Protest Against Wikipedia !!!

You can't just "get rid of" things like bullying. Yes, it's a product of society, but it's a product of every society, not just in our human race but in pretty much any social animal group as well. Wherever there is any kind of leadership, or wherever anyone has something that is desireable to others, the pecking order will evolve.

Furthermore, there's no reason to believe that Cho was mentally ill because he was bullied. Most people are bullied during their life, many of them a lot more severely than he was. Most people do not shoot up schools. Would you have us believe that violent TV makes people violent too? Monkey see, monkey do? It's an attractive idea if you want the world to make neat and tidy sense, but the world has people in it, so that's a bit of a fool's errand from the off.

 

Is that what you want for your children? Popular opinion can conteract bad behavior. Just look at the current trend against smoking. Why not put that kind of effort into conteracting bullying?

 

Well, the thing is, as we discuss it, it's potentially becoming obsolete. We're moving from censorship being directed by the government to censorship being directed by the individual.

This is possibly a good thing. Look at things like Google SafeSearch, content blockers on cable and so on. I've always had people telling me that censorship is awful, but people are doing it themselves, and I'm beginning to see why. It's nice to be able to use Google and not be bombarded with tits regardless of what I search for. It's nice that there is a certain window of the day when I can turn on the TV and know that I'm probably not going to see anyone being raped or with an axe hanging out of their cheeks. That's not the government though, that's my choice, and the choice is getting more and more flexible as there are more channels.

The reason we've had censorship has often been because people don't want to see certain things, and the media that we've had access to has been solid, rigid, and not exactly laden with choice. When we could either watch BBC or watch nothing, it was important to consider that the audience was likely to comprise the full range of ages.

Actually, I won't go too far into this, we did a presentation on media censorship, and being one of nature's Devil's Advocates I decided to be the guy that defends censorship. There's reasons for moderating, if not completely removing, certain content, that generally aren't voiced by free speech enthusiasts for self-evident reasons; the fallacy that presenting all viewpoints does not necessarily offer an accurate view of a subject (e.g. global warming - the theory that global warming is not happening/is not man made gets a disproportionate and misleading amount of airtime, which does not reflect how "niche" the view is) is seldom mentioned by those who perhaps might be seen as a bit "fringe' themselves. Similarly, as we move towards a more multi-cultural society, we can cater for different moralities without going so far as to be "politically correct", seeing as we pretty much already do it within our own culture (watershed, etc.). Furthermore, censorship can be very good for art. Satire has always flourished in times of censorship (e.g. in the early 1960s and the 1700s in the UK), but tended to lose its edge in more permissive times, because it had nothing to react against. On a more observable tangent, because Japanese pornographers weren't allowed to portray penises, we now have the many bizarre genres of tentacle porn that would probably never have crossed anyone's mind otherwise.

See, that's ALREADY too far into it.

I guess what I'm saying is that, while censorship is often bad for liberty, it's inevitable that different cultures and subcultures set their own levels of what should and shouldn't be seen and try in some way to enforce that. Now, we could just say "all censorship is immoral", but it's a lot more effective to have a constant dialogue about what is and isn't acceptable.

 

Because popular opinion creates bullying. I'm not saying we shouldn't try and change that, but it's wrong to hope that it'll make mental illness go away. I have a fairly limited understanding of psychology, but from what I've seen, abnormal psychology stems from being part of society generally, regardless of whether that society is nurturing or hostile. It comes from within, from the person's inability to deal with the world. If the world changes to accommodate them, they have no reason to heal.

 

Why not make that bullying mentality be the socially unacceptable thing instead of forcing the least able to defend themselves be more responsible. Why should they be protected and their victims allowed to be ignored?

Bullies can't deal with the world one on one either... the only way they can deal with it is to run someone else down and to have their families and friends support them, in order to make them feel better. And our society has backed them up for years, because it's promoted the view that the rich and powerfull can do no wrong. Well it's time to say...your kid is no better than mine! And we are surprised occassionally when some lower class kid goes balastic. I am not surprised.

If we continue to protect the bullies they have no reason to change either.

 

See, I don't think it's as black and white as bullies and victims. I hate to cite it as a source, but Romi & Michelle puts it just right: "Everyone made someone's life hell in high school". I don't think you can just say "there are bullies and they are bad people", because we've probably all, unwittingly or otherwise, made someone feel like taking a gun to the world at some point in our lives. Were people who laughed at Cho bad people? Would they have been better people if they'd had him sectioned? Maybe with the advantage of hindsight we can say that, but at the time, you would've had the choice to laugh it off or take it too seriously. Having been to uni, I can tell you that there are a hell of a lot of strange people there, but most of them aren't mentally ill, they're just acting weird.

