Reply #11: In our culture

[undergroundpanther]

Bullies are REWARDED for such behaviors more often than not.


For ethics to matter to us, the happiness and suffering of others(and their quality of life) must matter to us.


At present time, it is currently legal in the United States for an individual (usually a person in a supervisory role) to impair and/or destroy the physical and psychological well being of an employee, their social support network and career using an employers resources when a person is not a member of a protected status group. Current State and Federal laws only recognize an unlawful employment practice when a person is a member of a “protected status” group such as race, religious creed, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, martial status, sex age or sexual orientation and the employer or any person acting directly or indirectly as an agent of the employer harasses an employee.

Why isn’t workplace bullying covered under current State of Federal law? Because the bully and the target are both members of a protected class, therefore the existing harassment laws are negated and the bully is free to impair the health of another person without ramifications. NYHWA and via the Healthy Workplace Bill seeks to expand current harassment law to make it an unlawful employment practice to subject an employee to an abusive workplace environment regardless of protected status membership or better defined as a “status-blind” harassment protection .
http://www.nyhwa.org/

Verbal abusers are dependent on the attention they get from their victims. It is their "fix." Verbal abusers need a participant. It becomes a codependent situation. Clients have shared how they have tried to be "assertive" by being verbally abusive back to their partners. They may plead and cry to arouse sympathy, or even try to reason with them. Unfortunately, though these women were trying to protect themselves, it only made matters worse. This behavior actually rewards the abuser.
http://www.enotalone.com/article/2368.html

In the evening Dr. Twemlow responded to many questions from teachers and parents. Significant to this reviewer in light of the relatively small audience, is the resistance the researchers found in adults, parents, and bullies, which, he believes, is offset by the efficacy of the program with the children and teachers.

Addressing a question regarding the "puzzle of violence," he referred again to the disinhibiting required in order to injure others, such as occurs in the military, and closed by emphasizing once more that the primary inhibitor of violence is the social context, the influence of other people, in other words, attachments.
http://www.dspp.com/papers/littler.htm

In an article on bullying which appeared in the July 20, 1998 edition of the Toronto Star, experts pointed out that over 50% of the adult population have experienced this form of violence at work, at home, and in society. According to this article, "research evidence is showing that childhood bullies become adult bullies, and that adult bullies far too often become people who systematically harm those around them with impunity due to misunderstandings about its causes. Research has clearly shown that unless social intervention stops the bullying process, the bully is rarely motivated to change themselves because the social rewards for obtaining personal power seems to encourage this behavior."

http://www.pioneerthinking.com/ej_rubber.html

THE CHILD AS POISON CONTAINER
The main psychological mechanism that operates in all child abuse involves using children as what I have termed poison containers--receptacles into which adults project disowned parts of their psyches, so they can control these feelings in another body without danger to themselves.
http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/05_history.html

Sometimes it takes the great Dustbuster of fate to clear the room of bullies and bad habits.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E6DB1E38F930A25757C0A9629C8B63