The Bullying Experiment: An Exercise in Shame and Fear

I just viewed the youtube video, TheBullying Experiment.  In it a young man pretends to be a bully while another playacts the bullied. The bully is relatively big and wears tough guy clothes. He physically manhandles the victim who looks like he’s ready for prep school. It is shot live, presumably on a quiet part of a college campus. The intention of the video is to show how most people do not try to stop bullying and how by not intervening we are part of the problem. The video has had over 6000 hits. While I agree that we are complicit by not acting I have some issues with this video, specifically its underlying message of fear and shame.
 

After each fake altercation the “bully” confronts those who ignored the situation. Why didn’t you do anything, he asks. However valid the question the methodology is both shame and fear provoking. Imagine witnessing someone aggressively manhandle another and then have that same person turn to you and demand why you didn’t act. One bystander apologized. I would have done the same. But instead of being remorse for my non-response it would have been to avoid being pummeled by this guy. It reminds me of being confronted by an angry and authoritarian parent: damned if you tell the truth; damned if you don’t. Shame and fear are powerful inhibitors.

That said, some degree of shame is effective. This shame, however, must come from within rather than without. Internal shame propels us to change our behaviour and make amends. External shame, on the other hand, quickly becomes another form of bullying, an ostracization that alienates and decreases the potential for pro-social behaviour. 

That is what I feel the video has done. These bystanders are forever shamed and for what purpose? Shaming someone for their lack of courage or even indifference is not effective. Perhaps if the pretend victim rather than the bully had approached those who passed by the results would have been different. Instead of provoking shame and fear, there may have been empathy. Both parties could then have talked of their fears. When people share a common feeling they are more likely to be proactive.* This, of course, would not have changed their first reaction but perhaps encourage a more pro-social response in future.

It is easy to sit in one’s armchair and judge those who do not act. But ask yourself, would you have really gone in and stood up for the man being assaulted in the video? The pretend bully was scary. I applaud the young woman, physically smaller and presumably weaker, for doing so. But it doesn’t always end happily. Three years ago a young woman was killed in Vancouver’s Gastown while trying to break up a fight. She didn’t know the men fighting; she was only trying to help. 

I have both responded and not responded to bullying. Once, when seated at the back of a bus, I was surrounded by young men and their homophobic talk. While it wasn’t directed at anyone in particular, it was offensive and intimidating regardless of your sexual orientation. I felt too scared to speak up. I still feel some shame for that. Another time, however, I did speak up. It wasn’t easy and was not received with open heart but I felt good about it, after I stopped shaking, that is. I don’t know what made me act then and not the other time. Every day we experience life from different perspectives and varying degrees of security. Can I predict if I will step in another day? I hope I will but I cannot say it will definitely happen. I do not think anyone can. 

Fear for one’s own safety is only a small part of the equation. What about fear for our family’s safety, social conditioning or previous trauma? I think back to an October 2011 news clip where a toddle in Foshon, China, was run over not once but twice and then ignored by eighteen people.  (The scene was captured on street surveillance camera). Some commentators chose to use this as a forum for racism but one astute reporter, Mark McKinnon of the Globe and Mail, gave two possible reasons why this tragedy occurred. 1) “The legal system [in China] is unpredictable and unfair to those without money and political connections. Getting involved can often get you in trouble.” 2) An authoritarian state, such as China, instils fear in its citizens from acting, doing and /or getting noticed. 

Were those bystanders in The Bullying Experiment newcomers to North America? Had they had previous experiences where getting involved cost far too much, i.e. their family was negatively affected? Was their English comprehension limited in that they consequently interpreted the scene as political in nature? 

Here is another thought: In emergency response training the first thing you learn before approaching an incident is to ensure no danger. Perhaps, just perhaps, some of those bystanders were going to get help. They knew their physical limitations and chose, as unobtrusively as possible, to leave the scene so to contact those who could be more effective. Many would say that is the wisest choice.

