Standing up to bullies

It's more about self-sacrifice than bravery.

Credit: Sora

Several years ago, I was eating lunch with a friend in a crowded restaurant in Mexico City, and our conversation ventured into the realm of physical well-being and nutrition. I told him I had been reading up on the virtues of adopting a Paleo diet and that I was personally experimenting with it. He was very skeptical, so inevitably we engaged in an animated discussion. What I remember most vividly is him becoming somewhat impatient in the face of the supporting evidence I was sharing, until he finally fired back with incredulity: “so you are telling me that everybody else sitting here today has got their food wrong?”

I looked around, observing the large congregation of business people as they gobbled their succulent multi-course meals, and said to him, “yes, most of them have certainly got it wrong”. Then I reminded my friend that, according to national statistics, a significant majority of those adult individuals were already, or would soon be, suffering from life-threatening cardiovascular or liver disease, not to mention diabetes (the #1 killer in the country at the time) - all of which are conditions that have been unequivocally linked to dietary habits.

What does any of this have to do with bullying, you might ask. The most common characteristic associated with bullying is the propensity to seek domination over someone else, especially someone who seems unlikely or unable to fight back. But another, often less recognized trait of bullies is the uncanny ability to deceive others into joining their side. They achieve this by manipulating grievances and spreading lies, and by compelling followers to also deploy hostile attitudes and aggressive behaviors against their subjects.

Bullies are psychologically weak, which is why they usually need validation and others to join in. And because they know the source of their power is fragile, bullies will never ever admit they are wrong. Quite the contrary. If caught lying, they will double down on their scapegoating and cheating tactics. This often makes them even more convincing, which helps them assert their authority and gain more support.

Bullies are everywhere, from playgrounds to classrooms to boardrooms to newsrooms. Smartphones and social media have provided them with infinitely more space to roam, and harass their targets. Moreover, the cybersphere makes it possible for bullying mobs to swell very rapidly. This is where bullying morphs into a form of social contagion, and huge masses of people become engulfed in a particular narrative. You question the narrative at your own peril. Socrates was sentenced to death by hemlock poisoning. Jesus was crucified. Galileo was placed under house arrest. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. “Tank Man” (see video clip below) was yanked from public view forever.

Thirty-two years since the Chinese pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, the unknown rebel who stood alone in defiance of a phalanx of tanks remains an iconic figure. In this raw and unedited video clip, one can appreciate the tense interaction, accompanied by heavy gunfire in the background.

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The question is: why does bullying succeed?

From a natural selection standpoint, it makes perfect sense, because human beings have evolved to survive, not to see reality for what it is. Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman refers to this phenomenon as “fitness payoffs”, reminding us that our sensory nervous system is designed to protect us rather than help us figure out the truth. He observes that “fitness payoffs will destroy information about the structure of the world”, insofar as it increases our chances of passing on our genes. In other words, our brains will often produce logical errors intentionally, in service of our most primordial self-preservation instincts.

One of those instincts is avoiding ostracism and isolation, which can cause serious damage to social animals like us. Hence, if we perceive a big risk associated to questioning or resisting “conventional wisdom”, our bodies will shift into survival mode. We should therefore not be surprised that online mobs will brandish the threat of exclusion as a weapon. Mumford & Sons banjoist Winston Marshall, for instance, was forced to quit the band for the simple act of praising a book on Twitter.

You see, mobs are rarely satisfied with silencing their subjects, but also demand that they parrot certain slogans and do as they’re told. The food industrial complex is notorious for deploying these tactics on a grand scale, starting with redefining the very meaning of "food". As a result, our diet is by far the biggest cause of the gigantic health crisis we face in the West, now exacerbated by an infectious agent that thrives on co-morbidities. And yet, how many times have we heard public health authorities, government officials or media networks make any effort to help us improve our diet in the last eighteen months? When was the last time an authority figure said anything to raise awareness about the importance of a strong immune system? Of course, that’s not how bullies operate. Instead, we are told that we're going to kill granny unless we mask up and get the jab. And if the propaganda doesn't fully do the trick, they ramp up the fear mongering, bribing, coercing, and turning people against their neighbors, locking their self-preservation instincts in overdrive.

So what are we supposed to do? Resisting orthodoxy and standing up to bullies is extremely difficult, not to mention potentially dangerous - even more so when everyone else around seems confused, overwhelmed, or is trodding along on autopilot. One would think that what is needed is bravery, therefore not acting accordingly might be a sign of cowardice. But that is a false assumption. What standing up to bullies requires is a dose of self-sacrifice, and allegedly not everyone is in a position to make that leap, at least not publicly. Not everyone has the time, resources nor energy to question Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Tech and Big Government. Not everyone is Tank Man! However, if we want to achieve better societal outcomes, resignation is an equally terrible strategy because it lands us in "madness of crowds" territory.

So here we are, between a rock and a hard place. Your move.

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Diving Deeper

NO SALUTE FOR YOU: During the 1936 unveiling of a navy training vessel in Nazi Germany, the gathering crowd was stunned to see Hitler himself in front of the ship and hundreds raised their arms in the "hail victory" salute. Except for one man, who kept his arms folded. It was not until 1991 that he was identified as August Landmesser, a worker at the Blohm + Voss shipyard in Hamburg, by one of his children, when she saw this photograph in a German newspaper. Landmesser is believed to have been a member of the Nazi Party from 1931 to 1935, but was later expelled from the party for marrying a Jewish woman, Irma Eckler. After fathering two daughters with Irma, he was sent to jail for ‘dishonoring the race’. He was drafted to serve in the war after being released, and is believed to have been killed in 1944. His wife was taken by the Gestapo and sent to three different concentration camps. She is believed to have been killed at the Bernburg Euthanasia Center. Their two children survived the war. Read the story HERE.

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