[QUOTE=Zeke129;29449371]Wow you really don't understand psychology at all[/QUOTE]
Any person capable of reason can deduce a great number of ways to solve one of their own problems.
If they don't know how to tackle the problem directly, then why don't they put forth the effort in finding other paths to solving the problem? That makes logical sense, right? They're sick of being pushed around and they feel like they've exhausted all possibilities in making things right, when really they just haven't put forth enough effort in trying to find other solutions.
They try what seems to be the easiest solution, and when that doesn't work they just stop and give up. If they really wanted their torment to end, why wouldn't they bother in looking for other possibilities?
[QUOTE=mikfoz;29449736]Haloguy it has to be said that throughout this thread you have consistently talked out of your arse and shown scant regard for the fact that people are different.[/QUOTE]
No, not really. But if that's your opinion I respect it because I acknowledge that not everyone is the same.
[QUOTE=MaverickIB;29437010]They choose to do nothing about it.[/QUOTE]
"I'll fight back" - Kid gets the shit knocked out of him
"I'll get an adult" - Changes nothing, could make things worse, considering how the bully's parents might be angry
"I'll skip school" - Fails grade
Child becomes depressed
"I'll kill myself" (Rare solution) - Child is dead
"I'll kill them" (Rare solution) - Child either kills himself afterwards, gets in huge trouble, or runs away
Not everyone is like the overweight kid that beat up a bully. There are some short, scrawny people that get bullied all the time.
Nice, generalizing a handful of solutions with the most negative outcome possible. How do you know that all of those results are entirely likely?
"I'll fight back." - Kid tries, gets the shit beat out of him, either gives up or puts forth the effort in trying again, cycle repeats until kid either decides he has won or chooses to find another solution.
"I'll get an adult." - Kid gets an adult, adult does nothing, kid gives up; Kid gets an adult, adult helps kid (I mean, after all, [B]everybody is different, right?[/B] One adult might help while another adult might not do shit), Kid wins against bullies.
"I'll skip school." - The kid could request for home schooling. Assuming he tells his parents why he wants to be home schooled, he will effectively kill two birds with one stone, but the certainty of the outcome being positive is not known, as is the certainty with the outcome being negative.
"I'll kill myself." - Because as soon as they declare that they want to die they really go and follow through with it. I've talked to a number of people who have all said they contemplated suicide and they decided not to follow through with it.
"I'll kill them." - Similar case with the option of suicide. The thought may enter their head but that doesn't mean they'll choose to follow through.
[QUOTE=mokkan;29449382]
Should I have acted dumb to pacify them?[/QUOTE]
Look, in a perfect world, nobody would have to compromise their character in order to avoid conflict. However, the world is not perfect. Yes, telling homosexual people to act straight if they don't want to get picked on sounds horrible and virtually everyone can agree that it's horrible, but just because it's horrible doesn't mean it isn't true.
The bottom line is that beggars can't be choosers. Sucks, but that's the way things are. If you're getting picked on because the other kids don't like how you're smarter than them and you aren't in a position to fight back or resist, then yes, pretending like you're dumb is a good solution. Once again, I don't think that's a good thing and I find it terribly unfortunate, but that's just the way life is.
I mean, it's evident everywhere in history. It isn't uncommon for leaders of nations/tribes/whatever to pretend like they're sick/weak/stupid so their enemies will spare their lives. Is it a good thing that they had to sacrifice their character to survive? No, but they did what they had to do.
If you're getting picked on to no end for something you can hide, then you just have to bite the bullet and hide it. If you refuse to do so, then you have to live with the consequences. I wish things weren't that way, but just because we wish they weren't and just because we have ideologies on what the world should be like doesn't magically make the world like that.
So yes, if acting dumb to pacify them was an option, you should have done that. Unfortunately, you just weren't really in a position to bargain. It was either sacrifice your character for a few years or be bullied. Neither is a good thing, but the former is definitely the lesser of the two evils. And, at the end of the day, you alone made the choice to not hide it. Therefore, the consequences rest on your shoulders. The bullies gave you the problem, but you made the choice on what solution to use.