On the other side of the coin, one must also mention the “bystander effect”. This is where “[t]he mere presence of other bystanders greatly decreases intervention.” We witness this about half way through the video where one person stops to stare but moves on when he sees others walk by. This is a well documented and researched phenomena instigated by the horrors of what happened to New York’s Kitty Genovese. I am not saying this is appropriate but it seems to be part of human nature. 

I write these bystander excuses not to say it is okay to do nothing but so that we lay down our judgments, forego becoming another form of bully, and work instead to finding solutions. It is also important to remember that solutions need not be grandiose. In the book Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels subtly weaves themes of morality and complicity in her poetic book of a young Jewish boy who, saved from certain death in WWII Poland, finds sanctuary in Greece.

Michaels writes:

In those days, to be moral required no more than the slightest flicker of movement —a micrometer —of eyes looking away or blinking, while a running [Jewish] man crossed a field. And those who gave water or bread! They entered a realm higher than the angels’ simply by remaining in the human mire.” 

We need to teach our children that a helpful response to those in need is not only important but vital to our humanity. Bullying, however, will not be stopped by further bullying. Let us not shame the bullies into change but bring them into the fold and create change from within.

I close with a CBC excerpt about Nelson Mandela, a man who will forever remain one of our best models for compassionate humanity.

In prison he meditated every day while seeking signs of common humanity even among white guards — some of whom later became close friends. He discovered … a willingness to respect all and an ability to make even old foes feel better about themselves. At the same time he made it clear his core values were unshakable.

* If you Google “empathy and pro-social behaviour” you find that the majority of studies show a positive correlation between the two. However, one recent study showed that this correlation fell through if the subject felt they were in a lower socio-economic status. As the researcher states, the literature is complex.

The Sounds of Silence

I sit on the bus in an auditory coma. The motor’s roar competes in magnitude with the blare of the heater. The latter is an omnipresent attack on my senses, both skin and ears, while the engine revs with irritating spasms in the rush hour traffic. Little can be heard beyond this clamour. I see people’s mouths moving in silent charades, bags shifting and feet walking but I am cocooned within a sound proof bubble, ironically made up of that from which it shields: sound. 

I recently listened to CBC’s Radio One Spark. Julian Treasure, one of the judges for the Most Beautiful Sound in the World contest, was being interviewed. He states: “…we are so surrounded by noise all the time that we’ve become … rather deaf, we don’t listen as much, we tend to suppress our awareness of the sounds around us.”

Sound is not something for which I yearn. Not that I desire to be deaf but I am sensitive, some might say overly so, to auditory vibrations. Certain sounds, even those of the most innocuous, can exhaust, startle and, even can scare me. I find the incessant sonance of incoming waves, for example, an irritant, and the soft tones of well meaning people draining. I prefer the quiet or, at most, subtle sounds that speak to all my senses. 

I had a friend once, many years ago, of whom I was half in love. She ate in a way that ignited my sensory synapses, but especially those of my hearing. The meal was simple: a dish of macaroni with smallish pieces of raw garlic, chunks of yellow butter and orange cheddar cheese on the side. Using chopsticks she ate with composed insouciance—picking up a piece of butter or perhaps cheese and laying it on the curve of pasta. She would ponder for a moment and then, as if on a whim, add garlic to the top. Her hands, long and delicate, directed her chopsticks with graceful moves, each scoop a smooth transition from plate to mouth. And the music: the soft chalky tapping of the wooden sticks; the almost silent melt of butter; and the sweet swoosh of breath, a sigh, as her tongue succumbed to the sensations. She ate each bite as if long without food, long without nourishing succor.

After all these years it takes a little bit of work to conjure up the colours and movement but I can still hear the music of this meal.

My most favourite sound, however, is that of an old growth forest. Each ecosystem has its own rhythm and there are three that I have discerned here on the west coast: the rainforest of the Douglas Fir, Red Cedar and Western Hemlock; the slightly drier Pine forests; and that of the higher elevations, the Yellow or Nootka Cedar groves.

The rain forest is the one I frequent most often. She lies, this complex eco-system, not far from where I live—no more than 90 minutes of hiking, albeit straight up. Hers is a full, almost pregnant silence that wraps around me like a warm shawl. There is safety in this quiet, yet almost energetic vibration. She speaks of fertility, and the magic thereof, and of the interconnective web that exists despite my solitary nature. 

