We'll Need More than 2 Minutes to Solve This Problem

I’ve been working on adding audio videos to our YouTube channel and have moved into recording more pieces from the teen book, Ready or Not—Life’s Coming at Ya.

I posted the first story from the Bullying section of the book (Part 3).  Of course, when I posted and reviewed it, YouTube pulls a list of other videos that deal with the subject of bullying.

Listed on the side were videos from sessions in Congress, discussing the issue.  There were sessions from various school boards discussing the issue.  There were videos on the Children’s Forum Debate.  There were various videos showing gameplays for bully online games.  

In the list of all of these, there was one video that was titled “How To Deal with Bullies”.  The video took less than 1 ½ minutes to view.  The video stated that the answer to dealing with bullies is to simply avoid the bully.

Just walk the other way, stay out of his way, or take a different route…

GOSH!  Let’s give ourselves a collective slap on our foreheads!  Why didn’t we think of that?!

If it was that easy, why has bullying become such an epidemic?  Why are kids committing suicide over it?

GOSH!  If it’s that easy, then what’s the problem?

The problem is that it’s NOT that easy.  Bullies exist everywhere.  We go to school with them; we work with them; some of us live with them and even worse, are forced to sleep with them. 

No.  It’s hard for me to openly admit this, but a bully has qualities that we, as a society, admire and reward.  The bully personifies the “survival-of-the-fittest” mentality that permeates our human psyche.

 

Notice how most people you meet have this drive to compete against you, to gain control, to gain the upper hand, to dominate a situation, to get the last word in a conversation, to win an argument, to possess another person, to fight for that competitive advantage, etc.  Our culture thrives on this facet of our human-ness.  There is this internal hunger in us to assert ourselves over everything and everyone around us.  It is in this way that we carry a bit of the bully in each one of us. 

It’s this internal bully that scares me the most — and the fact that, as a society, we praise and reward the survival-of-the-fittest attitude over the virtues we pledge our allegiances to… truth, integrity, fairness, justice, kindness, generosity, apple pie, and the American Way…

Ironically, in preserving the human race in this manner — through the survival-of-the-fittest (a/k/a bullying) method — we lose what makes us human.  The very trait that has preserved our species has destroyed our humanity.  This survival-of-the-fittest theme prevents, if not totally destroys, the emotional survival of humanity.  It hinders the possibility of experiencing and cultivating quality relationships with friends and couples and within families and social groups.  It stands in the way of the most fundamental and vital element of a relationship.  It stands in the way of trust. 

I want this to change in our society. 

I want civility to come back into our civilization.

I want our human-ness to survive in humanity.  

These are the desires that feed my need to publish our books and create the audio videos.  This is what feeds my craving to get these bullying segments up.

I know what I want to share with others will take longer than 1 ½ minutes, but, if I can prevent someone from becoming another victim of bullying, it’ll be well worth the time.

Yeah.  We’ll need more than 2 minutes to solve this problem.

P.S. I was so "motivated" by this post that we've posted a number of YouTube audio clips/videos dealing with the bullying subject -- http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=2AspiringAuthors&aq=f. 

Please check them out and give us feedback.  Thanks.