I am sure some of you would have experienced it personally or noticed it in life.
Bullying stems out of a "Superiority complex" ego, where people feel they are "better off" than the other party whom they want to bully or deserve more from the person they want to bully. (Some psychologists however are of the opinion that today's bullies are yesterday's inferiority complex sufferers.)
My parents always taught me that hard work and character are what matters, we might have different skin shades just like dogs and cats come in different shades. But we are all human beings, with the same heart & mind. We may be "better off" than others who are economically backward, socially backward, I was always taught to sympathize with such people and help them, be friends with them, treat them as equals.
And that is how I have been, I do not walk around with any kind of superiority complex.
But I noticed this phenomenon that I name "Reverse bullying", "Reverse Racism", "Reverse abuse". This is a trick employed by incompetent or inefficient people to shift blame on others. However, it is not always a trick, most of the times, it is a sincere 'reverse bullying' which steams from "Inferiority complex". This is where you are wrongly/falsely/imaginatively accused of bullying when you have not done anything of that kind! So in effect, you get bullied by the person who pretends like you're bullying them!! You just want your private space, but you get accused of dominating them if you refuse to adjust for them!
For eg, I have seen cases where a maid doesn't work properly, but when her employer points it out, she retorts on how she is being exploited for being lower-caste/uneducated/illiterate etc.
I have seen a case where an Asian boss fired her Black secretary for being consistently late to work, so the secretary raised a hue & cry amongst all her Black colleagues that it is a case of racism.
I have personally experienced these kind of things in India. If somebody performs a task in an inefficient manner and you show them the flaw, they start on the debate of high caste- low caste!
In my life, I have accumulated a lot of such "reverse bullying" experiences.
There was a day my friend & I were discussing books sitting in our college garden, both of us are avid readers, we discussed so many novels, school curriculum, Rohinton Mistry, Oscar Wilde, classics from English literature, to the latest Harry Potter. Finally we somehow ended up discussing "Sold". I simply told my friend that it is the story of Zana Muhsen, a young Muslim girl born & brought up in the UK, her father was Yemeni, he tricked her into embarking on a holiday in Yemen, but she didn't know that he had sold her off in marriage, her sister too was sold to a family in Yemen. Zana escaped after long years of struggle with the aid of her mother (who too was brought up in UK). As I told my friend this story, two Muslim girls were sitting a couple of feet away from us. And one of them shouted into the air, "Daughters being sold by fathers, what kind of shit is this, I want to give one tight slap to the stupid people who think all Muslims are like this, I hate them.".
Now this again was a case of reverse bullying, I was discussing a book with my friend, we were not commenting on a religion, we didn't say "all" Muslims are like this. My friend & I were dumbstruck, we pretended like we didn't hear that very rude girl, we moved onto discussing other books. We felt very bullied & harassed, she wasn't party to our long conversation on books, books were the subject, how dare she eavesdrop on our conversation and then shout so rudely, falsely accusing us of being bigots? Whereas, she was being the "reverse bigot".
Especially try talking ethics with unethical economically backward people, "O what do you know, you have educated parents who gave you everything" is the quick retort to make me feel guilty!
Ha, that's when I realized, I have no superiority complex about being from a high caste upper middle class educated family, but there are others in this world from economically backward/uneducated/socially deprived families who try to dump their inferiority complex on me!!
Someday I want to tell such cheap people, that my parents toiled hard day & night to earn what they have, it didn't drop into their hands from the sky, it wasn't easy, and they never broke any law or regulations, they have always tried to help other economically deprived people. They built it from scratch, my grandmother didn't have enough to feed my father, he had a malnourished childhood. But whatever she had, she was so hardworking, toiling until she died, worrying about her son's upbringing, and worrying about our upbringing after we were born. And whatever I am today, my parents didn't give me everything as a free gift, education & character were always stressed on, it is not like money is accumulated by sitting at home doing nothing. And it is not like all rich people are characterless, look at the colossal amount of charity done by the very rich people of the world. But then, why do I owe an explanation to a Reverse bully?
The funniest thing is, these "reverse bullies" don't follow ethics/rules/social norms when it is their turn to follow! It is all about "convenience", so they get things by hook or crook in life, they bully their way up, they evade taxes, don't care to apply for licences, submit false cooked up documentation. Then when they are rich one day, they don't care to help those from their background, they just forget their past life and no matter how much they earn, they join the rat race of greed. They don't realize that they get transformed into the very beast that they have spent their life falsely accusing others of being!
The best way to avoid trivial arguments with such charged up people (especially if we know that they are of no consequence to us in life) is to just apologize & pacify them during that one particular altercation, and then limit the conversation to a hi bye. They come in all hues & shades, ready to accuse you of being money minded, racist, rich, high-caste, of some particular religion, prejudiced with this, that, blah blah blah. It is all to hide their own inefficiency, to divert the topic from examining their mess, their own jealousy, their own hatred, their own dominance & bully power. So they pile it all on you so that you feel guilty & apologize back to them for no fault of yours.
Seriously, character development should not only focus on tabooing "active bullying", but even this "reverse bullying". There is a theory that most bullies suffered an identity crisis/inferiority complex in childhood. But this is known only from studies of real bullies, what about these reverse bullies?? They have no self-respect in accusing us of things which are all in their own dirty head.
"Bullying" is a character trait prevalent in all sections of society, in all kinds of people, rich or poor, educated/uneducated, socially forward/backward, after all, there are all kinds of people all over this world, and all this complex stems from human desires & wants. However, "Reverse Bullying" is especially practiced by those who can categorize themselves as "underprivileged", so that they can then bully somebody with false accusations. The simplest example of reverse bullying is manifest in a parent-child relation. Parenting is a long process and the parent-child go through moments of joy, sorrow, mistakes. In most cases, parents never remind children of their errors. However, there are many a child who reverse bully their parents, accusing the parent of negligence, "You didn't care enough for me in my childhood, you neglected me at so & so time", so that the parent feels guilty and gives in to every demand in the present. In most cases, parents don't dare to retort & remind the child of its own share of errors. Even the duckling in Tom & Jerry goes around accusing others, "Nobody likes me, nobody loves me, I am ugly". ;-)) Well it's cute if it's a sad little baby duckling, but so not cute when adults try that ugly duckling act! :-O
In an extreme form, it is actually downright criminal, when a 'reverse bully' misuses law to frame innocent people. For eg, I noticed in Kenya, maid servants who threaten male employers with false accusations of rape. Or India, where some married women threaten their husband by falsely implicating them in dowry harassment cases. Nobody believes the innocent male employer or husband when an illiterate/poor maid or a hapless bride accuses them of cheap immoral behavior. But look, who's the bully and who's the victim??!!
Monday, March 8, 2010
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