I seriously don't think you'd eradicate bullying by punishing it, and I've seen zero evidence that bullying comes as a result of rich or upper class parents either. Certainly, the people I was bullied by at school weren't rich or upper class. Some of them had parents that didn't give a shit or thought their kid was special, others had parents who disciplined them but the kid just didn't give a shit. I have no reason to believe that our current brand of privilege creates bullies, or that we will change it and prevent their creation.

Where there is any kind of social hierarchy (which inevitably evolves from any social group over a prolongued period of time), you'll get those who will abuse their power, and there will, I hate to say, be those who attract that abuse, or who react to it in the worst possible ways. I honestly don't think that's something you can change. You can try and punish it, but I don't think you'd ever eradicate the cause of the symptom without breaking the spirit of the whole population. Check out Anthem by Ayn Rand to see the logical conclusion of that.

 

Sectioned??? Please, explain. What then motivates the young to bully and embarass, does it make them feel more powerful?

I was one of the invisible in both high school and college. Most of the time my professors didn't even know my name. I sought the invisibility I think to avoid the bullying.

 

I think the real issue here is stephen king

how the hell did that guy become such a celebrated writer?

 

I bet Stevie was the butt of many bullies jokes. Did it make him a good writer. Probably not. Did it make him bitter. I bet it did. If he hadn't finally found a profitable outlet he'd probably be shooting up neighborhoods.

 

you know, I think I'm gonna go into an old folks home with a bomb jsut to get famous on wikipedia

 

Bush sends the military to protect Iraqis while they plant I.E.D.'s for our troops.
There's no time, money or interest for soft things like "caring" for the ills of society.

In this polarized, paranoid society, all Bush and the neo-cons care about is all about war, war, being "macho", and showing dem' "terrists" who's the boss.
Obviously, even that is not working.

We as a society deserve our "leaders".

 

It is prevalent it always will be especially in a modern culture like ours where marketers are trying to reach their broadest markets without overstepping conventional standards. But that doesn't create a situation where governments should feel empowered to limit the free exchange of information. Commercial venues are always going to seek the cheapest most acceptable route. Let them, but don't seek to control the individual voice. There is a difference.

 

What?????

It's even more proof that the rest of us should act as civilized humane creatures. Bush won't be in office forever. And he shouldn't have been in office this long, but the bullies in the US bought into his spiel about smoke them out, and dead or alive. They jumped on the chuck wagon and they are out for blood and glory. He's failed to deliver but there are still a percentage that don't want to look at solutions for fear that they may have to admit that a huge mistake was made. I don't see anyone that could call themselves the "boss", least of all Bush. Cheney probably thinks he's the "boss", but he's just a sorry old man that has promised his wealthy friends benefits for supporting him and the American taxpayers have paid them off. It's time we woke up.

 

Some of them maybe, but how powerful could you feel dominating someone like Cho (before the shooting, obviously)? No, there are people who bully, deliberately, but most of the people who make us feel like shit in school, at work, or in life generally, aren't looking to torture us. They're just callous, careless, not constantly considering our feelings over their own and everybody else's. You can hate them for that if you want, but I don't intend to, because I'm sure I've been just as guilty of it as anyone.

This is basically my point: if you define that as bullying, then everyone's a bully. The guys in that story about Cho weren't bullying him. He was there, acting weird, and they reacted to it the way most people here probably would (if they weren't feeling all self-righteous with the advantage of hindsight).

You could, and should, try to stamp out those who go beyond callousness, who go the extra mile to fuck people over and ruin their lives. They are less adherent to our consensually-established norm. But it would probably include Cho. Who's more of a bully than the guy who freaks out the girls in class and then starts shooting people? It's a little worse than a snide remark.

Actually, I read an interview, he talked a lot about his childhood, and said he was kind of an outcast, but didn't particularly mention being bullied. I know it suits your theory to believe that anyone who was bullied would turn into a nutcase, but it's simply not evidenced. Seriously, pretty much everyone is bullied during their school-life, I'd almost say it's good for you! Childhood is at least 50% learning how to be an adult, and part of that is learning that some people will disagree with you or dislike you for no apparent reason, and that you have to find a way to deal with that. Protect a kid from that until his teens or twenties, and all that'll happen is that he'll have to learn to deal with it while everyone else is taking it in his stride.

I guess that's all it is. Bullying is taking out your frustration on people, often unconsciously. People don't think "yeah, let's bully this guy, I feel like doing some bullying today", and if you think of it as being anything like that you're even further from tackling the problem than I am when I do nothing.

 

that's an interesting point nacht, I shall think about it a bit and get back to you

 

I think it's kind of a romantic idea, that they like to believe that their government actually does something, because otherwise they gave up a hell of a lot of liberty for no real safety.

I don't know, there could be a lot of reasons. People prefer to blame something for the way the world is. If they can't blame blacks or gays or immigrants, they have to blame abstract concepts like Decline and Society and The World We Live In and The Media. Bad things have to be someone's fault, because the idea that they're just the result of 1,000,000+ yes/no choices that happened to lead to this outcome instead of another just makes it impossible to live one's own life.