Adult bullying and the common good.

 I am addressing some issues/concerns that an official of a non-profit organization had when I approached her for help with a national anti adult bullying campaign.  I am concerned with the arbitrary use of power which results in hurting, intimidating or tyrannizing another or others.  Why call that bullying?  Bullying is the best-fitting label that I have so far found in Webster's dictionary.  Perhaps I should call it "ballying".  Whatever one calls it, the problem has been around since Cain murdered Abel.  There is something about this problem that has been changing during my lifetime.  There is an intensification and growing commonality in the arbitrary use of power by adults that results in hurting, intimidating, and/or tyrannizing another or others in this alledged land of the free.  Perhaps the commonality is not so much a case of increased frequency as it is the increased number of people negatively affected by bullying.

     I base my belief that the trend of bullying is becoming more common and more intense on an intuitive feeling that has been percolating for the past thirteen years.  Ever had the feeling that some negative change is occurring but you can't quite identify it?  The change over the past 50 years has been rather subtle at least up to the beginning of the last Bush presidency.  Even though it's not based on science, it is nonetheless real. When I was a child, there was no Monsanto trying to control the world-wide production of food.  Perhaps there were Bernie Madoffs, but none as successful or ruthless as him.  There was no housing melt-downs contributing to major recessions.  There was no cyber-bullying and I did not hear about students being killed or seriously injured by hazing incidents every few months.  Nor did we hear about students killing themselves or each other as a reaction to bullying as often as we do these days.  Nor did small groups of politicians shut down the government in pursuit of their own personal agenda.  The arbitrary use of power is intensyfying and hurting, intimidating and tyrannizing more people in this country more effectively than 50 years ago.  Perhaps I should write a book about the problem that would explain why people who care about certain related causes are indifferent to the general trend.

     I now realize it would be politically unwise for non-profit organizations that rely on corporate funding to draw attention to this trend in American society.  If Monsanto wanted to give a grant to an organization to educate people about pesticides or GMOs it would probably think twice about giving money to an organization that exposed Monsanto as one of the world's biggest corporate bullies.

   This blog and the suggested national bullying awareness campaign are directed toward adults rather than children.  Children can tell that the arbitrary use of power that results in hurting, intimidating and tyrannizing another or others is widespread in the adult world.  Children tend to imitate adults.  As long as adult bullying continues to be so pervasive, i.e., common, school bullying will continue to be a problem for its victims.  Children know instintively that the only difference between a schoolyard bully and an adult bully is size. 

    What is so important about opposing adult bullying, apart from my claim that it perpetuates child bullying?  What is at stake is the quality of the common good in this country.  People who are concerned only about what this country can do for them, are willing to let bullies win.  But even bullies benefit from the common good that their actions lessen.  Victims of bullying naturally devote more energy to protecting themselves and their families than they do to promoting and preserving the common good. 

    What is the alternative to the triumph of bullies?  For all Americans to be able to live in a world where people use their power to promote the common good as opposed to using that power arbitrarily to hurt, intimidate or tyrannize another or others.  If this results in fewer millionaires and billionaires, higher taxes for the upper !%, higher minimum wages, and lower prices for the necessities of life, then so be it.

    So what's the end game?  What is the goal of an adult bullying awareness campaign?  That would be to get as many people as possible mobilized to stand against bullying for the sake of the common good.  Some ideas for how that would be achieved are contained in the previous post.

 

 

[Quoted text hidden]