“There are no tyrants if there are no Slaves”; There are no Bullies if there are no Gullibles

Human beings are gullible in certain and varied degrees otherwise, one is not human at all or he will be uneducable, worse than being gullible, isn’t it?

One significant reason for being gullible is the fact expressed in the statement “No man is an island.” People learn from other people in the process of socialization beginning from the smallest unit in society which is the family, peer groups and so on as he continues life’s journey. What one becomes is the totality of his socialization processes and his inherent personal qualities. How one perceives and reacts to certain people and relationships, incidents and situation, location and territory, weather or environment, and so forth, comprise the accumulated type of personality one has become.

Reactions to all these life experiences also depend on the inherent mental attitudes and intellectual capacity of an individual. The degree and quality of interactions with all of these life situations also affect the growth and development of a person in every stage. These are just some of the many complexities a human experiences and what he becomes; a bully or a gullible?

The treatment one receives and perceives in the family setting at an early stage of development depends a lot on the personality composition of an individual. Some examples are; being the first baby, son or daughter in normally loving parents is favorable to the social standing of such a child; and of course this position has to come with the personal inherent qualities such as beauty or good looks, health and intellectual capacity such as IQ, talents, perceptions, speaking skills, among others.

All these personality components determine the quality of socialization an individual experiences in all his developmental stages in life hence also determine his position in the society.

How one becomes a bully or a gullible victim

There are many and varied determinants, like what I had stated above, for one to become a bully.

Given all those favorable and unfavorable socialization processes from the smallest unit of society and, as he lives onwards in the developmental processes, in addition to the inherent gene or nature of the person; a bully must have been into unfavorable, even inhuman treatment in his foundation years, or that he is just a naturally rotten piece of a gene or both.

What is common to both?

Similarly, such conditions apply to a gullible, or the victim of a bully with the apparent reasons that one is a victim and the other the oppressor. Common to both is the unfavorable treatment or a perceived unfavorable as being inculcated to them from the family…unfavorable treatment is broad that includes violence to the extreme and over-protected in the other end; plus the inherent mental attitudes, tendencies, perceptions and other mental capacities in the individual levels.

Like attracts like

Not everybody is a bully nor everybody is a victim of bullies. Given this premise, why would anyone become a victim, to the point of being killed by bullies?

The answer would most probably be “like attracts like” and/or they reciprocate and need one another in order to survive in a world which these two types of personalities perceive as a tough life.

This is something to ponder both for bullies and victims of bullies.