I am aware that what I wish to discuss isn’t original. In fact, I began this thought process reading 2 of Ayn Rand’s books. Where the thoughts originated is irrelevant. The point of this thread is to discuss something I used to understand, but which lately has become completely nonsensical to me. I have read a lot in the news about people being bullied to the point of suicide. In the past I sided with these “victims” and placed the blame upon the bullies who tortured said victims without thought of the consequences. I used to understand how painful it is to be told day in and day out all sorts of awful things. How painful it is to be excluded and emotionally harassed. But lately it has dawned on me that without the the help and consent of the victims, the bullies have NO power. Should someone come up to me and throw any sort of insult at me, I am the one who gives it its power and validity. I know who I am, I know who I want to be, and without my consent and agreement, their words mean nothing. It truly is incredibly easy to discredit what anyone says about you simply by knowing yourself. If you live your life for you, and you do the absolute best that you are capable of, you have no reason to ever doubt yourself. I fail to understand why the vast majority of the world places so much importance on the opinions of others. It baffles me. It is truly incredibly easy to live for oneself and to not waste a single minute of one’s time on the thoughts of another. If everyone in the world were to simply focus on themselves, and were to, not ignore but not place such a high value on the opinions of others, people would have more time to strive for excellence and to reach greater levels of intellectual greatness that are currently restricted to them because of their closed minds and their current states of mind and ways of thinking. I’m sorry if my explanation is somewhat shaky. This is a concept I have contemplated for some time now, and which I fully understand within myself, but this is the first time I have tried to explain it. I’m just looking for some people of the same state of mind that I can bounce my ideas off of, and hopefully gain even further insight into the matter.
And if they punch you, steal or break your stuff, threaten you?
Well, you’ve just solved loneliness in one fell swoop. I wonder why it’s ever been a problem? It must not have occurred to anyone else. 
Or perhaps most human beings are social creatures? It’s all very well being rational about it, but the human brain does not work rationally. And if you’re dealing with human happiness, you need to take that on board.
You can see this applied in international politics, too.
To take a moment to look at this another way, have you ever met an idiot who was completely sure of themself? I have. They’re the kind of people who win arguments by saying, “I win!”. They’re the kind of people who can twist whatever you say to them to suit their own agenda, and will always come out on top because they insist that they are, even when every single person watching can see they’re wrong, and an idiot. These are the kind of people who will make assumptions about someone else based on very little real information, then spread their assumptions as fact, and yet hypocritically deny anything anyone else observes about them (unless it’s flattering, of course). These are the kind of people who are positive they’ve got “it” figured out, and no one else does. These are the kind of people who say things like, “…I know, because I’m always right.”
These people are unbending and, in many cases, ignorant. They are so “sure” of themselves that they see no reason to consider another point of view, no reason to consider that their actions and words can and do affect other people. They do not grow, they do not learn, they live their lives with blinders on. I’ve met these people, some of them are even fairly intelligent (inasmuch as they have the ability to grow and learn, if not the inclination), but mostly they’re just infuriating.
Most people call them “bullies”.
Maybe you can understand that young children have not developed the maturity, self-awareness and sense of identity needed to assert themselves like that? You assume an impossible standard for the vast vast majority of children. This whole “pull yourself up”, “just be a strong person”, “who cares what they think” “philosophy” is completely absurd and based in total fantasy. The world does not work that way.
Some few of us develop enough sense of self, mental and emotional strength to really become immune to the opinions and ridicule of others. And that’s great. However, even for most adults this is not the case, they are heavily influenced by other people. And it is certainly NOT the case for children, who are young, impressionable and vulnerable.
This is because, to be human is to be a social creature, a vain creature. We see ourselves in part through the lens of other people. We seek approval from others, we crave attention and agreement and approval. And the thing is, this is not only “bad”, this is just what it means to be a human: we seek to commune with other humans, we wish to find others like ourselves, to belong to a group. Of course this need can become pathological, and certainly it often does.
