‘We are a nation that loves to punish.’ Why is New Zealand a country of bullies?

Bullying, both physical and online is rife in New Zealand. Photo / Getty Images.

Social media has been instrumental in changing the way we interact with each other – and not always for the better. In this book extract, psychotherapist Kyle MacDonald looks at the cause and effects of online bullying, the importance of legislation around it, and asks the question: why are we nation of bullies?

Sticks and stones

Bullying is a word that has been redefined. A word we used to associate with schoolyard taunts and the singling out of one child for physical attack is now synonymous with the cruel online attacks that seem to increasingly put the lives of young people, and adults, at risk.

But is it any different? Or is online bullying (as tragic as the outcome can be) just more visible, and therefore more reportable? And how does it drive some to such intense distress that they take their own lives?

Singling someone out to run them down, humiliating or attacking them is as old as social groups, and yet in some ways we are only just starting to understand the impact it can have, especially on our emotional development. Traditionally dismissed (think, “sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me”) just a generation ago, children were encouraged to ignore it, and not let it get to them.

But more recently, research into the effects of all kinds of “adverse events” on emotional development suggests sustained bullying can almost be as harmful as physical and sexual abuse, and its consequences are just as long-lasting.

Now of course we also have “cyber-bullying”, which is bullying that can be very hard to get away from.

To me, there are some key differences with “cyber-bullying”. The first is that it is much harder to escape. If you’re being picked on at school, you can always escape it outside school or in other social groups. The nature of social media means, for those who use it, it’s always on. And that makes users more vulnerable.

Many social scientists have also found a gradual increase in “narcissism” culturally in the West, and with it a decrease in empathy. Some believe social media is a cause, and some believe it’s an outcome of this trend. But what is clear is that the very nature of social media, with the absence of physical proximity, and the ability to read physical and facial clues, means we all risk responding thoughtlessly online (I know I have).

For all the wonderful things social media brings to our lives, in my view it can also amplify the risk of bullying. It can make empathy for others harder to generate and harder to sustain, and it also makes it harder to know when enough is enough.

Ultimately it falls on all of us to not only protect each other from bullying but also to accept that within all of us lies the ability to respond without empathy. To feel justified in attacking rather than engaging — and to understand that within all of us lies the potential to both be the victim and the bully.

It’s also incredibly powerful to be an active witness, and to intervene when we see someone singled out. Of course, it’s not a good idea to put oneself in harm’s way, but being able to approach someone in public, at work or in the schoolyard is highly effective. Ignore the bully and simply ask if the person being berated is OK. A conversation and a little courage are all it takes.

Hate laws

Human beings are herd animals, and we naturally form groups, whether that be tribes, communities, work teams or followers of particular rugby teams.

We generally see people in groups we are a part of — our in-groups — as more trustworthy, honest and likeable, and people in groups we aren’t part of — the out-groups — as the opposite.

But in-group identification isn’t so strong that we can’t overcome it, as we’ve discussed. Looking for similarities tends to help, as does understanding and allowing ourselves to get past stereotypes via the real-world experience of people we see as “different”.

Ultimately though, those who eschew so-called “identity politics” aren’t saying groups themselves are bad, they’re saying other groups (out-groups) are bad. Moreover, we shouldn’t make rules about how to treat groups, because this solidifies a group identity and makes the problems of discrimination worse by reinforcing differences.

Of course, the endpoint of this argument is that the solution to discrimination is simply to eliminate a focus on difference. This is easy to say when your difference doesn’t define you, and when other people don’t define you by your difference.

People of colour, women, LGBTIQ+, those with a disability, people struggling with mental health or addictions, immigrants, and refugees. We too readily define people by their difference from some imagined “norm”, and we know that when people belong to a “minority group” they will likely do worse on all sorts of health and wellbeing measures.

Trying to limit how much discrimination gets levelled at people who are defined by difference is why we need hate laws: because discrimination is real, it does have an impact, and there is no ignoring that.

Kyle Macdonald has more than 20 years clinical experience as a psychotherapist. Photo / Michael Craig

You certainly can’t just make the problem go away by suggesting people put aside their identity to solve the problem.

But ultimately this isn’t the problem. Hate is. And anything we can do to limit the impact of the human tendency to hate rather than embrace differences must be considered. Because pride about who you are and the groups you are part of is fine. But we don’t have to build ourselves up at the cost of others.

