I used to run home after school, my fleet feet carrying me as fast as they could, to avoid the bullies that prowled the neighborhood woods and fields on my route home. On occasion, I wasn’t swift enough. When that happened, I absorbed and endured whatever mixture of intimidation, ridicule and physical violence they dished out.
By today’s standards, anything I experienced was pretty minor stuff. Forty years ago, school shootings and cyberbullying were unimaginable. I had it lucky compared to today’s young people.
Once I crossed the threshold of my parent’s home I knew I was safe. Sadly, whatever feelings of powerlessness I felt from being bullied were at least temporarily alleviated when I took out my frustrations on my younger brother, who became an unfortunately convenient target for the rage I felt toward my tormentors.
A similar pattern played itself out in the dynamic between him and our younger sister, who undoubtedly bore the brunt of my brother’s anger towards me. I would never have intentionally hurt my sister for anything in the world, but the perverse logic of bullying implicated me in a chain of events that led to her suffering.
Avenging angels
The tragedy of bullying is that it invariably triggers a vicious cycle in which the victimizer achieves a pseudo-catharsis by dehumanizing the victim. This pattern feeds on itself endlessly until someone ensnared in the process wakes up and recognizes the futility of the situation. Of course, the best hope for ending the self-defeating cycle is to instead become the healer.
Recently, there has been a lot of speculation about what’s feeding the ideology of ISIS or what motivates a lone gunman to carry out a senseless attack such as the one against innocent club-goers in Orlando. Counter-terrorism expert Jessica Stern offers some very important insight into what’s at work, psychologically speaking.
Stern has interviewed dozens of extremists and would-be attackers to see what makes them tick. She’s found that many of these people have been traumatized themselves. They soon see themselves as avenging angels, instruments of a form of divine punishment aimed at an oppressor they believe victimizes the weak or corrupts the pure and innocent.
However misguided, extremists and troubled loners see themselves as heroes who must resort to violence to vanquish an irredeemable “other.” Stern writes of the mindset that embraces violence, “The weak become strong. The selfish become altruists . . . rage turns to conviction. What seems to happen is that they seem to enter a trance, where the world is neatly divided between good and evil, victim and oppressor . . . they believe God is on their side.” They become convinced that violence will end their humiliation.
The Dalai Lama recently wrote on why he believed the violence in Orlando represented “old thinking” and why he’s optimistic about humanity’s prospects going forward. In particular, he is encouraged that “among the younger generation, there is a widespread rejection of war as a means of solving problems. Across the world, many are doing valuable work to prevent terrorism, recognizing the depths of misunderstanding and the divisive idea of ‘us’ and ‘them’ that is so dangerous.”
Conflict resolution skills
He continued: “Violence inevitably incurs further violence. Indeed, history has shown that nonviolent resistance ushers in more durable and peaceful democracies and is more successful in removing authoritarian regimes than violent struggle.”
In place of violence, the Dalai Lama proposes an ethics rooted in empathy, scientific findings, our shared humanity and common sense. He hopes this can lead to the development of school curricula and training programs that draw upon what we know of brain science so that people can learn how to manage destructive emotions and nurture positive ones, as well as improve their conflict-resolution skills.
The Dalai Lamai is a Tibetan monk. He has seen his culture both bullied and oppressed by the central government of China. Yet he has responded by encouraging greater reflection, dialogue and mutual understanding. I believe history and experience show this is the best way to respond to the cycles of violence that confront us.
A better direction
I’m not so naive that I believe every bully or extremist can be reasoned with. But I hope that fostering greater self-awareness can help our species cope more creatively, intelligently and constructively with humanity’s darker impulses.
Violence begets violence. On the other hand, empathy and compassion take us beyond our own woundedness. We come to see the humanity and hurt, even in the troubled souls that seek to do harm. When we seek to heal wounds rather than avenge wrongs, we begin to tip the world in a better direction.
—Scott O’Reilly
What happen to fighting back?
Man can never get it in his head that he can not bring in Utopia. Jesus did not come to bring
peace, He came to bring a sword. He did not come to merge everyone into one lovey dovey
group, He came to bring variance. Righteousness and unrighteousness can not agree.
This is not the age of peace, and will not be until the Prince of Peace returns bodily.
What happened in Orlando resulted from yielding to the sin nature. And God allowed it
as chastisement on those who practice homosexuality. He is calling homosexuals to repentance.
It is obvious that ISIS gets its ideology and theology directly from the Koran.
