Love, Tolerance, and Bullies · 5:13am Jun 24th, 2020
It’s easy to believe that being a nice person attracts jerks and assholes, however, I’ve come to a realization recently that the truth is that these people act the same way toward everyone. It’s just that they cling to us because we do not immediately drive them off like everyone else does.
I remember that on my first day of kindergarten I was punished harshly. I had not gone to daycare or preschool, which is so rare in America that the teacher couldn’t fathom that I had never encountered the instructions for “line up”, “sit Indian style”, or “recess”. She didn’t think to ask my parents or me if I had received prior instruction – it was that ingrained into her expectations that this would just happen. When people have social expectations of others, even children, and they are not met, the outcome is nothing short of vile.
What I took from this experience and a thousand others like it is that no matter how obvious something is to us, it may not be to others. For that lesson, I have extended patience to others who offend me. You see, we cannot assume that other people stop being jerks and assholes if we just reject them. We cannot assume that they will “get it” if everyone pushes them away. What is clear about all of these events is that the state of being a jerk/asshole is not an extra thing added on top of one’s being, but a lack of some quality.
I have sadly met many families who “didn’t get it”. They were vile to each other and everyone they met and were all lonely and miserable to boot, not because they knew what they were doing, but because not a single person in any of their lives had ever taken the time to explain and demonstrate to them that there is a better way. What’s kinda terrifying is that the vast majority really does believe that pushing these people away is the only way to make them learn. This is as logical as expecting someone who has never been taught math to be stranded alone on a desert island with nothing and come out knowing calculus. It results in a people being caste as undesirable through no fault of their own.
So as a nice person, when I encounter someone like this, I do the difficult thing in teaching these people patiently as if teaching a young child – no pretense as if they have heard this before and need to be reminded, no – a real lesson.
However, there there are people out there who on top of not having these lessons in their life, this fundamental decency that people are supposed to show one another, have so much arrogant pride for the idea that they cannot be wrong, that they completely believe that if any problem arises it is the other person’s failure to understand, even when this happens with so many people that it should spark some clue that it is one’s self that is in the wrong.
Steve Jobs was a famous bully who mistreated his closest friend, believed himself better than everyone, and was even not a spectacular programmer despite his opinion of himself. These are the people who no matter how much kindness you give them, they will try to take even more, and these are the people who have to be pushed away because they have built their personalities around taking advantage of anyone who gives them any amount of kindness. These bullies could come to respect others but because the majority of people who do not reject them immediately are so passive, the bulling behavior is reinforced as acceptable because it is never rejected even as they demand more from people the longer they know them.
Over the past few months, I’ve had to put my foot down with more than one bully, and even as a relationship was ending, it was very important to be assertive and direct about why the relationship could not continue. To be too shy would mean the person learns nothing. To be too aggressive gives that person the delusion that I suddenly turned into a bully giving them an excuse to ignore the fact that this happened, but tell them assertively exactly why I will not tolerate them anymore leaves them with a break in their mental defenses, forcing them to acknowledge on some level that, yes, they are the problem in their relationships.
But let me be clear that even though in the end I have had to leave these people, doing so was the last step I took in a process of months to years worth of trying to be friendly and have them understand that which they were not handed in life. It would be easy to turn into one of those people who can’t tolerate anyone besides those who appear to be emotionally educated and “of our tribe”, but as the above points out, that would only turn a person into part of the problem. So we love and tolerate for the benefit of all, but also for the benefit of all, we must not allow our tolerance to be used as a weapon against us.
Here to make your day 'cuz why not
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This was a good one. I've been trying to spread more kindness around this site and it seems to be working. 😇💖
I think this is an interesting blog post, and potentially relevant in so many ways.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about ways of grappling with bullying problems.