Bullying and Awareness

Lying awake at night I had a 3am “Aha” moment of cognition, while trying to make sense of six years of illogical incidents in my small community. This new-found perspective confirmed that these were deliberate acts of bullying and abuse towards me. When I took it to the police, one of the sergeants were sympathetic but feared reprisals if he intervened. I then learnt there were no sane legal means of protecting myself or my family from the insidiousness. My family and I left our home area of 30 years to start a new life interstate.

This distressing experience was validated when I read Tim Field’s brilliant book, Bully Insight, which is on workplace bullying, and I strongly agree that, “Trying to understand bullying is the most frustratingly futile experience imaginable.”

The standard definition of bullying is the use of strength or power to hurt, intimidate or dominate others. I believe that this is a shallow third-party observation, implying only physical abuses.

Dan Olweus’s paper on Bullies on the Playground: The Role of Victimisation investigates bullying and similarly perceives a deficiency in the description of ‘bullying’. He stresses that bullying is repetitive, damaging and with a power imbalance; the power comes from age difference or physical strength. He writes: “In order to use the term bullying, there should be an imbalance in the strength or power relations.” I believe a more accurate definition is: ‘Bullying is about narcissistic gratification, achieved by parasitically cannibalising the victim’s dignity, and all forms of abuse are merely tools to achieve that.’ This is a different perspective of Olweus’s ‘power imbalance’, and comes from defining the environment the psychological bully operates in.

Bruises, burns and broken bones are visible evidence of physical trauma to the body. There is no such visible evidence for psychological trauma to the victim, nor evidence that is not visible, or for the increments defining the degree of such invisible injury. Bear in mind that physical assaults also register as psychological assaults.

People are not able to cognitively comprehend situations without familiarity. The foundation of social harmony rests heavily upon communication, trust, and an understanding of norms and customs to ensure society is on the same wavelength. Without experience, or familiarity, bullying can become perverse, and even beyond comprehension to both the victim, their friends and family, and those they are reporting to. The legal industry then demonstrates little understanding nor remedy for the victim, but is quick to pounce upon those victim’s that react.

So, there is no visible evidence of psychological impact nor terminology to describe bullying. In addition, what is being done to the victim is outside the social norms and can be logically incomprehensible, so that victims sound psychotic or delusional to third parties including some experts. What hope do victims have when they are illiterate to the games that bullies play, where they have the ability to manipulate people and avoid accountability as part of their games?

Without practiced ‘wit’ to come back at bullies or a bikie gangs of support, victims are often powerless, easy targets.

The distress of the psychological assaults upon the victim are then compounded by society's failure to validate why this is happening and that anything is in fact wrong. What we need to do is prevent further assaults and to hold the bully accountable. This could be achieved in the early stages of child development. Children develop their egos by engaging with their world, learning various skills to validate themselves, learning how to ride a bicycle or perhaps bake a cake, which are all moulded by opportunities, abilities and guidance. Educating school children that bullying is very destructive to the victim commonly gets a positive outcome from most children. However, without the filter of empathy and the capacity to feel the emotional distress of a fellow person, and without nurturing environmental guidance, the young mind can develop to see society as a smorgus board to be consumed at will. Without education about the harmful impacts of bullying, children could end up as bullies themselves.

As adults, bullies commonly enjoy positions of authority where they can do as they please to whomever they like with virtual impunity. Tim Field’s wrote of the terror of going to work because of one individual, who really was unfit to be allowed out on their own, let alone be in a position of management. Field argued that the bully picked on enterprising workers because of feeling threatened. I suggest that bullies destroy enterprising others as status trophies, as a duck hunter might bag a passing duck.

Acts of bullying are truly heinous, consuming the life essence of the victim selected with no means of defence, cannibalising their fellow human’s dignity for their own vanity. Some maggots have a greater moral standing; at least they only eat dead things.

Awareness is our greatest defence against the horrible impacts of bullying.

Bob Napier is an ex-farmer and an uncredited potential, as well as a part-time CDU student and has been referred to as the Mandorah jetty fishing guru.