The pine forest lies farther to the east, perhaps 100km or so, just where the Cascades divide the watersheds. There is a sharpness to her silence, a staccato resonance that perhaps reflects the drier climes or relatively sparse undergrowth. I am not overly familiar with her environs but I know the sound when I arrive. It has a certain clarity of being, a depth of understanding, that only my ears can discern. My brain, although not unkindly, is left aside in this communication. It is an almost willful innocence that allows me to graciously deny any need for comprehension. 

The third ecosystem is that of the ancient Yellow Cedar. High above Buntzen Lake is a grove of 1000 year old trees with cat tail moss, agéd as the rocks below, suspended from their branches. I love to visit this forest when the clouds are low and the humidity high; when the flow of moisture laden life immerses with that of my own. The land here is filled with spirits so old, so inviolate, that communication is almost inconceivable. She demands stillness and reverence. There are no contemporary words for the silence of this forest:only an echo of what was; and a subtle reverberation of what may yet be.

Sorting Nails and the Meaning of Life

I was at work last week, my “day” job as it were, and I came to a realization. I was sorting nails at the back till—desolate territory in this big box franchise—when the seeds of this revelation germinated. It happened rather innocuously: a coworker, relatively new and somewhat standoffish, walked by.  In an attempt to connect I shook my head in mock despair and said: here I am, 52 years old and sorting nails. I expected a sympathetic reply to the tune of: I hear ya or don’t I know it; but instead he gave me a short moralizing comment about how everything is good as long as you have your health. It pissed me off. Royally. I held my anger and replied: I would have to debate that everything is good and besides, we all need some space to complain. Then it was his turn to shake his head as he wandered off.

It irritated me for several hours afterward. How dare he shoot me down when I was just trying to connect? What gall to shame me with his holier than thou preaching? I know health is important, I know my concerns are petty but jeeeeezzzz, can’t I want more? And later I got even angrier because I had been feeling sorry for myself and he called me on it.

A few days later I was mulling over the whole scene and realized that not only had he got it wrong but I did too. Yes, good health, space to vent and wanting more are all good and fine. Even self pity has its place. What is more important, however, is finding joy in who we are and what we do. 

I’ve blogged much about this necessary evil I call my day job.(See May-August 2012).  I’ve written of what  I’ve learned about myself and the colourful characters I've met; the laughter I've shared with my co-workers and profound moments I’ve experienced with customers. On the other side I’ve described how frustrating and, at times, even humiliating it can be: the poor wages and rude behaviours; the meeting of old friends and even worse, old clients. I’ve written about my commitment to being present to the hundreds of people that pass my till and how difficult it is in achieving that goal and how certain parts of myself have been revealed and how it has given me transient shame. Coming back to menial labour at this stage in life gives me nothing, I have come to conclude, if not new perspectives to ponder, space to grow and fodder for writing. I feel I am a better person because of this job.

That said, am I happy? 

Yes. In working at the low end of the career spectrum I find I still like myself: what I do for a living, or at least my most visible way of making money, does not affect who I am at the core. I am still Jo-Ann. Moreover, working part-time at a low responsibility job gives me space and time to develop my passions: my BodyMind therapeutic practice and my writing. I have time to create, to volunteer, to read or to just sit and do nothing if that is my desire. I live what I like to call the artist’s life. I am not raking it in but my inner life is joyfully abundant. I do not like my job, per se, but I like what it gives me: time, space and money, however minimal, to do what I want.

And sorting nails? Even that has its joy. I got paid to meditate for several hours with minimal interruptions. What more could I ask for?

The Lines We Draw

The spider mites have returned. They crawled up from whatever god forsaken place they had hidden, strung their insidious webs and are now slowing leaching my plants dry. I do not like them.  They frustrate me horribly. I take an aggressive stance when they appear. I kill them.

