigawd, did you see what Gwen Stephanie wore at the MTV awards? I mean, totally disasterous!"
"....I didn't watch it."
"Oh, poor YOU, don't worry, I think it's like, repeating on sunday or something."
"No, I just really don't care about it."
*Girl stands there for a minute, with a half puzzled, half offended look, before spying someone else to go and verbally assualt and rushes off*
Perhaps I'm an extreme, and very pessimistic, but why is avoiding branches of society always seen as an illness? Us geeks and nerds, we tend to make up a large proportion of the excellent minds of humanity, the open minded sector, why is it that they try to "treat" us? We affect humanity more with our research and interests, more than the guy who's going to lay bricks for a living, but is socially accepted ever will? Why not try it the other way around? Why arn't THEY at fault?
I guess for several reasons. People don't like to think they're wrong, and when most people don't want to be wrong, groupthink makes sure they're right, and their society is best. Management likes us to comply. Different thinking people only cause problems, whereas cattlepeople are easy to manage and handle. This works on every level, even some parents would prefer their children to be non geeks and normal, so the punishment of "go to your room, and you're not going out for three days" would actually work. Society also doesn't like splinter cells, they are scary, and different. If they can be forced to comply, the threat is gone, and obviously the status quo. was therefore correct.
I have geeky interests. I have a few close true friends. I like so
Right. 1785 and Burns describes depression perfectly. He's plowing a field when he turns up a mouse's house, sending her scurrying in panic. But there is no safety, there's no more building material to make a new house and Winter's on its way. The mouse had built a refuge and filled it with provisions to survive the cold months, and now everything's gone, there is no hope to rebuild. All its hard work destroyed. And still the mouse --who lives only in the present --is better off than the man, because he can remember and relive his failures and defeats, and look to the unseen future and "guess and fear".
I am not a crackpot.
Most parents feel that they would like their children to do better than they have done and not make the same mistakes they have made. Please take the advice of your children's teachers and spend more time focusing on enabling your children to improve on their weaknesses.
or... I could just let my kids grow up to be who they are rather than forcing them do do things that don't fit in their character. My extended family is full of introverts who would rather be alone than the center of attention. There is nothing wrong with being introverted. Quoth Socrates: "Know Thyself"
You can force your kids to 'pad their stats' if you want... and you'll probably teach them to focus on their inadequacies rather than their strengths. My kids will know who they are, and what they like to do.... and they'll be happier, more well-adjusted adults as a result.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Your children are in danger of falling into the same social death-spiral that many of us nerds have suffered. We all got to where we are now because:
* We received positive feedback as a result of some non-social activity.
* We received less positive or negative feed back as a result of social activity.
Parents don't make nerds. Kids make nerds. Kids decide that X over there is a teacher's pet/not cool/doesn't use the right slang and refuse to play with him. X pours energy into studies in order to please the people who he can get positive feedback from at all, parents and teachers. X's social skills underdevelop.
Or do they? I've noticed that most nerds in school are actually socially developed to an adult level. However, kids are kids and teens are teens, so when some nerd skips a phase or two of development and starts acting like an adult (this behavior is learned from the adults around him) he gets rejected and never experiences the things that come from going through a child or "adolescent" (adolescence is artificially created by denying teens real work or occupation, thereby extending their childhood. See John Taylor Gatto's work), like having lots of friends or getting laid.
This, understandably, caused us to spend more time with our strength and avoid our perceived weakness. Predictably, this lead to improvement in our non-social skill and continued or increased positive feedback from that. Similarly, we got worse at (or were left behind in) our social skills and received continued or increasing negative feedback from that. Unchecked, it doesn't take very long before this leads a kid that is better at drawing or science than being popular to expand that gap into one of social isolation and a defensive contempt for things in which s/he is weak.
Instead of allowing your children to follow us down this path, a more creative strategy would be to focus on helping them improve in the areas of their weakness. While it is good to continue to reward them for excelling in their strengths, spend more energy and focus on making time spent practicing in areas of weakness more rewarding so that they continue to have opportunities for growth there. There is some amount of trade-off a person has to make in the time spent, and you want them to continue to get better at their strengths. However, allowing them to inadvertently "min-max" their INT at the expense of their STR, DEX, or CHA would constitute a failed WIS check on your part.
