Are We Born to Bully?
The compulsion to bully is a biologically and genetically based instinct built into us for survival – to protect us from a person or group we believe is a threat to us. We therefore see this prejudicial bullying as paradoxically necessary for our survival – survival of the fittest.
In today’s world there is prejudice that creates bullying everywhere – at home, at school, in offices, among nations. There are ongoing attempts to stop the bullying that prejudice creates yet it still goes on. The question we need to ask is what creates this prejudice, this bullying? Is the cause outside myself – with the “other” – or does it begin in my brain?”
Once we understand how bullying begins, where it starts – we can stop acting out of it. If we see that we’re the source of this bullying, we won’t put the responsibility to understand this on other people. The truth is that the only way to prevent bullying from happening is to begin inside ourselves – to actually see the cause of it in our brain in the way we’ve been conditioned to think. Surprisingly the source of this conditioning comes from our primitive brain’s reaction to feeling a threat to its survival.
Also, anyone within the group who seems weak becomes a threat to the survival of the group and is perceived as someone who needs to be eliminated, or bullied out of the group. We shun, intimidate, bully – all in the misguided name of survival. What will free us from this destructive compulsion of the survival of the fittest? It’s not knowledge that will free us, but rather seeing the actual movement of this compulsion within ourselves in the way we’ve been conditioned to think in this divisive prejudicial way. Knowledge, motivated by the primitive biological brain, is prejudice, is what creates bullying. The prejudicial image I have been conditioned to think about you and the prejudicial image you have been conditioned to think about me is what separates us and creates conflict.
Conflict created by this biological genetic program is no one’s fault – it is not a “personal moral shortcoming” – it’s not my fault or your fault – it’s the fault in the brain’s system, its malfunctioning primitive biological make up, that is not working correctly. It can be called a systemic defect in that the human brain is defective, operating on an archaic program driven to survive that is unaware its causing conflict. It’s also like a collective virus for it affects the whole human race because we are born with this “fault” in our brains, a primitive defect that is corrupt, contaminated. This survival mechanism thinks it’s doing the right thing. It just doesn’t understand that it is misguided, that it’s not working to guarantee our survival any longer.