Politics aside, that’s the risk with all groups. Once we find a group to identify with, there’s always another — an out-group, who is “not like us”. It is entirely possible to encourage and cherish people figuring out who they are through being with people they identify with, without hating them for it or forming groups based on hate.

We can embrace difference, and it’s even easier if you engage with those you see as different. Because it is both true that we are different, and they are us.

Even bullies need love

Of course, everyone wants less bullying, and everyone wants to protect the victims of bullying. But what do we do about the bullies?

It’s natural, as a parent, to be protective. If you find out your kid is being bullied most of us would instinctively want to wade in and sort it out, one way or another. Talk to the bullies’ parents, maybe even give them a taste of their own medicine.

It might make you feel better, but bullying isn’t solved by more bullying. You can’t bully a bully into stopping.

For most, bullying, or “acting out” with aggression is a sign of distress. Bullies don’t intimidate and hurt other kids because they’re happy. They do so because it is a way to stop feeling the distress they feel, even momentarily.

And no, it’s not as simple as “kid gets bullied by their parents, and then bullies other kids”. It isn’t just about getting yelled at or hit at home, although for some that might be the cause.

It also isn’t just a “lower socio-economic problem”. Some of the best schools have bullying problems because the unrelenting pressure and expectations on our kids to be perfect is also a form of bullying, or at least deeply critical and harmful.

It’s just too easy — too tempting — to see the behaviour as the problem, to punish the bully and be done with it. We do that too easily in New Zealand — punish without wanting to understand — because we think it solves the problem.

But ultimately when we punish the person rather than attend to the behaviour we send the message that the person is bad. We need to send the message that the behaviour is not acceptable, and we want to understand what it is going on in the young person’s life. And ultimately, to help them with it.

We need to demonstrate compassion.

For bullies — indeed for all of us — the worst bully will be the one in our own head. That self-critical voice that lays into us when we make a mistake or fail to live up to the pressure and expectations that have been imposed on us by society, our teachers, schools, or our families.

And when we punish the child acting badly, ultimately all we do is give that self-critic more ammunition.

That’s not only harmful — it can be deadly.

A nation of bullies

We all have myths and half-truths we tell ourselves, it’s what we call an “ego ideal”. It’s the positive version of how we imagine ourselves to be. At best it’s a half-truth, at worst it can be a complete fiction.

As New Zealanders I believe we like to think of ourselves as a nation of “can-do” people, hard but fair, self- reliant but caring.

Yet some studies suggest we have the second worst rate of youth bullying in the world, with just over a quarter of 15-year-olds reporting being bullied at least a few times a month.

This is concerning for many reasons, in large part because we know that bullying has long-lasting consequences. It often leads to depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts for teenagers and adults.

So, no matter what we might like to think about ourselves, the uncomfortable reality is that New Zealand is a violent country and getting more so. We might not be armed to the teeth with semi-automatic weapons like the US, but our violence can be just as deadly.

Deadly particularly for our young people. Sadly, New Zealand is frequently world-leading in our teen suicide rate.

Our rangatahi are being killed by their own pain, killed indirectly by the violence of others. But it isn’t our attitude towards the bullied that needs to change, it’s our attitude towards the bullies.

Because we are a nation that loves to punish.

As regular as clockwork, politicians will trot out the “tough on crime” rhetoric. New Zealand has an incarceration rate nearly twice that of Australia and we’re building more prisons while our health system languishes in disrepair.

It’s a challenge to respond without revenge, to speak out when we’re distressed or in pain, and to respond with compassion to the bully — or the criminal. Instead, we must allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to feel pain and distress, and allow ourselves to connect with that in others.

We must see others’ suffering as our own. Somewhere along the way we lost our sense of collectivism, the sense that as a country we’re all in this together. Maybe it’s a global trend, maybe it’s due to the inherent competition of capitalism.

Increasingly, we all battle on in the belief that as long we make sure we’re okay, then that’ll do. And if someone else is struggling, then it’s not our problem, it must be their own fault, right?

But turning a blind eye is its own special form of violence. And how can we expect our young people to treat each other with respect and kindness when their parent’s generation turns on each other at the first excuse?

Going to punishment as a first resort simply doesn’t work. It can feel like it works because it feels good to do something, to have a target to legitimately take it out on when you’re distressed and angry. But it rarely leads to behaviour change.

This is an edited extract from Sh*t Happens: Lessons for dealing with life’s ups and downs by Kyle MacDonald, $39.99 RRP (Upstart Press)