By: Jackson Hamilton, Guest Writer
The science of bullying has seldom been dived into. SciShow, the famous Complexly-run YouTube franchise, ran a relatively inaccurate piece on the science of bullying a few years ago and was the first popular science show to explore it. Firstly, it was inaccurate, because they said it was a type of “harassment” which I don't like for a few reasons. One, that word suggests a lack of consent and, secondly, it only accounts for explicit acts of harm while neglecting the more passive and passive aggressive behaviors that often constitute bullying. The most common form of bullying of me and other special needs people was “circus monkey” bullying where our social blindness was exploited to induce us to perform in degrading and humiliating ways which, while certainly bullying, was fully consensual. Moreover, things like shunning and ghosting, while passive, are psychologically injurious. Bullying is not harassment, it is the systemic oppression of one class by another.
When understood as prejudice, rather than something more arbitrary, then a prescription may be written. It is, largely, induced by oxytocin-based anti-outgroup bias. Oxytocin was, formerly, known as the “moral molecule” but is better described as the “clique chemical” since it doesn't make people more empathetic, generally, just more attached to their family, friends, and others perceived as in-group members. It does the opposite toward outgroup members. Insofar as it causes empathy toward strangers, this is usually in regards to “worthy victims”. Cute kids with cancer as opposed to meth-heads with schizophrenia*. The way to counter this is to work with it and make people naturally see others as members of their ingroup.
This is why schools should have extracurricular exchange programs. It is based on the proven and common sense psychological theory of “contact theory” in which prejudice between groups decreases the more contact they are in with one another. Cliques, today, aren't as stereotypical as they used to be but still roughly align with the extracurriculars of the various members. To use a clichéd example, to have the band, the football team, the cheerleaders, the special ed classes, and the student council all coordinate halftime shows together in ways that require them to thoroughly mix. That schools would have different events that required the intimate collaboration of people from different subcultures.
Not only would this combat prejudice between subcultures and disabilities but also races, genders, sexual orientations, and everything. Each school would squeeze their students into a microcosm of the human family. It would make neighbors of strangers and would increase empathy toward strangers. Mass shooters are usually members of the far-right and are alienated and lonely. This would reduce both of those factors and make our society safer for that reason, too. It would increase the support network of people who need housing, health care, employment, and more, because the more diverse one's connections, the fewer degrees are between people and what can help them.
In the end, bullying is not about the presence of abuse but the lack of love. It is not about getting them to leave their victims alone but to make a society where no one feels alone and where everyone is constituent in that universal siblinghood of humanity. Most of the intervention programs programs and discussions about mental health don't include how to make more interconnected communities where neighbors know and love each other. I proposed extracurricular exchange programs to the executive director of SPED services for the Charleston County School District, but she claimed the IDEA and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prevented any action with regards to anti-bullying efforts. Well, she implied they created so much red tape that it was too difficult to pursue. They don't. It was, for all intents and purposes, a lie. I don't like humiliating people, but powerless people, lower-functioning people far more powerless than me, are being harmed by their inaction.
It is imperative that our institutions take scientific steps to reduce hatred and increase love. This is one of many. There is so much we are not doing that we could do that would make everything better and make this species into the family we are commanded by God to be. Maybe more people would be socialists, like Jesus and I both are, if they saw everyone in every station of society as their sibling? The place to begin is by breaking down the oxytocin barriers that hinder the love we could potentially have for one another en masse. Even if this is not the first step in a socialist revolution, and it really should be, it is still something we should do.