So the trick is not to “fail to understand” it, but rather to rise above the distinction/s between natural and healthy vanity/sociability vs pathological and harmful vanity/sociability. To pretend that there is no reason or rationality in “placing importance on the opinions of others” is to think from a position of unreality, ignorance and impotence.
What you talk about is a rare path of deliberate emotional/mental/social self-isolation. One problem with this path is that often it leads into a self-narcissism, and certainly leads to development of intense and eventually willed ignorance. Why is this? Because, as with Ayn rand, the belief must become ideological in order to survive. The world and human nature are not like you or ayn rand posit, not at all. In fact the conditions of the world are almost opposite of what you and her (and unfortunately many others) think. Humans are not atoms, we are not isolated self-reliant individuals, humans are social and societal in nature, we are raised, developed, given into ideas/thought/beliefs and all our potentialities through a collective social process that shapes us to a very large extent. How long before a newborn human can survive on its own and be “independent”? Ten years? 15? Also of importance is that your position is entirely dismissive of the effects of environment on our personal conditions and choices in life - as with all life, indeed all things, we are situated/embedded within extremely complex environmental conditions, which continuously shape us in terms of what we view as possible and likely, what our incentives and disincentives are, what choices we make or do not make, how we envision ourselves and life. Not only this, but this complex environmental conditionality of influence/s builds on itself over time, and thus is projected into four dimensions and we become also very much conditioned by what came before us. Philosophy is an easy example, since many of what we consider philosophy today, the terms and concepts and logics we employ in order to think and develop thought, were created back in ancient Greece by the first “Western philosophers”. Were they not to have done what they did, we would not be here thinking, talking, imagining as we are today.
What we understand, eventually and indeed with the help of the examples of self-ignorant and self-serving ideologues like ayn rand, is that to wish for isolation, total independence, lack of all influence by others is folly and unrealistic at best, destructive and pathological at worst. Firstly, you grossly limit your ability to influence your life and the world at large - other people and the future - when you take the atomistic view of yourself AGAINST the world/other people. Secondly, you become severely ignorant of the actual ways in fact that you are connected, shaped and influenced by the world/other people. For example, the economic conditions in whatever country you live in have a direct and powerful impact on the overt conditions of your life, they directly shape your choices. And lastly, due to the psychological investment in paradigms like yours, as we see with ayn rand and many similar to her today, the constant contact with a reality/world which is entirely at odds with your worldview creates a situation in which deliberate denial and rationalization develops. You must continually block off facts of the world in order to continue to sustain your ideological position against the world into which it does not fit. Thus you begin to posit that “the world” is only some false image or shadow of “a real world” where all people are “strong, independent, atomistic” and free of being influenced/conditioned/affected by their environment. And as I am sure you can see, it is entirely unrealistic to assume such a “free” state of existence.
The choices you are given to choose from in life are given through the conditions of your environments/histories. The way you approach these given choices is also given by these environments/histories. Influence and interdependence, connectivity and conditionality, are present everywhere at at every stage of psychological activity. Therefore we can finally arrive at the understanding that a real culprit for the “power lies in the hands of the victim” pathology is a fallacious sort of view on “free will” and the atomism/irreducibility of the “subject”. I would recomend you spent some time reading what has been developed with regard to the notions of free will, really try to push this to its limit, and see what changes this eventually leads to.
“Power lies in the hands of the victim”… yeah, tell that to the guy with a gun in his face. To a child in school, bullies are in the position of power, literally, they have a gun in your face. The whole point of being a victim, what this means, is that you are not in a position of power relative to that which victimizes you.
In my school, I was never the bullied (though it got close sometimes) and never the bully (though I did it once, to a bully, because I wanted him to feel what it felt like to be abused by someone stronger). I was able to reject bullies, and other people too, because we were strong enough to face them and get in a fight if need be. But the bullied are, precicely, not usually strong enough. Either because they are innatley weak, or because the situation in their home takes everything out of them, or because his temperament simply doesn’t allow him to be violent enough to shake the bullies off. In this sense, you could argue that it is their fault that they got bullied.
