THE solution to bullying

[matty7]

Wade ,great view point and thx for making me think a bit too

[Arkansota]

This exactly.

I think the solution to the bullying problem, if there is one, is to attempt to understand what makes kids (and adults) feel the need to assert their power over others. And yes, studies have shown that kids who are considered "bullies" almost always come from homes where there is some sort of abuse going on.

Separating kids into groups of "the good ones" and "the bad ones" is just plain sick to me.

It seems to me that some adults who get really fired up over the bullying of children are trying to rectify the wrongs that were done to themselves as a child. Not that I think that wanting to eliminate bullying among children is an ignoble cause, but I think some people get so wrapped up in a desire to see their own bullies of the past punished that they project those feelings onto "bullies" today.

The whole anti bullying craze is very strange to me. Particularly in the "gay community" (I hate that term... but I'm a hypocrite) there seems to be this notion that there exists only bullies and victims. The problem is much more complicated than that. A person can be a bully to one person, and be a saint to another. We all have the capacity to bully, and probably all have been someone's bully without realizing it. It doesn't have to be physical bullying, it can be as simple as not being welcoming to a new member of a particular social group. That person will wonder why you're not nice to him or her, be convinced you hate them... and BAM! You're their bully forever.

Yeah, some people who were bullies as kids are almost scarily militant about opposing bullies. Like, executing all bullies isn't going to help.

[Pix]

GENERALLY speaking I'm inclined to cut kids some slack with the real hope of change as their brains mature (otherwise, why not just make them adults and let them live their own lives, including driving to work?), though just to be clear I don't mean bullying should be tolerated at all, but rather that someone may become a completely different person years later. And it's interesting to me that bullies among kids are mostly restricted to schools, kids who don't go to school but still meet other kids don't face the same bullying (I was the most popular with high school kids after I dropped out and started unschooling), I suppose because they're not part of the pecking order that has to be determined. But another factor is that school faculty subtly (and sometimes overtly) encourages bullying against certain people as a means of control and conformity, too.

But what gets me is how reviled bullies are in popular kids shows. I saw kids hating passionately the bullies in Harry Potter and Hannah Montana, and yet in real life it's obvious they were what they hated, the same kind of vile brutes and stuck up rumor spreaders they loved to see made to suffer by their victims in their favorite shows. Do they not see how they are what they hate when watching their favorite shows and movies? :confused:

The closest anyone has been able to answer that for me is this article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16180030