Tuesday 23 February 2010

Bullying

What a dismal low our politics has sunk to! Has the difference between the "main" parties become so insignificant that it has come to this?

Bullying happens in the church, unfortunately, and we have procedures for recognising and dealing with it. It is not the same as people being irascible. Bullying has distinct characteristics :

- it focuses on and exploits people's sense of inadequacy (and everybody, no matter what they say, senses personal inadequacy). In this respect it is "satanic" in the true sense - it tells people "You're no good, are you?" "You can't do this, can you?" Mere aggression may be upsetting, even intimidating, but it doesn't necessarily implant that worm of self-doubt. Bullying can take place without any overt aggression at all.

- it tends to take place over a long period of time, gradually undermining a person's sense of self-worth, often through barely noticeable things - a passing word, a glance, a minor action e.g. bypassing someone in decision-making, leaving someone 'out of the loop', going behind someone's back, giving someone a task without giving them the resources to do it.

- it often also tries to recruit others into reinforcing this pattern by colluding with it. It is at this point that it becomes most dangerous.

I don't know what happens in military training nowadays, but in the past carefully controlled bullying has been an important part of the training process - it grooms people to become torturers in their own right once they are set free to take their own resulting sense of self-loathing out on more vulnerable people.

I have heard nothing in the discussions about what may or may not have been going on in the office at No.10 that refers to bullying as such at all.

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