intimidation

To intimidate someone is to make timid or fearful :  frighten; especially :  to compel or deter by or as if by threats <tried to intimidate a witness>  
Policing by intimidation is a common enough technique.
Workplace intimidation is intentionally and maliciously causing an employee or coworker to feel inadequate or afraid. This includes verbal threats, unjust criticisms, sabotage of a person's work or supplies, sexual harassment, and physical violence. Actions like these erode the confidence of employees and affects their ability to do their jobs. In many places, it is punishable by fines and imprisonment, and businesses may also be held liable if they do not respond appropriately. Those who feel they are being subjected to workplace intimidation can get help from managers and law enforcement.
One form of intimidation is bullying.

Physical:  Physical bullying involves harmful actions against another person’s body.  Examples include:  biting, kicking, pushing, pinching, hitting, tripping, pulling hair, any form of violence or intimidation. Physical bullying also involves the interference with another person’s property.  Examples include: damaging or stealing.

Verbal:  Verbal bullying involves speaking to a person or about a person in an unkind or hurtful way.  Examples include:  sarcasm, teasing, put-downs, name calling, phone calls, spreading rumors or hurtful gossip.

Emotional:  Emotional bullying involves behaviors that upset, exclude, or embarrass a person.  Examples include:  nasty notes, saying mean things using technology (e.g. cyber bullying using emails, instant messaging), chat rooms, tormenting threatening, humiliation or social embarrassment.

Sexual:  Sexual bullying singles out a person because of gender and demonstrates unwarranted or unwelcome sexual behavior.  Examples include: sexual comments, abusive comments, unwanted physical contact.

Racial:  Racial bullying involves rejection or isolation of a person because of ethnicity.  Examples include: gestures, racial slurs or taunts, name calling, making fun of customs/skin color/accent/food choices.

The best immediate response to intimidating behaviors is 

1.Walk Away: If possible, remove yourself from the situation immediately.

2. Say “Stop:” If it feels safe, tell the aggressor to stop in a firm but calm 

way. If you feel confident to do so, use humor or a clever response to 

weaken the effect of the mean behavior.

3. Keep Cool: Try to control your emotions in the moment. Showing fear or 

anger may egg on the aggressor.

4. Don’t Fight: Try not to fight or bully back in response—this may just 

continue the cycle of bad behavior.

But if the intimidator is in a position of power, then walking away or saying stop will be seen as insubordination.  If the person being intimidated is young or this is round 57 of the same old thing, staying cool and not fighting is very unlikely.

So the question is, why do bullies and intimidators go into positions that allow them to repeatedly do what they like best.  I know from personal experience that while I'm basically peaceful, if you get in my space, touch me, or crowd me or try to box me into a corner, i'm going to start pushing back.  Its automatic.  I am no longer capable of hunkering down and surviving.  I'm going to let you know that I won't be intimidated and will not be pushed around.  For millions of people that have been victimized/ostracized/bullied/demonized/and treated like they aren't human, that response is also automatic.  

If i'm waving a gun at you or trying to kill someone, shoot me. But if i'm walking down the street and you get in my space, i'm going to try to get you out of my space--its automatic.  And while some people will tell you that you should expect that from people in power, reality is, people in power don't do that to anyone unless they are trying to elicit that automatic response.  

We need to make sure that the people we put into positions of power and control like police and probation officers and social workers and teachers and anyone that interacts with less powerful people and has the ability to use intimidation be educated fully about the subject.  I know that large, urban police departments require 4 year degrees, but a lot of small departments require only a cleet license--which is all about gun law, and not at all about not being a bully.

We need to make sure that people do not get placed in those positions with known prejudices---a hard thing to do, as many of the people doing the hiring have the same prejudices; that people with a history of using intimidation to get cooperation not be given that kind of power over people.

And last, we need to not have such deep loyalties to our fellow coworkers because they are pals or watched our back or "know what it's like out there" that we protect them when they are viciously wrong.  

Repeatedly the citizens of this country have witnessed the way a group of people that has been hired to protect and serve, becomes a criminal enterprise, covering up the bad and criminal behavior of its members because they are family.  Time to stop the "us against them" attitudes that create so many problems in our communities (and the world--its what starts every war).  

We are all in this together.  None of us want to be robbed by anyone, or hit or shot or otherwise victimized.  All of us want to be treated with respect despite our differences.  We have all worked with the person that is dearly loved by everyone up the ladder, but despised for their rudeness, arrogance, and self-aggrandizement by everyone equal or under them.  

The hierarchy is a sham, we are all on the same plane. So, without pushing or crowding, lets all just do this together.

A Barren Mind, a Barren Soul.

The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.  The opposite of happiness is not sadness but boredom.  And the opposite of rich is not poor but barren.  

