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Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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I don't have a problem with that conversation.
However, you can clearly see how I handled the situation: I asked questions when I didn't understand something, asked for clarification, and at times had to keep prying information out because you're perfectly content saying something like Q(P(a),n) = 1 - (1 - P(a))^n knowing most people haven't a clue what you're talking about.
Even when I'm clearly trying to work with you, and understand what your saying, your responses are far from constructive:
Then you come on here and say: "It is a great question CyberLN. Am I a bully for pointing repeatedly pointing out the mathematical inconsistencies of what someone says? Maybe.. It isn't so clear as to where the line is."
You know exactly where the line is.
You asked for it more formally and now your going to bitch about it?:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
You dishonest fucker; I shouldn't have started talking to you again; my bad.
Let's walk through the highlights and see who's dishonest:
You knew back then, much like you know now, that most people haven't a clue what you're saying. I've been complaining about your approach consistently since the beginning. Acting as if I'm jut now complaining for the first time lol.
As a closing note: You spend your entire existence here twisting peoples words, taking them out of context, and patting yourself on the back for it. Now that somebody barely spends two posts quoting your words back to you, you completely collapse? Shame.
@ Breezy super sensitive wheezy
"You spend your entire existence here twisting peoples words, taking them out of context, and patting yourself on the back for it."
Bwwwaaahahahahah...oh that is so rich, irony much? Your tongue must be so firmly in your cheek its denting the cushion.
5***** for giving me the best laugh of the morning...* goes off to doctors chuckling*
Well I rather have you laughing than contribute to your hypertension.
When I was going to school I must have been exposed to 8,000 to 10,000 other kids. I don't recall ever being bullied by any of them and wouldn't have given a damn if some had tried it. That's because I knew that I would never see them again. In fact, I only met one guy that I went to school with and that was when I was in the Navy.
In today's environment when kids claim that someone is bullying them electronically I just consider them to be snowflakes.
And when they commit suicide over online bullying, that just a snowflake being a snowflake? Kids as young as 7, (and quite likely younger,) have commited suicide over at least in part, online bullying. But they are just snowflakes, everyone just move along? They were not "tough enough" and now they have just conveniently removed themselves from the gene pool?
I have never been bullied either and it is true that trying to help people who are being bullied can sometimes be frustrating as they often don't seem willing to stand up for themselves or are unable to do so for reasons of personality or lack of spirit. (Like some abused people they even protect their bully!) However, Diotrephes should consider that not everyone can always be immune from bullying and cyber bullying can be brutal. To call people "snowflakes" has the effect of condemning the innocent and protecting the guilty.
Plainly some people are targeted and it is done in a calculating way to avoid authorities. Diotrephes may have been one of the more difficult people to bully, but that doesn't make him as immune as he imagined. Bullies, like pedophiles and other predators, are very adept at identifying vulnerable individuals and isolating them from the group. The approach to the problem so well illustrated in Diotrephes post above enables that.
https://sites.google.com/a/cypanthers.org/cease-cyber-bullying/real-life...
In so many posts above no mention is made of the importance of empathy, intent and motives. Bullying cannot be understood if any of those are disregarded.
I watched one program where people were expected to get out of the way of "jocks" walking through the centre of a corridor. If they didn't there would likely be a physical attack. People don't go to school to look for fights and trouble and it doesn't help to teach the bullied and perpetrators alike that idiot youths can own the place, in practice. They can't unless good people stand aside or attack the "snowflakes" as they perceive them. Bad behaviour is either challenged or it deteriorates until it is effectively confronted. That's how many criminal careers get started. School is supposed to be a learning environment.
Naturally people must learn that some other people have little empathy and much fear or aggression in them. We are bound to be exposed to them and so must have or develop reasonable resilience, whatever other personal trials we may be going through. It is also true that you cannot help everyone, but surely justice and good order make a respected and civilised society. Everyone should understand the line. What is acceptable or not should be very clear - and supported by all, the bullied, the susceptible and the individually invincible. Supporting those without empathy won't work.