[QUOTE=MaverickIB;29451156]Look, in a perfect world, nobody would have to comprimise their character in order to avoid conflict. However, the world is not perfect. Yes, telling homosexual people to act straight if they don't want to get picked on sounds horrible and virtually everyone can agree that it's horrible, but just because it's horrible doesn't mean it isn't true.[/QUOTE]
Well if you are going to suggest that they act straight to avoid bullying, I'd hope you advocate just as much not bullying people for being homosexual.
[QUOTE=haloguy234;29451088]Nice, generalizing a handful of solutions with the most negative outcome possible. How do you know that all of those results are entirely likely?
"I'll fight back." - Kid tries, gets the shit beat out of him, either gives up or puts forth the effort in trying again, cycle repeats until kid either decides he has won or chooses to find another solution.
"I'll get an adult." - Kid gets an adult, adult does nothing, kid gives up; Kid gets an adult, adult helps kid (I mean, after all, [B]everybody is different, right?[/B] One adult might help while another adult might not do shit), Kid wins against bullies.z
"I'll skip school." - The kid could request for home schooling. Assuming he tells his parents why he wants to be home schooled, he will effectively kill two birds with one stone, but the certainty of the outcome being positive is not known, as is the certainty with the outcome being negative.
"I'll kill myself." - Because as soon as they declare that they want to die they really go and follow through with it. I've talked to a number of people who have all said they contemplated suicide and they decided not to follow through with it.
"I'll kill them." - Similar case with the option of suicide. The thought may enter their head but that doesn't mean they'll choose to follow through.[/QUOTE]
Once again, suicide and school shootings are extremely rare. By rare I mean they don't always follow through it.
Also, I'm not saying all the solution. I picked the most negative solutions to show what could possibly happen. I'm not going to list every possible solution the kid comes up with, also, the get an adult and fight back solutions are common. Neither of them will end positively most of the time.
[B]ALSO, THIS STILL DOES NOT FUCKING PROVE THE KID CAN EASILY DEAL WITH IT. IT'S. NOT. THAT. FUCKING. EASY.[/B]
Bullying people for any reason is a problem. However, it's something that is somewhat intertwined with human nature. Quite frankly, it seems ridiculous to expect bullying to go away.
It's like having your house lit on fire with some magic fuel source that can't be put out. Your house is going to burn down regardless; you can choose to sit outside and watch it burn or go running in to attempt saving some belongings. At the end of the day, you made the choice. If you get 3rd degree burns all over because you ran in to save shit, you have to accept the consequences because you made that choice. Same thing if you sit outside and lose everything.
I just find it ridiculous that people argue that there is no choice. As if something forces them to go running in or something forces them to sit outside. If you can't get yourself to go running in to save shit because you're scared, yeah you might not be able to help that you're too scared, but that doesn't mean it's not your fault for making that choice. The choice was always there, you just couldn't bring yourself to make it, which is okay, everyone is different. However, it's silly to sit there and say there was literally no choice and it's the fire's fault that you didn't have the bravery to run in there and save your stuff. At the end of the day, it all came down to you and your constitution. If you weren't brave (or stupid, depending on how much value you place in your things over your personal safety) enough to run in there, then don't blame anything else other than your lack of bravery (or stupidity, whatever).
I'm not trying to say only the brave have the ability to choose or anything like that, it's just an analogy. What I'm saying is that there's choices and the only thing keeping you from making certain choices is yourself. If you can't make a choice because you are holding yourself back, then it's your fault you can't make that choice. It sucks, but that's the way it is. If you weren't brave enough, you weren't brave enough. Like everyone has said a million times, everyone is different, but that doesn't automatically exclude people from accepting responsibility for their actions or lack of action.
EDIT:
If you try to run into the house and it fucking explodes in your face then yeah, it was something out of your control. However, people are quick to associate things that are incredibly difficult with being impossible, which isn't the case most of the time.