The first two are obvious;  most of us have had someone we love that hurts us so badly we hate them.  That is just the other side of the same coin--the yin of it's yang.  We have all had moments of happiness, sometimes amazing happiness, and times of utter sadness.  But the hardest to withstand day after day is boredom.  Boredom makes people quit jobs that pay well for their lives, and leave marriages that they sincerely wanted to work or worse, make them turn off their brains.  Boredom feels like it kills brain cells and dulls everything.  
But the last, rich and poor vs barren--what is that supposed to mean?   Barren is the opposite of fertile and therefore the opposite of productive or creative.  While not all people choose to have children, the couple that wants them but can't feels they are missing the full richness of life--despite the evidence that kids are actually a lot of work with no guarantees of any pay-off at all.  
While people with massive amounts of cash and properties--both real (and not so real), are always called rich by everyone;  people that created things, made things, used their imaginations, volunteered to help others, or teach others, producing things both ordinary and sublime, frequently describe the richness of their lives but rarely are described that way by any except close friends and family.

We need to make the  definition mean everything it used to.

having abundant possessions and especially material wealth

2

a :  having high value or quality

b :  well supplied or endowed <a city rich in traditions>

3

:  magnificently impressive :  sumptuous

4

a :  vivid and deep in color <a rich red>

b :  full and mellow in tone and quality <a rich voice>

c :  having a strong fragrance <rich perfumes>

5

:  highly productive or remunerative <a rich mine>

6

a :  having abundant plant nutrients <rich soil>

b :  highly seasoned, fatty, oily, or sweet <rich foods>

c :  high in the combustible component <a rich fuel mixture>

d :  high in some component <cholesterol-rich foods>

7

a :  entertaining; also :  laughable

b :  meaningful, significant <rich allusions>

c :  lush <rich meadows>

8

:  pure or nearly pure <rich lime>

While we know about rich soil, the opposite being called poor but meaning barren--incapable of producing anything, we rarely considered the richness of people in any terms but materialism--until they are old and facing death.  

We want our children to become rich, it was the american dream--getting rich.  The millionaire was the standard, although the unspoken inflation that has made a car that used to cost 3000$ new now cost 30,000$ and a house go from 25,000$ for a basic starter to at least 80,000$ for a basic starter that needs work and comes with a iffy neighborhood.  A millionaire is not middle-class, but only barely not.  You need at least 10,000,000$ to be "well-to-do"  secure in your standing/position in life.  If your job has a retirement advisor, they will make sure you know that you can't retire with a measly 500,000$ saved.  (What?  that is 10 years of my salary!  What?)

Our society has been all about the money for a while.  And while some wise folks have figured out that it is not what it is all about, and lived their lives with a different goal, there have always been a large number of our population that can never even acquire enough for the basics, food, water, shelter, weather-appropriate clothes, medicine when sick and therefore they never get the opportunity to find out what true riches are.  Barely surviving is life-sucking.  If you have ever almost drowned, then you know that you were not enjoying the beautiful view while treading water and trying to keep your nose above the waves.  All energy went one place.  Drowning people are desperate, they will try to use their fellow drowning victims as flotation devices. They will bargain with god, and curse their own mothers and anyone else they can blame for the position they are in. And they will take other's down with them.  Its not evil, or meanness or even cowardice, but just pure panicky fear.  Most creatures when placed in a position where they think there might be a way to survive and get on with their life will do the same (a few won't, but they are rare heroes).
The people generally described as rich, tend to act like they believe that in some way they are worth more, their life if more valuable, their ideas more important, their contributions to society more meaningful. They are frequently jerks or worse.
Rich people gave us cars and computers and tv and professional sports---of course they didn't really give them to us, they sold them to us and got rich doing so.  The people working for them are unknown unless they happened to be a name that was being sold.  Some professional athletes and actors and directors and CEO's also get rich when we buy those things, but the guy that put your car together didn't get rich, and the man that ran the camera or put on the monster makeup or sold the hotdogs or swept the stadium or showed you how to program your smart phone, that person didn't get rich.
Who decides who profits and who gets by.  Artists have always known that the difference between a 50$ painting and a 5,000,000$ painting is a patron.  A patron with some money can help you find an audience of higher paying customers and a patron that blows millions on a whim can make you rich also.  For some reason, if rich man #1 wants a painting by Joe Blow, then rich man #2 and #3 also want one, only bigger or more expensive.
At any rate, the man or woman with millions and billions is not necessarily the one to die rich.  At the end of it all, the richest is the one with the best memories, the most loved-ones, the wisest wisdoms and that ended up getting the chance to create all those things that lived in their head.  Use the rich and creative and productive mind and soul you were born with--die rich.

