Bullies

Do we live in a Bully Culture? What does that mean? Is it desirable?

In the government and political arena, we witness elected officials creating and enforcing policies, laws, systems of getting what we want, when we want, the way we want. The "we" being vaguely defined, if at all, sometimes. And even though sometimes we, as indidividuals, are sometimes hailed as the beneficiaries of these actions, we can as quickly and easily be condemened as the brunt of them. There are systems in place to deal with when you are on which side...

At school the school board makes rules which it passes down to families via administrators and teachers. It sends notes home that say, "if you/your child does/doesn't do X, your child will be..." trounced, essentially. There's this looming threat spelled out: expelled, suspended, written up in the "permanent record" which will be used against (they never how it is used "for", interestingly) your child. The idea is to instill fear to get order, which means minding all the rules exactly, without question, all of the time.

At home parents sometimes spank, ground, punish, discipline, redirect, scold, scream at, abuse, neglect, avoid, threaten, cajole, hover over their children. Sometimes to help the child avoid injury or danger. Sometimes to help the child learn manners. Sometimes to keep the child from hurting someone else. Sometimes because the parent is tired, angry with someone or something other than the child, drunk or drugged, being abused by the other adult in the house, at the end of her or his rope about who knows what. Sometimes because that's what their parents did and they don't know another way, are fearful someone will think they're a bad parent and may take their children away.

There is a top-down, the biggest wins, playground bully aspect to all of this. It keeps coming to mind day to day. I keep finding things I do or others do to be less pure than they seem on the surface (if they seem so at all).

I'll muse on this more later. It's not whole and present yet. But the thoughts are forming.