Understanding the mentality of a bully: the MRT incident part 2

Hello everyone. I have had such a response since my last post about the MRT bully going viral that I thought I'd need to do a follow up, but I want to focus on just one aspect of the incident since I got into a really heated argument on Facebook with a former schoolmate (which resulted in me unfriending him in the process). I've seen him once since I've left VJC in 1994 and given how little I have in common with him, I see little point in holding on to him as a friend even on Facebook. I shall summarize what he said which sparked off such a very heated exchange between us.

Can you stand up for yourself even if others won't?

He basically praised the victim (ie. the young man who received the torrent of abuse) for his passive response, he said that remaining quiet as the attacker (ie. the crazy white guy) would soon get bored if he didn't get any kind of response from the victim. He even claimed that if the victim had tried to run away, the train was too crowded - the victim would have inconvenienced or disturbed other passengers by pushing past them and that he was being considerate to the other passengers. He also said that even if he tried running away, the attacker could have followed the victim. Furthermore, he said that trying to engage the attacker in any way might have only served to encourage the attacker - thus remaining passive was the best and only sensible response. I saw this as another case of extreme apathy - where you can't even be asked to stand up for yourself.

Boy did I get angry. I said, "okay so if someone is about to rape you, what do you do? Do you worry about inconveniencing others around you by asking for help or running away? What kind of message are you sending to the rapist if you simply remained totally passive, without offering any resistance at all? What if you met a madman who stuck a knife in your face and threatened to stab you? Do you try to defuse the situation? Do you try to run away from the attacker? Or do you simply offer no resistance, practically offering the madman an easy target to stab? What if someone was trying to poison you - would you feel too worry about causing offence if you refused to drink the poisoned water?" To which, this old classmate replied that I couldn't compare being raped or being stabbed to simply being shouted at by a stranger - at least the attacker didn't physically touch the victim in this case, it was just words. This is when I gave up with my old classmate: great, so words don't matter in the context of Singapore, or do they?

Do words matter in Singapore? Just ask Amos and Roy.

Oh, so why was Amos Yee arrested then - when all he did was use words to speak his mind on Youtube? He didn't hit anyone, it was pretty ironic that Amos Yee actually got assaulted, yet the man who hit Amos got off with a lighter sentence than Amos Yee eventually. Amos didn't actually hit anyone, all he did was use a bunch of words in his Youtube video. What about the ongoing case where Roy Ngerng is being sued by PM Lee for defamation? It's just words after all, it's not like Ngerng actually tried to hit the PM, so why is the PM making such a fuss about Ngerng's words then? Oh perhaps, words do matter in Singapore then. I am being sarcastic here, really. Of course words do bloody matter and we see people in Singapore being sued and jailed over the words they have used. Words can cause great damage, great harm and we have a right to protect ourselves against the words others use against us.

Bullies usually try to get off the hook by simply using words to taunt, belittle, mock and scorn their victims. They can cause their victims great emotional stress and trauma with their cruel words and often when caught doing red handed, they would claim, "oh we're just having fun, it's just a joke, it's just words." Yet the victims of bullying can often suffer long term consequences of this kind of 'words' - it is so wrong to claim that just because the bullies didn't inflict any physical scars on their victims, that there are no emotional scars. There have been plenty of reports of victims of bullying who have killed themselves because they can no longer put up with non-stop taunting and abuse at the hands of their bullies: the weapon of choice for these bullies? Words. That's right. They don't need to hit their victims in order to drive their victims to suicide. We can recover from physical injuries with time, but words can cause emotional scars that can last a lifetime. This is why there are laws governing the words we use because of the effects they have.

Words can cause a lot of emotional damage.

I feel very disappointed that so many of you Singaporeans have so little faith in your ability to deal with such a situation - you seem to think that any attempt to defuse or deescalate the situation would lead to a worst case scenario, of being beaten up by the attacker. I can only feel very sorry for people who feel like that, who have that little self-confidence. They seem convinced that being passive may bring the best possible outcome and refuse to accept that trying to defuse the situation (or even running away) may lead to a better outcome. Do you guys really have so little confidence when it comes to speaking up for yourselves or defending yourselves? Many seem to think that being 'timid' or 'shy' is a valid excuse for being passive: well I have news for you. Life doesn't give a damn if you are timid or shy, sometimes life just puts you in a situation where you have to find your guts and stand up for yourself (or help another person the way our Malay hero did) because insisting in being timid or shy would leave to a far worse outcome for you - so think twice about trying to use your shyness as an excuse in the future.