Most parents feel that they would like their children to do better than they have done and not make the same mistakes they have made. Please take the advice of your children's teachers and spend more time focusing on enabling your children to improve on their weaknesses. Don't do it because the teachers are smarter than you; they're not. Instead, do it because you are big enough to admit that our worst flaws aren't that our strengths could be stronger, but that our weaknesses truly are weaknesses. By being secure enough in your strengths to admit that your flaws really are flaws, you'll be better able to help your children avoid the same issues.
This advice I have a large problem with, because it doesn't work. My parents have been encouraging social development in me (often beyond what I wanted) since day 1. I'm known to be quite a charmer when I'm nice to people. So why don't I have friends like a normal 16 year old? I don't know the "codes" to be "in". It's like not knowing the password to a very useful group server, but instead of a password to a server it's a complex set of social rituals which gain you access to the popular groups. Unfortunately, most groups don't want you if you don't know their passwords, and set up the passwords deliberately to keep people out who don't know them.
This is why a perfectly sociable person who's a Jock will never get accepted by the Nerds, and vice versa. And let me tell you, Jocks can be nice when they want to.
I question the intelligence of anybody who thinks any one thing is the only thing that matters.
Intelligence is important. Inability to deal with other humans makes intelligence less valuable.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Thought I had to mention this to cover my back: There are of course assholes that act like kids anyway, I'm not suggesting the world suddenly turns strictly rule-obeying and correct the day you turn 25. A lot of people just get different priorities/ less time on their hands.
:)
Not all adults are adult
Depression, despair, etc are places where you can find amazing creativity of both artistic and scientific nature.
Bullshit. If you're thinking this, you either don't know what it means to be depressed, or you don't know what it means to be creative. I would go so far as to say they are opposite experiences.
I would gladly relive my darkest times because I know they are what made me who I am.
This doesn't even remotely mean that not having those experiences would have made you less creative. In hindsight you can say that they made you who you are, but you could say that about any other experience.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
An "ambitious risk-taker" is someone who risks his short-term benefits for possible long-term ones. A "dick" is someone who sacrifices others for his own benefit. An ambitious risk-taker is an asset to the society and everyone around himself, while a dick is a parasite. They have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Of course. It was the ready availability of PC clones that made PC so popular. That availability was caused by IBM publishing the specs for PC and had nothing to do with Gates.
Furthermore, PC was not the first widespread home computer. It's architechture simply proved to be adaptable enough that it could be expanded part at a time, instead of the whole machine being replaced at once. Modern-day PC's have little in common with the original ones; had IBM PC not become the hit it did, we'd simply call our modern machines "Amigas" or "Macs".
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Please enlighten me. If someone is repeatedly attacking me and beating me up for his own fun, and moving away isn't an option, how will I make it stop without physically defeating him ?
Fighting back doesn't make the victim the bully. I'm not suggesting that he go and beat up the bullies; I'm suggesting that he beat them up when they next attack him. Self-defense doesn't make anyone a bully, attacking innocent people does.
As I said, beating up someone who began the fight by attacking you does not make you a bully. Attacking him as revenge might, but simply beating him up rather than letting him beat you up does not.
Bully bullies others because he enjoys their torment and pain. Word "evil" sums that up nicely; and, since people who have been bullied sometimes go and take their anger out on other, innocent, people, or causes them grief through the psychological damage done to them, the original bully has acted as a source of behavior best descriped as "evil".
Please explain what is melodramatic about this ?
It makes you stronger and therefore means that they are not a threat to you.
It is. If it was not, the bully would be carted to prison or psychiatric ward the first time he tried bullying others, and we wouldn't be having this conversation since bullying wouldn't exist. Since it does, and we are, it is rather difficult for me to see how this society is any different from that neanderthal one, since obviously beating others up with sticks is accepted in this society, since it doesn't get the bully punished.
I haven't claimed that it is. I have claimed that being "worthy" by some standard doesn't stop you from being bullied, while being strong does. Therefore, the question of worth is simply completely irrelevant to the discussion about bullying.
My manager isn't regularly attacking me with the intent of causing me physical harm and pain. Having your argument relay on a ridiculous strawman does make it "less of an argument". And if I I answered a potential question before it was asked, is that something to complain about ?
Actually, all legal codes that I know of specifically state that you are allowed to protect yourself, someone else, and yours or their property against a violent assault. Therefore, self-defense is not illegal. And even if it was, that law must be one of those silently ignored - after all, the bully isn't being punished by it, otherwise the whole problem of bullying would go away.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.