No One Likes a Bully

We own chickens on our little homestead in Whitestown Indiana, white ones and red ones . We bought the hens as chicks and raised them all together as one happy family. As they matured the reds became bigger and more aggressive; eventually we had to separate them because they had blinded one of the smaller white ones. The order is always the same, the big against the little. The other day our roster , we call him Larry, mercilessly attacked the blinded white and sent her banging into lawn chairs and walls finally to just give up and allow herself to be brutalized, and possibly killed if I hadn’t intervened. I imagined that those bigger chickens felt proud in their ability to dominate and control their weaker members, it’s an animal thing.

In the lower “animal” nature we see this played out as, well, natural, but what about the higher animal nature of humans, is this justified? Can we simply fall back on the excuse of a “base” animal nature when we witness the larger in our society taking advantage of the smaller and weaker ? To bully means, to intimidate, cow, bulldoze, or browbeat or even kill. We have all heard of the latest bullying episodes where the victim is actually killed or commits suicide, and we cringe at such a beastly and criminal behavior that derives pleasure from such acts.

At the core of all human beings lay this base nature to dominate the weaker, smaller, or younger of our race. But, also at our core is another nature, a nature that is appalled at the dominating attitude of the bully and sides with the weak and defenseless. It is a dual nature where we are constantly admonished to repress the lower nature. The human animal is unique in this regard, a battle that wages within us, and that nature which is fed rises to dominance; this is true on a personal as well as on a social level.

Once a bully experiences power and victory he or she begins to build up a resistance to any agitation they may receive from an awakened conscience of right and wrong and ultimately becomes calloused, and will even become offended when confronted. The worst kinds of bullies are those who openly applaud and celebrate their corrupt and dishonorable character. Who isn’t glad when these unsocial menaces are restrained and put in their place? There is a sense of peace when the small and weak are protected and allowed to flourish and become strong and healthy in mind, body, and spirit.

Who is weaker or smaller than a child, and weaker still, than the unborn child. Bullies feed on the weak, and with that element of our humanness, who have yet to be born, it is , “out of sight out of mind.” Bullies give no amount of thought to the harm they inflict on these  weak-ones; their very weakness is the justification given for their demise; they have become as nothing, and even less than nothing in the eyes of the bully.

We as a nation have become bullies toward those who cannot fight back, who have no voice, whose only crime against society is that they have not been born.

I hope this message will reach the ears of maybe only one person who will discern the inhuman cruelty of a society who sacrifices its young on the altar of modernity. On that society, there is most certainly a curse. I pity that society.