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Andrea Morisette Grazzini

Consultant, WetheP, Inc.

TEDCRED 30+

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Are grownup bullies teaching kids how to bully?

Media personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olberman make a living by catalyzing the ire of their audiences through their incendiary tactics.

Leaders themselves, from pastors to politicians to parents to Tea Partiers and Black Panthers square off against different others.

Sparks are a flying, to say least.

And new movies like "The Hunger Games" and "Bully" provide brutal images that imply youth brutality can be catalyzed by adult cultures where competitive vitriol prevails.

Meanwhile, in the real world, communities and schools struggle to manage the bully-culture that has lead to increasingly more mental health concerns, if not more suicides by ostracized kids.

So, folks.

Who's to blame for bullying: kids, adults, both?
Who should lead the demise of cross-country bullying?
And the $10K Q: How?

Bullying, it seems knows no bounds. Thus, I hope this conversation doesn't get too bogged down on specific groups who suffer from bullying, but more on the larger contagions that seem to infecting many different segments of society.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts --
Andrea

Topics: anti-social behaviour bullying community education evolutionary psychology media political correctness religion social media social norms
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  • Kieron Treasure

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    Apr 1 2012: The potential to bully is in the genetic code. Therefore it is not a giant leap to imagine that those grownup bullies(who are programmed to do so) will exhibit behaviour that seems natural to them. Unfortunayely it is reasonable to assume that they will have an influence on some impressionable young who are not necessarily programmed this way. Most will eventually realise this behaviour is wrong. Saddly not all and the cycle will continue. The only solution is firm intervention.
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      Allan Macdougall 30+

      • +2
      Apr 1 2012: Not sure I can agree with the notion that some of us are bullies programmed through genetic code.

      However, there is some evidence that sociopathy, with its links to bullying, is a heritable condition:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy

      On the other hand, there is also evidence that in spite of having sociopathic genes, with good parental upbringing, normal lives could be led without risks either of sociopathic behaviour or any tendencies towards bullying:

      http://www.lovefraud.com/12_leavingAsociopath/sociopaths_and_children.html

      I tend to think that today's adult society is weighted towards favouring those people with psychopathic tendencies. The people who rise to the top are those who do not care about for the effect they have on others. The rewards for lacking empathy and indulging in a spot of bullying to get what they want, are far greater than the rewards they get by being empathic and understanding of others' needs.

      If our society continues to lionise what is essentially psychpathic behaviour, then bulling will continue to be the norm.

      This simply has to change, and that change can only happen when we decide that it is human beings, and the environment that gives us life, is what actually matters - not the blind pursuit of material gain and the bullying that goes with it.

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