Saying No

Sammy had a problem. He was the new kid in the class this year after a school transfer. At first, all seemed well as everybody was quite cool with him. Things started taking a turn for the worse when a group of boys from his class started borrowing a small amount of money from him. Initially, he enthusiastically lent them the money, thinking nothing much of it. However, they continued borrowing money from him, promising that they would return the money soon. The promises were never fulfilled.

When Sammy finally decided to confront the boys about the issues, the most unexpected thing happened. The boys brought him to an isolated place in school and beat him up, threatening to do him further harm if he ever dared to bring up the issue again. They also made him promise not to tell his parents the real reason for his injuries.

Sammy went home full of fear and doubt about himself. What did he do wrong to warrant such an attack on himself? Then something extraordiary happened. As he was surfing the internet while nursing his bruises, Sammy stumbled onto Woody's blog post titled "The Mind of the Bully". Sammy realised that while it was not his fault that the incident happened, he might really have been sending the wrong message to others, always flashing the latest accessories and gadets that his parents had bought for him to his classmates. Sammy had also always been a scatterbrain, always stumbling around the place clumsily and never really knowing what was going on around him. Could this be the reason he was targeted?

Sammy decided to do something to resolve this problem. Now, how was he going to go about tackling this issue?

The Mind of the Bully

Almost all of us have been the victim of a bully at one point of our lives or another. Be it physical or verbal bullying, make no mistake, the bully only has ill-will for you. His actions are malicious in nature and are meant to harm you. He dervies pleasure from hurting you. Sometimes, the victim doesn't even know that he is being bullied and often doesn't know how to defend himself against these attacks.

This post aims to analyse how the bully picks his victim and how he attacks him, as well as how the victim reacts and the results of his reactions.

I believe the way a person dresses and acts has a great influence on his vulnerability to being bullied. A person who dresses in a "geekish" manner appears to be physically weak and unable to defend himself against physical attacks. Similarly, a person who is timid is unlikely to even retaliate when attacks. Bullies often look out for traits such as these in their victim as they are signs that the person is not physically or psychologically strong enough to withstand their abuse.

The bully will also act and dress in a way that reinforces his or her position of the aggressor. Jocks threaten to beat anybody up who dares to mess with them. The obnoxious woman who always insults other people's dressing never fails to be one of the most trendy people in the room. All this is done in a bid to make sure that they are superior to the victim in the areas where they are attacking them.

Lastly, when a victim submissively tolerates the bully's abuse, he is actually telling the bully that he can continue his attacks, that he can get away with his actions. Conversely, if the victim stands up for himself and retaliates (regardless of the manner), he sends the message that he will not condone the bully's behaviour and is capable of defending himself and even attacking back if the need arises.

In conclusion, I believe that most bullying cases can be prevented if the victim portrays a better image and takes appropriate countermeasures when attacked. So stand up for yourselves people!

Reply to Brad

Thank you Brad for your encouraging comments! I do have a very interesting and logical explanation to your question.

I do believe that the human race has reached the next critical stage of evolution, where our advancement is no longer just dependent on our physical adaptations to our surrounding environment but also on the evolution of our global civilization.

Simply put, if we continue to abuse our environment and degrade it, the world will eventually become too inhospitable for us to live in. In this scenario, the human race will either go extinct or would have developed the technology to enable us to live in space independent of the earth. The earth would have simply "shrugged" us off.

Either way, life on earth will continue to exist, with or without us. The key thing to take note of is that life on earth has never been stable. Mass extinctions have happened on many occasions throughout earth's history and evolution has brought the biodiversity back to a certain number again. Life on earth exists as a system in equilibrium with the environment.

Whatever we are trying to preserve now is just an environment on earth that is suitable for human life, which is not permanent anyway. For the continued survival and propagation of our species in this universe (not just independent of the earth), we will have to develop a civilisation with near utopian judicial, governmental, economic, media, educational and social systems. This will lead to the concept of the different stages of maturity of civilizations.

Where effective communication skills are required is really within the global community as a whole, not only between our various governments but also our various multi-national organisations. This is in the pursuit of the development of better systems in the areas previously listed.

Now, the question would be: Can we achieve this technological superiority by the time we reach the critical time where the earth can no longer support human life? And can we continue to develop the systems that we require to survive at our continual stages of civilisation?

The Importance of Effective Communication Skills in Life

This is a blog by a student taking a module on professional communication. As much as I would like to write with an informal setting, to facilitate my training on communicating in a professional manner, I have decided to write my posts with a degree of formality.

The decision to write in a formal manner demonstrates the importance of developing effective communication skills in human society. Man is a social animal that has evolved to survive through the formation of tightly knit social units. Through communicating with each other, prehistoric men were able to hunt down large prey using the most primitive of weapons. This is because communicating with one another allows for people to coordinate with each other and work together to conquer otherwise insurmountable tasks. It is this ability to work in a coordinated group that has allowed Man to dominate our planet even though we are not the most physically viable of all animal species.

In this modern age, the role of communication in a person’s life has not decreased one bit. In order to achieve a successful and wholesome life, a person must develop skills that enable him to communicate well with people. The ability to communicate well with people opens up a channel rich in opportunities to obtain resources such as information, finances and even more contacts.

Interestingly, a person’s level of emotional intelligence is an important factor in determining how well one can communicate with others and a person’s ability to communicate with others greatly affects a person’s emotional health. Introverted people often experience problems such as low self esteem and low self confidence. Conversely, people who are poor communicators often find it hard to maintain good relationships with people. For example, parents who have difficulty expressing affection for their children often cause their children to grow up emotionally impaired, thinking that their parents don’t love them. Many conflicts and misunderstandings often stem from miscommunication between people.

Personally, I have learnt about the importance of communicating well with people in maintaining good relations with people. Through heart wrenching conflicts where good friends have been lost and countless hours of self reflection, I have learnt the value of respect for people. Experience has taught me to pay attention to the emotional state of people and to be wise in my choice of words and tone of speech when speaking to people. Ultimately, it is the quality of the relationships that I have with my family and friends that determine the degree of happiness and fulfillment that I find in life; and this is only possible through the development of effective communication skills.