“First they ignore you. then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Trade unionist Nicholas Klein
The only way to fight bullying is to never tolerate it — always look the bullies in the eyes and stand up to them. If bullies get their payoff for bullying, they only have more incentives and no deterrents for continuing the act. As author Gary Hopkins writes, “[w]hen a bully is held accountable for his actions, his future actions will change. Bad behavior only continues for those who allow it.” Being targets of bullying is a human condition, but letting ourselves stay in that condition — or not — is a choice.
In fact, standing up to bullying has a lot of health and socio-economic benefits. See more in World > Bullying Basics > Why Standing Up to Bullying is One of the Most Important Things in Life.
But bullies are usually much stronger than us, how can we effectively stand up to them? When you think about it, the path to overcoming bullies isn’t that different from solving any other problems:
1. Be aware of and understand bullying, including its nature, its mechanism, the different roles involved, and its impact on us all. See World > Bullying Basics.
2. Identify bullying in your life using acronym PRIM — repeated, intentional, malicious acts that stem from power imbalance. See more in World > Bullying Basics > Identify Bullying in Your Life.
- Look for early signs. The earlier you stand up to bullies, the lower the cost.
- Understand your bullies’ sources of strength, motivations, methods, and how they exert power.
3. Check if you are falsely victimizing yourself or if those you’ve identified as bullies are not just people with conflicting priorities. See more in World > Bullying Basics > Check for False Victimhood.
- If you are not the victim, are there other sufferers?
- If there are other sufferers, are you the bully, an assistant, a reinforcer, a by-stander or a defender? If you are playing one of these roles, jump directly to step 6. See more in World > Bullying Basics > Other Roles in Bullying.
4. Is it worthwhile to fight? Use Groups > System 2: Game Theory to decide.
- If not, consider walking away. Bullies are only successful when they have people to bully. Without people to target, they are just pathetic losers .
5. If you can’t walk away (as in living in a country run by bullies), work with all roles in the act of bullying to increase the cost of bullying and lower the cost of standing up to it. See how in World > Bullying Basics > Methods to Overcome Bullying and the rest of World for ideas of resolving systemic bullying.
6. Whenever you can, turn bullies, assistants, reinforcers and by-standers into allies by providing them the right incentives as well as deterrents. Learn more in Groups > System 2: Game Theory and Groups > System 2: Collaboration.
- If you are a bully, an assistant, a reinforcer, or a by-stander, review why and whether you want to continue. See more in World > Bullying Basics > Why Standing Up to Bullying is One of the Most Important Things in Life.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until bullying stops.
When we break it down, fighting bullying, even systemic ones, becomes manageable — not easy, but manageable. We will unpack this methodology step by step.
Do you have any suggestions, doubts, hypothesis or experience for this topic? Please comment below 👇!