Here's an inconvenient truth for timid people: in life, the easiest option may not lead to the best result. If I want good results for my exams, the best option is to study very hard - that's clearly not the easiest option (which would be to take it easy). Likewise, if I want to lose weight, the best option is to go on a diet and exercise everyday, but the easiest option would be to just say, "actually I'm not that fat, there's plenty of people fatter than me, I should just accept my body for what it is". You would be amazed at just how far people will go to justify to themselves why the easiest option is right for them - even if it clearly does not lead to the best outcome. In this case, closing your eyes as you get attacked may be the easiest option for a timid person - but would it lead to the best outcome? Clearly not, especially if you are putting your fate in the hands of an unpredictable deranged attacker, now that's hardly a wise thing to do.

Do you choose the easiest or the best option?

That is a hard truth for some timid people to accept - sure some of them are totally incapable of dealing with such a situation, I actually know an ex-colleague (let's call her Mona-Lisa) who was afraid of even speaking up when amongst colleagues: yes she was that terrified of any form of public speaking. Never mind trying to speak to strangers, she would fumble her lines, forget her words even when doing a presentation to her own colleagues. Would Mona-Lisa be able to engage a random attacker should she be a victim? Probably not, she would probably start crying, given how timid she is. But I'm sure that even Mona-Lisa can see that for those of us who do have the communication and linguistic skills to deal with an attacker, trying to engage him to defuse the situation can easily bring a much better outcome than just closing your eyes or crying when you get attacked.

There is however, a place where going silent is an appropriate response when dealing with bullying: it's cyberspace. It is easy to get drawn into a flame war on social media - quarrels spiral out of control and you wanna get the last word in despite it being clear that you're never going to agree with the other party on the issue. However, when you fail to get a response from the other party, that's when you will lose interest in that engagement - something else will come along (like a funny video on Youtube) that will take your mind of the quarrel and you will move on. Not being able to get an immediate response will make that quarrel go cold, having to wait eight hours or even a couple of days for someone to respond to your Facebook comment usually means you would have calmed down and realized that it wasn't worth getting into that argument in the first place. I have had my fair share of haters on my blog who would post several hateful comments a day but even my silence in refusing to respond to the comments eventually drove them away.

Do not feed an internet troll... but what about in real life?

But this is not cyber-bullying we're talking about here: we're talking about a situation where the victim is literally within arm's reach of the attacker. Even if the attacker is not getting much of a response out of the victim, he is still wielding some kind of power over the victim in the following ways: he can see that the victim has fallen silent, too afraid to speak or look up. He can see from the victim's body language that the victim is literally cowering in fear. Furthermore, the attacker knows that he is attracting an audience, who is watching him abuse his victim in public - he is clearly enjoying the kind of attention he is receiving. So this is not just about trying to get a reaction out of the victim: the attacker's ideal victim is one who is just too afraid to respond in any way. Conversely, the worst case scenario for the attacker is when the victim is not at all afraid of the attacker and stands up to the attacker, forcing the attacker to back off. That would tantamount to losing face for the attacker, as you would say in Singapore.

This reminds me of a BBC nature documentary I saw a while ago, it was about a group of lions hunting their prey on the African Savannah. As the lion chased a pack of zebra through the grasslands, a weaker, maybe sick zebra fell behind, unable to run as fast as the others. The lion caught that slower zebra. What do you think the other zebra did? Some turned around to look at what happened to that slower zebra, but none helped. It was almost as if they were thinking, "that old zebra got caught, let's hope the lion eats that zebra and lets the rest of us go. That zebra has sacrificed himself for the rest of us to survive. I feel sorry for that zebra but I'd rather he get eaten than me." That was pretty much the attitude of the rest of the passengers in that MRT train who were quite happy to let the attacker have his wicked way with his victim: they were quite happy to observe passively, even film the attack but none of them wanted to put themselves between the attacker and the victim. Thus that means the attacker had not only subdued his victim by his actions - but he had subdued the entire MRT carriage packed full of passengers who were too afraid of him to intervene. This is the ultimate ego trip for the bully - that was of course, until our Malay hero came along.