That is EXACTLY the mindset that needs to be lost. Yet again someone comes from his convictions instead of seeing the bigger picture: we cannot go on this way. People, get over yourselves and your beliefs. We are one human race that should respect our differences without all this war and destruction and trying to force our ways onto others. Live and let live without encroaching on others. Thou shall not kill, remember?? Or is this a selective thing?? I guess you’d have to be Christian to understand that one. As Wiccan I only have one major rule: An it harm none!!!
No disrespect, your thoughts would be, as his steel blade through your gut touched your back bone?
Since your entire presentation was a fairy tale to begin with you could have drawn any conclusion you wished and gotten by. However you managed to hit on the one thing that has been totally disproved throughout history. People hit punching bags because they don’t hit back. Bullies punch accomidiating victims for the same reason.
Orlando happended for 3 reasons. Obama for his own purposes encourged a large group of people to display their sexual tastes in a very public place. It was witnessed by one of the many Muslims imported to America. Again this was for his own purposes. In addition to bringing nitro and gliscerine recklessly together he did this at a time when Obama and his accomplices are doing anything and everything to disarm the American public leaving no defense when the shooting starts. If this combination was unintentional, it was one of the stupidest, most thoughtless acts of all time. No one will ever convince me this was not intentional and ment to foward one of Obama’s private goals which all happen to revolve around the destruction of America and American Citizens. Read his earlier writings and listen to his speaches. It’s all in there. He set up gays and Muslims in one shot and is using that to do more harm by disarming more citizens that have a constitutional guarantee protecting them from politicians taking their firearms. To me this is an impeachable act under high crimes.
The “mindset that needs to be lost” is that which won’t blame Islamists for Orlando.
Every thing we eat fights back. But who listens to the cry as a tree falls to be made into toilet paper? Absurd? Perspective? Are you the tree or the person in need of toilet paper?
Do you live in a “safe zone” while destroying a nation. Again perspective.
Bear your neck or bear your teeth. Raped or bearer of the seed?
W.D. agree. Addendum though, islamic terrorist better define by ‘terrorist of the koran’.
Some bears you fight back, a meal not easily won. Other bears you curl up as their teeth grind on bone but you do live to fight another day. Learning that when in bear country you carry a gun. Basically though either the bear eats you or you eat the bear. So ‘carry’ were ever when ever. The bear is in the willows, your are aware, what the bear does next determines, good bear or bad bear. But carry is your right of self defense.
All of Islam is radical and extreme. No need to say radical Islamic extremist. Islam is an ideology of extreme radical hate towards women and children and all non Muslims. Their unholy book, the Quran, is a satanic guide of how to conquer the world by murder, rape, deceit and by any means, no matter how evil. Don’t believe it? Look into a mirror and you’ll see a fool.
You fight by any means necessary. Old school. You do give good advice. Learn my lessons on the streets of Jersey City in the forty’s.
+As we use to say back in the day THAT DEEP
“TERRORIST OF THE KORAN”
I thought Jesus was all about turning your cheek when you get hit! Having lived amongst Muslims, I find anybody who claims they are Satanists is simply ignorant of Islam and how it is practiced by most Muslims. This attitude of intolerance is exactly what the author was addressing. Three cheers to the author.
If there were a God that was interested in mankind would that God really leave man with so many different religions? Or would God make it clear? People need to let go of their manmade religions, they are only a means of control. Of course man will argue about divine revelation, but what is divine revelation. All things that come out of us come from our brain we know this, the brain can be tricked in so many ways, it can act in ways that are not understood even by itself. People say they feel God so they know God is real, but all feeling is just the firing of neurons in the brain. This idea of God where did it come from. Clever men? Maybe. Or maybe it did come from the creator, but as an experiment to see how it would effect our evolution. Maybe there are many more earths with different variables. People must stop seeing things as black and white and stop fighting variation. People think that there is only one way, the natural way. Well maybe nature added almost unlimited variations for a reason and we see that any variation that is possible exists. Man should be more worried about how to survive beyond there very near decimation than who is right, of course that would mean everyone getting along and working together.
We should temporally ban Muslims into the country that’s what we should do after Orlando. How many more people have to die before we wise up??
Respect doesn’t equal agreement or concession. We can disagree and still respect one another. “Thou shalt not kill” is speaking about murder, not self defense as in the case of David and Goliath which by the way was for the defense of an entire nation. The Bible doesn’t condemn self defense individually or nationally. Harm none? What about people trying to harm you or your family?