[QUOTE=haloguy234;29450462]Any person capable of reason can deduce a great number of ways to solve one of their own problems. [/quote]
Okay you've never been truly depressed
Who are you to decide what I have and have not felt to a specific degree?
[QUOTE=haloguy234;29452405]Who are you to decide what I have and have not felt to a specific degree?[/QUOTE]
Zeke129 knows all.
[QUOTE=MaverickIB;29451156]Look, in a perfect world, nobody would have to compromise their character in order to avoid conflict. However, the world is not perfect. Yes, telling homosexual people to act straight if they don't want to get picked on sounds horrible and virtually everyone can agree that it's horrible, but just because it's horrible doesn't mean it isn't true.
The bottom line is that beggars can't be choosers. Sucks, but that's the way things are. If you're getting picked on because the other kids don't like how you're smarter than them and you aren't in a position to fight back or resist, then yes, pretending like you're dumb is a good solution. Once again, I don't think that's a good thing and I find it terribly unfortunate, but that's just the way life is.
I mean, it's evident everywhere in history. It isn't uncommon for leaders of nations/tribes/whatever to pretend like they're sick/weak/stupid so their enemies will spare their lives. Is it a good thing that they had to sacrifice their character to survive? No, but they did what they had to do.
If you're getting picked on to no end for something you can hide, then you just have to bite the bullet and hide it. If you refuse to do so, then you have to live with the consequences. I wish things weren't that way, but just because we wish they weren't and just because we have ideologies on what the world should be like doesn't magically make the world like that.
So yes, if acting dumb to pacify them was an option, you should have done that. Unfortunately, you just weren't really in a position to bargain. It was either sacrifice your character for a few years or be bullied. Neither is a good thing, but the former is definitely the lesser of the two evils. And, at the end of the day, you alone made the choice to not hide it. Therefore, the consequences rest on your shoulders. The bullies gave you the problem, but you made the choice on what solution to use.[/QUOTE]
Or, y'know, you could actually strive to create a culture in which people actually respect each other, thereby actually creating a long-term solution that works for all rather than an "About a Boy" style "WELL HAVE YOU JUST TRIED AVOIDING THEM?" answer-
but no that's just silly sorry
[QUOTE=haloguy234;29452405]Who are you to decide what I have and have not felt to a specific degree?[/QUOTE]
Well you said it's impossible to not be able to find a way to get help so I can safely say you've never been depressed to a degree where you can't get help
[QUOTE=Dr_Funk;29452633]Or, y'know, you could actually strive to create a culture in which people actually respect each other, thereby actually creating a long-term solution that works for all rather than an "About a Boy" style "WELL HAVE YOU JUST TRIED AVOIDING THEM?" answer-
but no that's just silly sorry[/QUOTE]
Who says I'm not striving to get to the point where we no longer have to live life that way?
You seem to have missed a huge part of what I'm saying. I'm not satisfied with the way things are right now and I hope a long-term solution arises someday, but the bottom line is [i]that's how things are right now, whether you like it or not.[/i]
People don't actually respect each other. Do I agree with that? No. Is that the way things are? Yes.
This thread makes me realize all the edgy little devil's advocates will try to rationalize even bullying.
[QUOTE=MaverickIB;29452760]Who says I'm not striving to get to the point where we no longer have to live life that way?
You seem to have missed a huge part of what I'm saying. I'm not satisfied with the way things are right now and I hope a long-term solution arises someday, but the bottom line is [i]that's how things are right now, whether you like it or not.[/i]
People don't actually respect each other. Do I agree with that? No. Is that the way things are? Yes.[/QUOTE]
But then at what point do we actually make the jump from "I need to change" to "Society needs to change"? It doesn't matter if [i]that's how things are now whether I like it or not[/i] - it's not going to change unless people actually DO something about it.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;29452638]Well you said it's impossible to not be able to find a way to get help so I can safely say you've never been depressed to a degree where you can't get help[/QUOTE]
The choices are always there even if the person who's depressed doesn't realize they are. Yeah, there is always going to be a degree of depression where a person feels completely helpless. I was there at one point. And then I snapped out of it and realized I wouldn't get anywhere if I just sat there in a saddened stupor, so I decided to do something about it.