I have but a small collection of tropicals: a philodendron, two gardenias, three orchids (of which I wrote about last March), two begonias, a Saintpaulia, a Dracaena, a Pachira and a bamboo. They either have come from rough beginnings (i.e. the orchids and the begonia) or are cuttings received from friends. I have a thing for bringing plants back to life. So when some spineless tetranychidae comes to feed, I get angry.

Unfortunately, my anger doesn’t help much so I clean and prune instead. It’s an ongoing job. The mites are relentless. The technique I have found to be most effective is soaking the leaves in soapy water then putting the plant under a plastic bag for 2-3 days. Mites dislike humidity. It keeps the little bugs at bay for several months, sometimes more. However, my bamboo seems to be chronically affected. Drastic action is called for. I prune with little mercy, soap and cover it with plastic. After a few days when I feel I have the upper hand, I shall prune my bamboo down to base and change the soil. They will not kill this plant.

Like most people, I do not enjoy watching humans or animals die. Our impulse is to do something, anything, to stop the process. It does not matter that death is natural and a foregone conclusion, a part of us feels like it dies too when another succumbs. I extend these feelings to plants and some insects; mites, of course, excluded. It feels somewhat wrong to be biased in this way, after all, a life is a life regardless of the being’s state of consciousness or, I should say, our assumed belief of that state. But we all draw a line somewhere about what is worthy of life and what is not; that is mine.

Still, that line of mine that honours most beings is not so solid. Sure I respect the lives of animals, plants and some insects but I still eat them—the latter most unintentionally. Although I am politically against factory farming, penned up animals and the poor economics behind feeding corn to livestock, my body (unlike those of practicing vegans) does not like to abstain—I tried it for a year and felt the negative effects for far too long. Instead I buy range fed cattle and cage free chicken eggs. I keep my intake down to a minimum and try to pay respect to the animal it was when I eat it. My line, you see, has its issues. 

We all draw lines. Some are rigid; some are like one mentioned above. Lines like that can waver and meander, swirling their way into big loops or interesting gaps depending on the situation. My line against wasteful logging practices is another example: I prefer actual books to reading on-line and posted letters to e-cards. If I was a staunch conservationist I’d be holding a Kindle at night. I don’t. I am also an anti-plastic activist but still wash my polypro clothing even though I know microscopic plastic bits are ending up in the ocean. Interesting gaps to be sure.

There are lines that some draw that are quite rigid. Outside of those that delineate universal moral taboos there are the more individualistic ones that purport to know the truth: I am right; you are wrong. These lines can grow in dimension becoming rigid behemoths where the drawer of said lines can become morally lost and disorientated. Like the politicians who vote for draconian drugs law and then are found buying coke on the street or say abortion is immoral but want to reinstate capital punishment. And even if the lines drawn do not grow in such proportion, you can see it in our everyday lives: nice people who “wouldn’t hurt a fly” buying sweatshop clothes or turning a blind eye to how their computers are built.

I have a friend who has a lovely saying: “Hypocrites welcome”. I see it as an invitation to acknowledge and own our internal and external contradictions. And I don’t mean to own and then ignore like we do with exercise equipment. I mean to really own and build awareness around these grey zones. Like be a pro-lifer but fight for better sex education and free birth control or vow to reinstate capital punishment but work to abolish racial prejudice that puts too many people of colour on death row. Say "no to drugs" but fund better treatment programs and stop criminalizing the end user. Promote trade with totalitarian countries but make human rights a condition for better pricing. Eat fish caught with ethical practices; protest pipelines but start stop driving your car when you can ride a bus; and abstain from buying the latest digital toys each year just because they are new. These solutions in themselves won’t save the world. They will, however, help us regain our humanity.

In other words, we need to constantly examine and reexamine our beliefs. To find ways to dismantle walls of rigidity, own our contradictions and open our hearts to new ways of being. This will not only help us be more compassionate to those who think and act differently but more compassionate to ourselves when we find that the lines we have drawn are not so straight.