But it isn’t. It is the fault of the bullies, too cowardly to be violent towards even the weaker that would stand up to them. Only the immobile, thos who react only with tears and begging, are their targets. The bully is weak himself, but has found a way to get stronger by ganging up with others and catharsising their insecurities with their expressed power over them. It is the fault of the bully, for not being able to handle their weakness and insecurity like a WoMan, and every chance I got I picked fights with them. Ah! some tasty moments I remember. I would usually lose, seeing as bullies like to travel in packs, but they would relax their rutines whenever I was around. Help the bullied! If for no other reason, because bullies are fun people to train your violence with.
THE PROBLEM WITH BULLIES IS THAT THEY ARE B.I.T.C.H.ES
BIENGS INTENT TO CHEAT HUMANITY. THEY BRING KNIVES TO AN ARGUMENT AMD GUNS TO A KNIVE FIGHT. THE TRY TO ESCULATE EMOTION BEYOND THE WILLINGNESS OF THE PRACTICLE PERSON. THEY ACT AS IF THEY HAVE NOTHING TO LIVE FOR. AND SHOW US RECKLESS ABANDON OF MORALITY. SENSABLE PEOPLE CAN’T COMPETE WITH KOMOKAZZI MOBS WITHOUT SPIRITUAL FORTIFICATION.GOD IS FOR THE UNDERDOG, WHILE THE WORLD AS IT IS SUPPORTS SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.
If you are being bullied, I got some strategies for you. PM me.
I’m too new in the system to PM. but me personally ,no I’m not bullied, i am an advocate for the bullied anf have the biblical method to level the playing field or battleground.read post “the end of violence talkabout 2 bringabout”
The problem is that some newborns never become independent. they where not taught how to be. they only know how to take advantage of others thus the crabs in the barrel. there are no independent crabs that make it to the top with stepping on another crab.
Yes, poor parenting and early childhood education are certainly main culprits here when it comes to bullies. Society sanctions the existence of such phenomena as bullys and bullying and victims of bullying by refusing to take a more active, rational and productive role when it comes to parenting and education.
This is very true. I think the reason we are so interested in otherness is to get a better perspective of ourselves. I believe the only reason we like anyone is because they make us feel better about ourselves.
I don’t think many high school kids have such an opportunity to get to know themselves, though.
we seek ourselves in the faces of others. we identify with others to identfy ourselves.all that we find that we don’t like, we hate. and things we hate, if it will benefit us, we use. and things we use we take as part of us. thats why we’re lost.
Well, we need other people’s opinions of us in order to better shape our self image.
How else can we imagine ourselves objectively?
Humility is very important when learning about oneself.
We should value anothers example not their opinion.From those examples we refine our self image.
I’m reminded of the old saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” That’s hogwash, as far as I’m concerned. Of course, names can hurt–very deeply. It doesn’t matter if you’re a child or an adult; but the adult, at least, has the ability to rationalize–to find excuses–a child doesn’t.
Ayn Rand’s philosophy of ‘enlightened self-interest’ is most often misunderstood, imo, and can be quite dangerous, as a result. Too many people read only the ‘self-interest’ and blip over the ‘enlightened’ part. I don’t particularly care for Rand, because she doesn’t seem able to recognize the realities of human life and the fact that most humans aren’t as enlightened as she thought she was. But she’s still hugely popular among high schoolers who need an reason for their growing selfishness.
Most of them get over it, in time, I hope. 
I thought this thread said Powerlines in the Hands of the Victim. 
this?
We don’t have to fully side with either party. Of course some victims could potentially react better to mistreatment. But regardless of how victims may have not done as well as they could have or whatever, we can still judge the behavior of the abusers.
I agree that we can judge the offender but the bestanswer is to have the offender judge himself. how?
we develop an effigy calleth the bitch (disclaimer: the bitch in this plan has nothing to do with women.It’s about punks with guns that do senseless killing) The Being Intent to Cheat Humanity and crucify it publically. We place all the things we don’t like about our society on it,teach our kids not to be that, embarrass those who act out into submission because no one wants to be seen as a bitch by the public.