I was just reading a short article on relational aggession on the Courage for Youth website. This sentence jumped out at me.

The BC Safe School Task Force Report states, “The Task Force learned that bystanders are not innocent witnesses in many cases and are often the cause of bullying.”

The cause of bullying. Well, not that I would take any responsibility away from the aggressor, but it is a provocative thought, especially if they’re making reference not to active collaborators but passive bystanders.

“Covert encouragement”? Maybe we aren’t actively engaging in gossip or being the ones to leave nasty notes or “egg on” the aggressor, but how much of the entire relational aggression dynamics do bystanders who “merely watch” contribute to?

Question: Can anyone truy be objective? Can someone witness a violent act of any kind totally detached? Maybe in today’s increasingly desensitized society, it’s becoming alarmingly easier, but isn’t being entertained a response? Is amused silence a collusion, a tacit approval?

Speaking out against brutality can often subdue that brutality in varying degrees. And silence can be construed as condoning the action or validating it. But how much it causes as opposed to sustains, I’m not sure. Perhaps an aggressor who taunts another for the thrill of this silent approval would be encouraged to seek a victim for her own fragile self-esteem, but I’d still be reticent to shift the lion’s share of the blame for the aggressors behavior on her peers.

I think as soon as there’s any active encouragement, you leave that place of being a bystander to one of collaborator. Laughing along, giggling at the pain and suffering you see, takes you out of “innocent observer” to that of collaborator. Staccatos and notes that accentuate a song, are just as much a part of that song as full fledged harmonies. They all go to creating the living hell that relational aggression can be.

Because relational aggression deals with social situations, there’s always more than one player or even neatly defined catagories of players. Everything is fluid moment by moment. Awareness – self and for others – is key to maintaining one’s integrity and assessing one’s culpability. Because the bottom line is, each one of us is responsible for our behavior.

Demian,
~DreamSinger