The Art of Self Loyalty: Standing Up for Young Girls

Last week I wrote about self loyalty. I quoted Pascal Mercier: [Self loyalty is] not a feeling… but a will, a decision, a partisanship of the soul. … The duty not to run away from yourself…The willingness to stand for yourself even if you do not like yourself. The problem, as already outlined, is we are not taught to do this. Rather, there is an outward focus that supports our departure from inner partisanship. Nowhere is this more apparent, it seems, than with young girls.

A new study from the Canadian Women’s Foundation found that [g]irls between the ages of nine and 16 face body shaming and lack of confidence at more than double the rate of young boys. One-in-five Canadians (21 per cent) know a girl who says she’s fat and an almost equal amount (18 per cent) know one who says she’s on a diet. Moreover, 17 per cent of Canadians know a girl who thinks she is ugly, compared to only 7 per cent of Canadians who know a boy that feels this way.

The first time I felt ashamed of my body was in Brownies. I was nine years old. I remember looking in the mirror and thinking I looked like a sack of potatoes tied in the middle. I even spoke it aloud.  No one disputed it. It began a long journey of diets and over exercising.

Forty three years ago I unknowingly abandoned myself. Not feeling good in who I was—most likely a reaction to the family situation—and not understanding why I felt that way, I did what only seemed natural: I compared myself to others and found a lack.  Ironically, it wasn’t TV stars or magazine starlets that struck me as the paragon of perfection but the line drawings of the willowy girls in my Brownie handbook. I wasn’t like them, an impossible feat in anyone’s guidelines, and therefore was wrong, inadequate; a failure.

Four decades later I can still hear the echoes of those inner struggles. Oh, I know how to manage them and they no longer control my life but when feeling stressed or at a loss they can, even now, make enough noise to make me wonder, if only for a moment, if I am good enough. And while I feel vulnerable in stating those thoughts, I also know that I am not alone in feeling this way.   

So how can we support young girls to stand up for themselves, have inner loyalty, and not abandon self as I did back then? 

The Canadian Women’s Foundation offers the following Top 7 Dos and DONTs for parents in what they call nurturing resilience.  I call it fostering self loyalty but hey, as long as the message gets out.

1.    DON’T bite your tongue.
If people say things you disagree with or treat you in a disrespectful way, speak up. She [your daughter or any young woman] needs to know it’s okay to stand up for herself, even at the risk of hurting someone’s feelings or causing disagreement.

2.    DON’T talk about how fat you look.
Never criticize your appearance in front of her or make negative comments about the way she or other females look. Let her know you value people’s inner qualities - like curiosity and courage - more than outward appearance.

3.    DON’T put yourself down.
Never make jokes about how incompetent you are, or make light of your own skills and abilities. She will learn to minimize her own accomplishments and may lower her future ambitions.

4.    DO let her lead.
When choosing school or social activities, ask her opinion and provide genuine choice. Rather than saying, “Do you want to take dance or singing?” ask open-ended questions like, “What interests you these days?”

5.    DO let her take risks.
Assuming her physical or mental health isn’t at stake, try not to be over-protective. Don’t rob her of the chance to be accountable for her own decisions and to learn from her own mistakes. If she fails, congratulate her for trying but don’t rescue her.

6.    DO validate her experience.
If she has ‘negative’ feelings or is having problems with her friends, don’t say “It’s not that bad” or try to cheer her up. Listen with respect, acknowledge that things sound difficult, and ask if there is anything you can do. Don’t pressure her to talk when she doesn’t want to. Instead, find lighthearted ways to strengthen your connection with her, like going for a walk or bike ride. If she is having problems with friends, encourage her to think more critically about the situation; suggest she pretend she is watching the conflict on TV or in a movie; what motivations and solutions does she see? If she is in genuine distress, get outside help.

7.    DO provide fair and consistent structure.
Presented in the spirit of love and caring, rules help young people feel protected and connected. Adolescents are less likely to engage in problem behaviours when adults know what they’re doing, and who they’re with. Set clear expectations for behaviour related to attending school, doing homework, sharing chores, and abiding by curfews.

 And, I would be amiss if I didn’t mention my good friend, Carla Webb and her program, Empowered byHorses. Yes, I am biased, but I think she does excellent work in empowering young girls to be, and to appreciate, who they are.