What is there to do about it? If the answer was obvious, if there was a solution, it would have been done already.
More importantly, a utopian society would suck.
If everybody respected each other, if the world we live in was absolutely perfect, then there wouldn't be anything to fight for. Nothing to choose to believe in because, if the world was perfect, what you could choose to believe is already a reality.
[QUOTE=haloguy234;29452992]More importantly, a utopian society would suck.
[/QUOTE]
In theory, it wouldn't.
[QUOTE=haloguy234;29452992]More importantly, a utopian society would suck.
If everybody respected each other, if the world we live in was absolutely perfect, then there wouldn't be anything to fight for. Nothing to choose to believe in because, if the world was perfect, what you could choose to believe is already a reality.[/QUOTE]
How does preventing bullying = utopia?
[editline]26th April 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=MaverickIB;29452946]What is there to do about it? If the answer was obvious, if there was a solution, it would have been done already.[/QUOTE]
Can you imagine a guy in the 1700s saying this about slavery?
"What is there to do about it? Slavery has existed for millenniums. If the answer was obvious, if there was a solution, it would have been done already."
[QUOTE=Owner3;29453196]
Can you imagine a guy in the 1700s saying this about slavery?
"What is there to do about it? Slavery has existed for millenniums. If the answer was obvious, if there was a solution, it would have been done already."[/QUOTE]
Except there was a solution to slavery present, just nobody supported it for a long time. Free the slaves, that was a clear solution. Easily enacted through writing a few laws.
That isn't the case with bullying. You can't just say "stop the bullying" because that's like saying "stop the crime." How exactly do you do that? Also, the vast majority of people would be all for something that magically stops bullying. Therefore, the analogy of bullying to slavery is, quite frankly, not very smart or accurate.
[QUOTE=MaverickIB;29453600]Except there was a solution to slavery present, just nobody supported it for a long time. Free the slaves, that was a clear solution. Easily enacted through writing a few laws.
That isn't the case with bullying. You can't just say "stop the bullying" because that's like saying "stop the crime." How exactly do you do that? Also, the vast majority of people would be all for something that magically stops bullying. Therefore, the analogy of bullying to slavery is, quite frankly, not very smart or accurate.[/QUOTE]
I agree that the bullying to slavery analogy is bad, but if you're suggesting we should stop trying to stop bullying because it hasn't worked so far then you're completely wrong. There is one point in the slavery thing that makes sense: do you think, really, that passing a few laws stopped the trade of slaves? It didn't but it did mean it wasn't institutionalized. There was a time when teachers and students were free to discriminate and bully anyone they wanted and if that's not significant progress I don't know what is.
You're right. Slavery still exists in tons of places. That further proves my point that there's still no solution to bullying. Sweeping something under the table doesn't make it cease to exist. Yes, there's legal measures that are supposed to stop teachers and students from bullying, but they apparently do not work.
Still, bullying has never been an "okay" thing like slavery. It has never been institutionalized, it's not like teachers and kids were encouraged to pick on the smaller kids with glasses.
There hasn't been any significant progress on bullying. There just hasn't. It has always existed and it sure as hell hasn't slowed down. If anything, it's escalated when you consider that now kids have more mediums to bully people through (like the internet).
Bullying is an ugly part of human nature. It's what happens when a kid's brain understands that they must compete with everyone else in the world, but doesn't understand how exactly to do that. So they naturally assert themselves over weaker kids because that's what competition is to them.
