The Vampire Theory of Bullying

I was recently discussing with a teacher of my acquaintance the folly of current “zero-tolerance” policies towards fighting among kids. He insisted these were warranted as a way to prevent bullying.

He was making two assumptions, taken as truisms in the social sciences. Both are wrong:

1. Bullying is violence, and violence is bullying.
2. If you bully someone, they too will become a bully.

Going along in parallel with this, among educators and social workers, are the following two assumed axioms:

1. Child abuse is violence (or sex), and all violence is child abuse.
2. If you abuse a child, he or she will grow up to abuse.

Based on these premises, schools no longer allow children to roughhouse; and, increasingly, governments no longer allow parents to spank their kids.

It is my strong belief that these ideas are completely wrong. They are a prime example of how the social sciences do more harm than good.

Watch baby animals at play, of any species—you will see them fighting each other. It’s a natural part of learning. Which we are now denying our children. Heaven knows what the long-term effects might be.

And just imagine a bully who knows that, if he starts a fight, and the school authorities find out, he and his victim will be punished equally. Excellent: now the mere threat of violence will probably get him anything he wants. Moreover, if he actually resorts to violence, his victim will not dare report it.

Imagine now someone who was abused throughout their childhood. And instead of being given sympathy and help, the social scientists brand him or her a potential abuser, blaming them for the crime they suffered from. It is as if one blamed Hitler on the Jews.

It is virtually impossible to get reliable data out of the social sciences. Any human being is infinitely smarter than any experimental design created by any social scientist, and can easily bamboozle it. I can imagine where the data “proving” that bullies themselves are victims of violence comes from: social scientists probably asked bullies why they bully. Any spoiled child knows enough to deflect blame, and this is the simplest, most obvious strategy available: to claim someone else, anybody else, does the same. It was also Hitler’s argument in Mein Kampf.

So how are we to know the truth? Given the choice between social science experiments and the wisdom of ages, I would give a strong presumption in favour of the wisdom of ages.

The I Ching advises, “through oppression, one learns to lessen rancour.” This is the opposite of the social science claim.

Jesus says, in the Beatitudes: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven…” If the social science claim is true, that of Jesus is false.

And of course, everyone knows that the Old Testament advises beating your child with a rod: “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.”

So, in sum, to believe the social science claim, we must believe that all our ancestors quite independently came to the same wrong firm conclusion. This is unlikely.

We can also look at history. History, unlike a social science survey, is readily visible to all; we can more easily judge the strength of the evidence and conclusions.

So let’s look at nations that have been bullies or abusers of others: say, Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia, the Boers of South Africa, the whites of the US Jim Crow South. Have they been historically abused? All would, like any bully, claim they had been: Germany by Versailles, Russia by capitalists, the Boers by the British, the American Southerners by “carpetbaggers.” But were they?

Germany, for example, was hit hard by Versailles; but largely because it had grown used to being Europe’s wunderkind. Spoiled, used to getting what it wanted up to 1914, it had unexpectedly been thwarted in its will. By contrast, its two chief allies, Austria and the Ottoman Empire, were completely dismembered. Did this inspire them to rise up in WWII? No, and no. And Germany’s two chief allies in WWII, Italy and Japan, were victors in WWI. Their beef was that they did not get as much new territory as they felt they deserved from Versailles.

Stalin’s Russia? Russia had long been an imperial power, used to dominating lesser races. It suffered a setback in losing to Germany in WWI. Spoiled, used to getting what it wanted, then thwarted.

The Boers? They may have been roughly treated by the British, but they were given self-government almost immediately. They were accustomed to viewing themselves as a master race, dominating the local African blacks, and were offended by their loss to the British.

The Jim Crow South? Southerners long saw themselves as aristocrats, the masters of the local black race. They were thwarted by their loss to the less civilized North. And, being used to being spoiled, they lashed out at whomever they could.

In Iraq, who is primarily responsible for the violence? The Sunnis. They are used to running the country. In a democracy, they cannot. Spoiled, then thwarted; not abused.
So too with the current Islamists generally: their ideology tells them their master doctrine should be ruling the world, and they remember an imperial past. Local Jews and Christians have always been tolerated subject nations. Spoiled, used to being masters and to having their way, then thwarted.