The lion isn't really interested in chasing the zebras who are fast enough to get away from him - the lion certainly doesn't want to engage with a zebra who will put up a fight (like our Malay hero). You have to understand how the predator-prey relationship: it is a relationship defined by total dominance of one over the other. In nature, the predator literally eats the prey: the lion did eat the zebra in the end, but that was the result of the predator being able to dominate the prey to the extent of being able to hunt it, catch it and kill it. The attacker on the MRT was pretty much like this lion who had managed to trap a weak zebra in a corner and the weak zebra was too afraid, too weak to even try to run away. If not for our Malay hero, the predator would have devoured the prey - the white guy would have gone on humiliating the victim and maybe even inflict physical injuries on the him. For the bullies, getting their victims to a state where they are too terrified to even utter a word is pretty much what they would like - it is like a lion who has cornered a zebra who is too weak and scared to put up a fight and has just resigned to its fate. Achieving this really pleases the bullies - it doesn't make them bored at all, this is the part they enjoy the most.

I'm afraid my ex-schoolmate doesn't really understand what a bully's mindset is like: but to be fair, he was the victim of bullying back in VJC rather than a bully back then and little has changed. I won't stoop as low as to tell you what he was bullied for back then, but it suffices to say that he was definitely at the receiving end of bullying back then - which surprises me that he hasn't spent any time or effort trying to figure out how to stop being bullied so much by understanding the mindset of his bullies for this is strictly an intellectual process (and he isn't that stupid, really). But then again, victims of bullying usually have very low self-esteem and have no self-confidence: they fall prey to bullying because they allow themselves to be bullied. They don't believe that they deserve to be treated with respect or dignity, so when a bully picks on them, they just bow their heads and accept whatever shit that may come their way - much the same way this young victim on the MRT did. Can you try to consider things from the bully's perspective instead?

Why are Singaporeans unable to speak up?

To explain his very Singaporean mentality, we have to understand the context he is in. He has no easy solutions to the situation - heck, I have no solutions either: any kind of solution would involve such a paradigm shift that would take generations to achieve. The logical conclusion after reading about this incident is, "damn, this is all so very wrong - I wish things were better in Singapore." There are so many questions with no good answers: like why was this white guy let off without even being questioned? Why was the police giving him preferential treatment because he was white? This has left so many people so angry. But since he can't wave a magic wand and make things better, instead he goes into denial. He tells himself that words don't really matter, that the young victim on the MRT did the right thing and that it was perfectly natural for the passengers on the MRT to have minded their own business when the whole incident kicked off. This is an extreme form of blind spot resulting in a very warped vision of reality.

Trying to reason with Singaporeans who have this kind of blind spot is a futile exercise - why? Because of a double whammy: they actually believe that they deserve to be treated like shit and they don't have enough self-confidence to stand up for themselves. I've been trying to reason with them, "no actually you can do something about the situation when you are being attacked, but I am asking you to believe that you actually have the ability to handle such a stressful, delicate and difficult situation. I'm not saying it is easy, but you will be so proud of yourself in being able to deal with it and if you can deal with something like that - you will feel that you can handle anything in life." But no, I'm casting pearls at swines - they just insist on jumping to the wrong conclusion, they accuse me of asking them to get into a fight (when I have NEVER said anything like that - I've been talking only about defusing and containing the situation, never escalating it). I give up - if you Singaporeans want to believe that you deserve to be treated like shit, then have it your way. I give up on you guys. I tried to help but if you guys wanna wallow in your self-pity like pathetic losers, then have it your way. I can't singlehandedly start this paradigm shift with my blog and I should not try.

As always, please let me know your thoughts on the issue by leaving a comment below. Many thanks for reading.