As people get older, the concept of bullying remains, just the means of it changes. It changes from the big kids picking on the little kids to the rich shitting on the poor. Quite frankly, that's the way things have always been. I'm not saying that's the way things will always be, but there sure as hell hasn't been any progress toward changing that. Instead of burning resources with all kinds of stupid anti-bullying campaigns that never work, kids need to be educated on how to react properly to bullies in realistic ways. Right now, they simply preach shit like saying "Leave me alone" and walking away, which we all know doesn't work.
It's just like sex education and whatnot. Kids are going to fuck each other whether you like it or not. You can be ignorant of that and keep preaching abstinence or you can be smart and educate them on how to safely have sex.
[QUOTE=MaverickIB;29454376]You're right. Slavery still exists in tons of places. That further proves my point that there's still no solution to bullying. Sweeping something under the table doesn't make it cease to exist. Yes, there's legal measures that are supposed to stop teachers and students from bullying, but they apparently do not work.
Still, bullying has never been an "okay" thing like slavery. It has never been institutionalized, it's not like teachers and kids were encouraged to pick on the smaller kids with glasses.
There hasn't been any significant progress on bullying. There just hasn't. It has always existed and it sure as hell hasn't slowed down. If anything, it's escalated when you consider that now kids have more mediums to bully people through (like the internet).
Bullying is an ugly part of human nature. It's what happens when a kid's brain understands that they must compete with everyone else in the world, but doesn't understand how exactly to do that. So they naturally assert themselves over weaker kids because that's what competition is to them.
As people get older, the concept of bullying remains, just the means of it changes. It changes from the big kids picking on the little kids to the rich shitting on the poor. Quite frankly, that's the way things have always been. I'm not saying that's the way things will always be, but there sure as hell hasn't been any progress toward changing that. Instead of burning resources with all kinds of stupid anti-bullying campaigns that never work, kids need to be educated on how to react properly to bullies in realistic ways. Right now, they simply preach shit like saying "Leave me alone" and walking away, which we all know doesn't work.
It's just like sex education and whatnot. Kids are going to fuck each other whether you like it or not. You can be ignorant of that and keep preaching abstinence or you can be smart and educate them on how to safely have sex.[/QUOTE]
Well if anti-bullying programs aren't what you think we should do to work towards getting rid of bullying, then what do you think we should do? Nothing?
Like I said, we should educate kids on how to properly deal with bullying instead of just blowing smoke up their asses. Teachers/administrators/parents need to be educated on how to be mentors for their kids instead of just educators and parents. Educate a kid and show him that there's help available if he needs it and suddenly bullying is no longer fun for the bullies because all the kids they pick on don't give a shit.
[QUOTE=BrQ;29447152]If you can not deal bullies, then it'd be best to please them[/QUOTE]
I'm sorry that...just that is idiotic :v:
Of course you can reduce bullying. Take the schoolyard, for example - you really think that anti-bullying policies and programs do NOTHING at all? Of course some people will always be pricks, but to simply go "welp it's impossible to remove it entirely so resort to appeasement instead" is utterly ridiculous - cowardly, even.
That's taking what people say and using it in a very extreme context.
There's a handful of options one can employ when they are bullied. Appeasement is one of them. You can take the bullying and retain your character but be tormented every day or sacrifice your character and appease them in order to escape it. Which one you choose is up to you to decide, based on what your personal values are. Even kids have values as simple as those.
However, if you choose one of those things and don't get the results you wanted, there's really nobody to blame but yourself. If you appease the bullies and end up feeling like a coward, you can't really blame anyone for the choice you made except yourself.
However, it's important to understand that most bullying takes place while people are in the lower levels of schooling as kids. It's not like you have to pretend to be stupid/straight/whatever for the rest of your life, just as long as you're at whatever school you go to. Yeah, it sucks, and yeah, I wish there was some kind of end-all magical solution that involves zero sacrifice from the person being bullied, but there isn't.
Personally, I'd rather keep fighting than just give up.
[QUOTE=Dr_Funk;29455561]Personally, I'd rather keep fighting than just give up.[/QUOTE]
Easier said than done....
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