ZeffD,
You made some good observations. My opinion is based on a lifetime of observing real events and depictions of life in movies. For example, a handful of ISIS thugs got away with their initial terrorism and attracted more thugs to their cause. If people had stood up to the few at the outset they could have easily killed all of them off without too much trouble. Instead the people sat on their frightened asses and paid the price.
In typical western and crime movies a couple of bad guys intimidate a whole town and make everyone kiss their butts. The townspeople could have easily ambushed them but they were scared to do so. And because no one is willing to risk his neck at the outset everyone ends up paying the price at the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9CR_tib0CA
It should be added that some bullying isn't intentional. That is not the most serious kind.
@ZeffD: cyber bullying can be brutal
A 14 year-old girl in Australia killed herself over cyber-bullying a couple of weeks ago. This brought out the usual calls for tougher policing of the internet. I don't think we can ever eradicate cyber bullies, groomers, and other assorted vermin from the Internet. It's always going to be a dangerous and edgy environment. When we try to protect kids too much, we end up making them more vulnerable.
So I think the answer is to teach the kids to deal with these scum. They need to learn that cyber-bullies are just pathetic damaged people who can only hit out from the anonymity of the Internet. Kids also need to be able to talk to their parents or a teacher about experiences that have disturbed them. Too many bottle up their feelings until they are overwhelmed.
Some of you have never seen bullying?
I was bullied at Primary and Grammar schools because I was small and smart. (I got my revenge by living well.)
I was also bullied at home by my dad. Whatever he did not like/believe/understand, he responded to by losing his temper and shouting with an implied threat of violence. It is sad to say, but I was afraid of him until I was about 45 years old. Then one day I saw him for the old, frail person he was who could no longer physically intimidate me.
When parents are bullies, how can their children talk to them?
The US currently has a president whom many would consider a bully. How do you teach children not to be bullies, when he is the “leader” of the country?
I’m sure there are many parents who are bullies and teach their children to emulate both them and the president.
I think many bullies do not consider themselves that. They seem to think and behave as though what they do and say is completely appropriate, or as though they are doing the world a service by what they consider to be just telling the truth.
@CyberLN: They seem to think and behave as though what they do and say is completely appropriate
But mostly I think they're profoundly damaged and fragile people who constantly need to inflate their egos by humiliating and hurting others. None of the anti-bullying schemes I've seen include anything to identify and help these people when they're young.
I agree, Algebe. And when they reach adulthood, they continue, which sets an example for youngsters and thus the cycle continues.
I was bullied as a kid. I was tall,lanky, and a bookworm. One older kid on the school bus kept slapping me on the side of my head until my nose bled. There were worse situations. Way worse!
When I was thirteen I began to practice Judo. I also studied Hapkido. When I was eighteen a bully that tormented me for years tried to throw a right hook at my face. I broke his wrist. It was the momentum of his own punch that caused the fracture. I simply diverted the momentum back onto him. My justice for years of bullying was to see him driving by with his arm in a cast and flipping me off. His mom was driving.
From eighteen on I had enough confidence to stand up to bullies. I was also 6'2"and over 200 lbs. I never had any situations escalate beyond their chest beating.
I hate bullies!
I was on the receiving end of bullying at my English school. As the only admitted accented Scots boy in the school (one other joined the following year) I was bulled physically and mentally every day, mocked by Masters and peers alike for pronunciation, food, the kilt, knowledge of history. I eventually gained the bastards respect by using physical means of retaliation, ( being small I did not eschew weapons and the Marquis of Queensbury was an old faggot to me) refusing to 'fag' ( be a servant for older boys) and argue the toss over English as opposed to Scots versions of History.
Consequently at 10 and a half I was marked down as a 'rebel' and very few but the most hardy or the newest took me on solo as they knew they would win a fight but I would get the bastards later in spades.