How about the Serbs in Yugoslavia: they had been the unquestioned dominant group; then their subject races sought independence. And it was the Serbs, not the Croats, Albanians, or Muslims, who first and most resorted to atrocities. Spoiled, then seeing their superiority challenged.

The Protestants in Northern Ireland—under Britain, able to view themselves as a privileged elite, with Catholics unable to vote or own land. Spoiled, then their superiority challenged. Or the Hutus of Rwanda, faced with a Tutsi demand to allow exiles to return—threatening their dominance.

Who’s left? Is there a single instance of the opposite, of being abused leading to a nation becoming abusive?

Let’s consider as a parallel the history of nations and peoples who, by popular consent, genuinely have experienced bullying by others: Ireland, Poland, the Jews, Armenia, Korea. Have any of these subsequently tried to bully someone else?

No; with the possible exception of the Jews of Israel. Some would argue that they are persecuting the Palestinian Arabs. But I think that is a hard case to make: yes, they wanted and took their land, but at least until the recent Intifadeh, Palestinian Arabs were also significantly wealthier than the Arabs of surrounding countries; and those within the borders of Israel proper had full civil liberties and a free vote, something other Arabs did not have.

Of course, those who are bullied, by definition, are the small and weak. It follows that a bullied country is unlikely any time soon after being kicked around to have the physical capacity to do much bullying of its own. So this may not really signify. Who knows? Given the clear choice, Ireland might be perfectly delighted to enslave the Isle of Man.

Irish and Jewish individuals have had the opportunity to influence policy in some strong and wealthy nations: Canada, the US, Australia. Have they tended to advocate national bullying? Did they, for example, notably support Jim Crow in the US? No; more the reverse. Kennedy, for example, was notable for breaking the ice on black civil rights.

Now let us consider famous individuals generally. This works, because we all have some insight into the life stories of people whose lives have been lived on the public record. If being bullied creates bullies, it should follow that Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for so many years, should have launched a bloodbath on assuming power in South Africa. Did it happen? No; and despite the fact that he had advocated violence before he was imprisoned.

Or how about Jomo Kenyatta, imprisoned for many years by the British as head of the Mau-Mau? Did he, formerly a violent man, seek revenge on assuming office? Dramatically, no; Kenya’s post-colonial transition was one of the most peaceful anywhere in Africa.

How about Kim Dae-Jung, within a hairsbreadth of being executed by the previous regime. Bloodbath? No. Vaclav Havel? No; he loudly advocated forgiveness and reconciliation towards all former Communist officials. Lech Walesa? Mahatma Gandhi, who spent seven years in prison under the British? Corazon Aquino, who saw her husband shot on his return from long years of exile? No, no, no.

Heck, one would almost think that, through oppression, one learns to lessen rancour, not to nurse it.

The advocates of the vampire theory of bullying argue that children learn what they are taught—so that, if they are bullied, they learn to bully.

But what children who are bullied or abused learn most powerfully is that it hurts a great deal; surely, if they start out with the same conscience God gave us all, through this they are being taught not to do it to others. Conversely, a child who is never punished unfairly may be less aware of how much it hurts.

Same principle as a small child putting his hand on an element, and getting burned. Does that encourage him to put his hand there again? Just the reverse. Does it suggest to him that others should put their hands there? Just the reverse.

Here in our compound in the Middle East, we have school buses taking the kids off to the various private schools every morning, and coming back every afternoon. There is a serious problem with bullying on those buses. The plan was to have parent volunteers ride shotgun to keep the kids in line. But all the volunteers soon quit: they would tell the children to behave, and the offenders would ignore them, or worse. If anyone then approached the parents of the offenders to complain, they said, “nobody is allowed to discipline my child.”

Now, let me tell you, by my grizzled beard, it was nothing like that when I went to school on a bus forty years ago. Without supervision.

And these are children from “good, stable” homes, in Canadian terms: the parents are all academics.

Something is awry. I tremble for my country, and for the world, when these kids grow up and take the reins of power.

And I thank the social scientists for it.