Some Factors in Bullying: Human Sadism and the Desire to Go along with the Group

A nice comment from commenter Tamerlane, expanding on my posts about bullying.

This reminded me of your posts on bullying and in many of them you justified that it is simply human nature, therefore you will never get rid of it. Yes, that is simply a fact and people need to accept it.

However, you overly emphasized that bullying had to do with either the inability and/or refusal to conform to social norms and behaviors. Which I remember thinking was true, but way too myopic. There were simply more factors. Perhaps those other factors did not share as large a percentage in terms of the causes of bullying as the inability and/or refusal to conform to social norms and behaviors, but nevertheless there were more factors that were too significant to dismiss or overlook.

I think with this post you have identified a second major factor. It is sadism. All humans are sadists, just not equally. Like everything else in nature, there is a bell curve distribution with regards to this trait.

To wrap things up, there is a third and final major factor. It is the behavior of humans in groups, i.e. human sociology. One is inclined to go along with the group lest one also becomes a victim. One is inclined to go along with the group if the pack leader (Alpha/most popular individual) is the instigator, lest one risks incurring his/her wrath due to the refusal to conform and therefore loses status in the group.

One is inclined to go along with the group and perhaps even show more cruelty and sadism than what would be considered average in that specific situation in order to gain more social status in order to move up the social hierarchy of that particular group and gain acceptance, and or more power. One is inclined to go along with the group in order to avoid being identified with the bullied and therefore lose group membership and be kicked out and thus become vulnerable to other groups.

So to put it all together:

1) Bullying is caused by the inability and/or refusal to conform to social norms and behaviors. These norms and behaviors can range anything from ethnicity, height, weight, socioeconomic status, social skills, already-perceived lower social status, etc., etc. In this way a target is selected.

2) Humans have a tendency to lord over perceived inferiors and take pleasure in their pain, i.e. sadism. This is a major motivating factor which makes the bullies act on the perceived differences of the target. Sadism gives one delight; makes you feel “big” and “tall”. It boosts your ego.

3) Humans go along with the group even if they may not individually agree with what is taking place due to group dynamics and uncountable other concepts that one can find in a sociology book. Or to put it more bluntly, most people are cattle and will moo with whatever intonation seems right/true/convenient at the moment.

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3 thoughts on “Some Factors in Bullying: Human Sadism and the Desire to Go along with the Group”

  1. “Or to put it more bluntly, most people are cattle and will moo with whatever intonation seems right/true/convenient at the moment.”

    I disagree. Sometimes it’s a rational choice. You may not fully agree with one mob, but you pretty much completely disagree with the other. So, in order to save your skin and see the lesser of two evil played out, you go with the former.

    1. You are giving a very specific scenario involving two mobs in which you would act a certain way to save your skin. I was a giving a general case scenario for the behavior of the herd/normalfags/NPCs. Your comments and the fact that you are on this site to begin with means these things would not apply to you anyway.

      You are capable of meta-cognition. Most people aren’t even capable of cognition. 98% of whites have IQ’s lower than 130 – let’s not even talk about Blacks and Browns. Moreover, one needs more than just ‘muh high IQ’ to perceive reality clearly.

      One also needs either a greater level of consciousness (as Dostoevsky described it in Notes from Underground), a high level of psychoticism, or at least moderate levels of psychopathy (AKA independent-mindedness). I think all three overlap each other so much that you can more or less think of each one as the same thing: a greater consciousness. This weeds out even a lot of people that possess high IQ’s.

      Furthermore, saving your own skin would just be submitting to their social reality by limiting your ability to exercise your will. Better to manipulate the mob than to be pressured by it. Better yet to disperse the mob. And even better than that to not be part of the mob in the first place.

    2. Here is a relevant quote, but only because I am obsessed with Nietzsche so much ha ha.

      “The Great Man…is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without fear of ‘opinion’; he lacks the virtues that accompany respect and ‘respectability’ and altogether everything that is the ‘virtue of the herd.’ If he cannot lead, he goes alone…He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it tasteless to be familiar…When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame.”

      – Nietzsche

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