Are we all Bullies?

I was a bully at high school. I think most kids were actually, it was an all boys’ school and it was survival of the fittest. But I recall I did more than some others, taunting one particular defenceless kid, not with anything physical, but with nicknames and getting into his face when I am sure he would rather I were some place else.

As an adult, I’ve often thought back to that phase with some shame and wondered what led me to behave like that. I don’t know if there was any sadism involved; my best guess is that it was a sort of fear-based way of avoiding being bullied myself. If I was a predator, maybe I was less likely to become a prey, despite being a weakling and a nerd.

I believe that fear will be behind most bullying. I just looked up that an American study found that among athletes, “the strongest predictor was the perception of whether the most influential male in a player’s life would approve of the bullying behaviour”. Although I don’t recall any particular male influencing me, that seems to account for much of the bullying I witnessed at school.

Shell went through a phase when bullying was called out. After the reserves crisis, new CEO Jeroen van der Veer made a big point of stamping out any bullying culture, clearly because he had witnessed (even suffered?) it himself at the hands of his predecessor. It was a brave, and vulnerable intervention, and successful too, at least for a time. Sadly, corporate bullying seems to be alive and well.

I have been thinking about bullying since it seems to have been something of a theme of dismal 2016, and we can expect more of it in the coming years. Putin is a classic bully, and his behaviour is certainly driven by fear: he is tactical and not strategic, and often trying to divert risks or negative attention to himself.

Then there is Trump. He seems to be plenty of evidence that he has been a corporate bully. In the campaign there was plenty of belittling and imagined conspiracy. And now he seems to be trying the tactic on China. Further, his supporters seem to include a lot of cyber bullies and even those who would physically taunt minorities.

Cyber bullying is insidious, but interesting because it is so widespread. Seemingly, many of us can’t resist the temptation to take a free hateful shot at defenceless others. Even us optimists can’t gloss over or marginalise this phenomenon; it is too omnipresent for that.

So this leads me to a very negative thought about human nature. Are we all (or at least nearly all) bullies? Is bullying the natural way of things, only tempered by some learned societal decorum?

Perhaps it is. And perhaps more of us practice forms of bullying on a regular basis than we are aware of. Because there are many ways to be a bully, and lots of those don’t have much societal decorum in their way.

I was in a long relationship of unequal power. I was the young one, the rich one, the brainy one, the quick-witted one, and the one not suffering from an affliction. Often I felt bullied, when the affliction induced a lashing out. But was I a bully too?

No doubt there could be all sorts of psychological analysis as to how I landed in such a relationship in the first place, with some fear and some predator-before-prey sub conscious thinking a possibility. But I also have to consider the possibility that my behaviour drifted into a form of bullying too, thereby cementing the affliction ever deeper. On balance, I don’t think that is correct, but it is very healthy to consider the possibility in terms of identifying underlying risk factors in my make up.

There are a lot of abusive relationships in this world, whether parental, marital, corporate or anything else. I wonder how many of those are characterised by mutual bullying, with each partner using a different weapon. The more desperate partner’s bullying will be obvious to outsiders, but the behaviour of the other might be just as damaging. And that partner will generally be seen as societally acceptable, and oblivious to the effects of their own behaviour.

So, in 2016, have we got this the wrong way around, or at least only focused on one half of the story? The whole remain campaign in the UK felt like a demeaning lecture. Renzi’s failed campaign in Italy had a bullying, back me or else, feel. And Clinton’s infamous deplorable remark displayed her ugly true colours. Meanwhile, across Europe, the establishment tries to bully the public into rejecting the far right, without being fully honest about its own platforms and undermining of democracy. All this could be summarised as the public finally reacting to years of intellectual bullying by elites.

It is tempting to push back. Trump’s vilification of Clinton and much else in his campaign were fact-free bullying. And somehow the playing field doesn’t feel equal - outsiders and minorities seem to get the benefit of the doubt. A US policeman trying to do his job may sense double standards when provoked by unruly kids or organised gangs.

But this is where the buck stops. Outsiders and minorities and the historically disadvantaged have a right to express a grievance, while incumbents must beware of bullying. Sometimes it doesn’t feel fair – and in another way the Trump populists are the incumbents rather than the outsiders – but such asymmetry leads to a fairer society ion the end.

One of the smartest statements in the US campaign came from Trump when he suggested banning Muslims until they understood why they hated us. Instead the ugliness of that statement is a kernel of potential value. The reasons many Muslims do hate the US is that they are fed up with decades of bullying, including invasions, sanctions and abuse of UN vetoes. The powerful tend to resort to bullying. And power comes in many forms that are not physical, including intellectual power.

I recall again the Prodigal Son parable, specifically the attempted bullying of the elder son who so resembles most of us. The whole Gospel could be argued as a parable about abusing power, via repeated exposure of those like the Pharisees, and culminating in the crucifixion made inevitable by the mob. I’ve been in mobs, for example at soccer matches, and I know they do not bring out the best in me.

So what should we do? As usual, the best place to start is with ourselves. I have bullied, I can still bully, in some ways my natural tendency is to bully. It is powerful and empowering to be aware of that, because it is the first step to doing something about it. Just like in a twelve-step programme, the first step is to acknowledge a weakness and its near inevitability.

Then we can look at specific situations and relationships that carry a bullying risk, and work on them, with plenty of self-awareness and feedback. For those of us challenged by events in 2016, I believe that approach has more promise than doubling down, or blame, or despair.