The daily beatings ceased when I was in 3rd form and a determined sexual assault was made by two seniors. With the aid of a piece of gym equipment they both ended in hospital, one with concussion, cuts and bruising and the other with damaged testes. Magically after that and a visit from my grandpa to the school the bullying stopped. No more soaking wet beds in winter, no more missing uniforms, no playground beatings by up to 12 other boys, no more of a lot of shit I had started to expect as normal.
They even stopped 'fagging' and midnight cross country runs.
I found the English caste system incomprehensible, the food inedible and the uniform ludicrous. I also refused to "doff my cap" to seniors and masters so often I had a years worth of Saturday detentions by the end of term 1. I solved the dilemma by burning my cap in the senior prefects waste bin while he was at prayers.
The bullying went on from the moment I entered that school until the day I ran away and boarded a ship for Australia soon afterward as an unaccompanied migrant.
@Old man
Did you ever read Roald Dahl's autobiography about his youth at an English public school? The headmaster was a sadist who later became Archprickrick of Canterbury.
No I haven't but I will now. My headmaster was just an idle upper class failure who lived in some "Tom Browns Schooldays " world. He surrounded himself with Army rejects, failures, a pervert or two and two brilliant minds.
Best thing I did was lob a thunderflash (practice grenade) into his office through an open window and watch the ensuing panic...that and fill the swimming pool with potassium permanganate the night before the swimming Sports. The same night that the OTC honor guard uniforms unaccountably ended up in the same pool.
HAH! NICE!
(On the revenge pranks.)
If you had enough of it, it must of been a very pink, (and clean,) pool. If you had enough of it and some glycerin... heh, ya would of burned the whole building down. ;) I wonder how Potassium permanganate reacts with chlorine and other chemicals in the water...
@ Logic
I threw the entire chem labs stock in to the (small typical english) pool, it had an interesting effect as it reacted with the chlorine and sank to the bottom forming a pleasant purple colored slime that gradually remixed as the first swimming events took place turning the pool progressively murkier and the competitors a pleasing puce and flesh colored striped effect as they left the water.
I loved it.
The OTC uniforms didn't fare so well and they were forced to welcome some retired old Brigadier in school uniforms and without rifles ( some nasty fucker had changed the armory locks) Not me this time apparently an old boy with connections and a grudge against the school captain who was buggering or being buggered by the new cadet CO LMAO...
good times
I have not waded in on this thread because it is clear to me that it was aimed at me by CberLN referring to my replies to Ligeia in the Atheist hub.
First let me say that yes I am a bully when it comes to some people, namely BULLIES. I throw it back in their faces. I challenge them directly. I call their bluff.
Secondly, I do not pull punches with anyone. I state things the way they really are. I don't pussyfoot around anything. That is NOT bullying, it is just blunt. If peoples feelings get hurt they get hurt. Sometimes people need to be slapped back into reality.
Now addressing Ligeia's posts collectively. She sought sympathy. We gave it to her. Then she described a desire to basically be a prostitute. Okay fine she can be what she wants but she needs to OWN it. It isn't an insult or "bullying" to call things the way they are. I don't care if she wants to be a whore, more power to her if that is what she wants, but don't ask me to hold back and not call it what it is. Is it harsh, yes, if you have a problem with the word whore.
Did I bully her? NO!
Do I bully FIG, yes every opportunity that he gives me, namely when he personally attacks me or anyone else on this forum.
We are all bullies in some manner and to a degree. I am just honest about it!
I got bullied for a while during my secondary education, but immediately I realized that I had to take matters into my own hands... by which I learnt martial arts.
And I'll be honest, for any of you who have young children or teenagers, it is an invaluable tool!
I studied wing chun and Brazilian ju-jitsu to a high level and the confidence you gain in immeasurable, to the point although I've only had call to defend myself on three occasions, it has been a positive experience.
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