Theos-Talk Archives (October 2004 Message tt00011)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "Bill Meredith"
<meredith_bill@e...> wrote:
First, the forum may already have a bully of sorts. 

or several. Here's a good website about online bullies, of which
there have occasionally been several operating simultaneously here:

http://www.urban75.org/info/bullying.html

One thing I've recently come to recognize is how denial operates with
bullies. They will try to dominate and demean you, but if you protest
they indignantly deny any such intention. Well, maybe some of them
are cynical liars and consciously set out to torment people. But
often, I think, we can take them at their word: "I didn't *intend* to
attack you." They think that lack of destructive *intention* proves
that you've imagined being attacked, and that you're an oversensitive
crybaby. But what it really proves (if they're not cynical liars) is
that aggressive behavior is so deeply ingrained in them that they
attack people automatically without any *conscious* intention to harm
them. The conscious intention may well be some high-minded goal like
defending HPB or serving the Masters, which justifies treating people
in bullying ways.

One aspect of bullying I've recently encountered is forced dichotomous
choice. A topic might be nuanced and complex, and the phenomenon
under discussion might be measurable on a continuum. But a bully will
demand that you say it's either x or y, and won't accept the reply
that it's both or neither. Here are the most relevant lines from the
website in terms of describing my own experience with online bullies:

"It doesn't matter how you react, the fact they've successful provoked
a reaction is, to the bully, a sign that their attempt at control have
been successful.

After that, it's a question of wearing you down. The more your try to
explain, negotiate, conciliate, etc the more gratification they obtain
from your increasingly desperate attempts to communicate with them.

Understand that it is not possible to communicate in a mature adult
manner with a disordered individual who's emotionally retarded."

Paul