symbols, keywords and other cues to our environment

There is a great bumper sticker out there,  (coexist) and it has a lot of variations, but every time I see it, I like the person whose car it is on.  I don't know them, and it might have been slapped on there five minutes ago while they were in a store---by the person that was different than them and that they had just cussed out.  I'm responding to the bumper sticker and not the person.  It represents something that is positive to me.
Symbols represent.  They give us clues.  They help us know if something is good or bad, safe or dangerous, desireable or worthy of avoidance.  And which is which is frequently taught to us by our beliefs.  Most of us get those from the people that raised us and while we rebel about speeding and seatbelts, getting high and safe sex, we rarely rebel against the beliefs we were taught as children.
When we do rebel against those beliefs, it is usually more reaction-formation than an actual examination of the beliefs.  We have all met at least one person raised in a home with strict fundamentalist religious beliefs (any religion--they all have families like that) that becomes the biggest atheist or satanist fundamentalist that could exist--reactionary to the point that their whole life is taken up with going against the teachings of their family.  They are consumed with being the opposite and do not even admit that anything except the opposite exists as a possibility.  They can not see that they are as blind to the other possible beliefs as their family that raised them was.  They would only recognize two symbols, the one of their childhood--which they now hate, the one of their current belief, and the rest would be meaningless.
We give symbols their meanings.  But a symbol doesn't have to be a drawing or visual representation of a religion.  It can be anything.  It can be detected by any sense.  And it can be meaningful to an entire culture or only to a single individual.
Currently, we are having riots in a neighborhood outside of St. Louis, and the symbols involved in that are both highly recognized, and unspeakable.  The face of the young black male and the blue uniform.  While the first should not be a symbol, it has been for a very long time.  And it means very different things to different people. We know through discussions of profiling that the young black male is supposed to be violent, criminal, and the list could go on and on from here.  Show someone a picture of a young black male and ask them to tell you what he is doing in the picture, the stories will be different depending upon the culture and background of the person you ask.  The picture itself has no meaning except the meaning placed on it by the person telling the story.  The same is true of a picture of a person in a police uniform, and while the sex and race of the person in the uniform may make a difference depending upon the beliefs of the person telling the story, the story of the young black male in the blue uniform will not be the same as the story told for the first picture.  The uniform is its own symbol.
We are rioting now, and it is spreading because being a symbol causes a person to lose their individuality.  They are judged as the symbol and all the connotations the symbol has to the person doing the judging.  And we are all judging.  It's what we do.  We recognize patterns and sort things into groups.  It is why we can accomplish so many things, and why we do so much evil.  Obviously, the ability to recognize a nail and use it, even if it is a little different than the first nail we saw makes us able to make things, and just as obviously, our inability to judge each other without prejudging them based on appearance,culture, worklife and health and habit creates social injustice, poverty, fear and even war.
Our natural tendencies, to judge, to react, to panic, to gossip, to put things in little boxes according to our beliefs, to be loyal to what we see as "like us" and to be against what we see as "not us", makes us dangerous.  Only our own awareness of how we as people can be, how wrong, how unjust, how murderous, that awareness can help us to examine our own thoughts, our own beliefs.  We must look closely.  And it is hard to do, because of our loyalty, because we don't want to think that the people like us could be wrong, could be predators or users or any of those things we say we don't like.    But clear vision is needed, self-honesty is needed, commitment to being a good person is needed if we are going to stop hurting each other as if the other is only a symbol.
We need symbols, stop signs, international bathroom signs, red-tipped white canes, yellow cabs, even uniforms to identify people functioning in roles of service.  But people need to stop being symbols.  I know how hard it is to find even one person that is just like me---I've never really found that, so how can whole groups, cultures, countries, and continents of people be the same.
Don't react to the symbol, get to know the person.

LONER OR LONELY?

Sometimes i ask myself, "am I really a loner? or am I lonely?"  When I was 7 I would have said lonely, and at 12 and at 18, it was lonely but instead of a friend and playmate, it was for a soulmate.  So why is it that I avoid people now?  Did something bad happen?  Did I become old and crusty and antisocial?  Maybe.  Or maybe I stopped listening to the people around me.
I don't know that I will ever be able to completely dissect the past and find the answer.  I wanted more friends because my mother told me I needed friends--translate "popular friends" as I always had at least one person and usually more that I talked to, some were closer than others, but none of them were at all popular.  The closest was a neighbor child, and we shared our childhood games and imagination and hopes and dreams.  the others, in truth were not to be put off.  I have always had a few people in my life that are aggressively friendly.  They need a sidekick and I am unattached, always, to anyone.  When I was a child, with a mother so desperately wishing for a popular child (thankfully my little sister was both popular AND social) and fears that by not wanting what everyone else wanted and seeking out friends and trying to be popular, I must be a freak, a weirdo, some kind of defective.  I wanted to be normal as much as the next person.  But shared experiences do best with shared interests.  And I guess I was a weirdo.  While the other girls were playing with barbies and talking about the boyfriends (6 year olds, I swear, it was all about the passing of notes in class and church)  I was wanting to play cowboys and indians (I loved cap pistols) and was reading life books about evolution.  I went to a school that never taught evolution and the 10 grade biology teacher stole my favorite book on the subject.  When every girl that wasn't pretty and heading for cheerleading or majorette with their string of boyfriends started playing sports, it was discovered I was so myopic that even with glasses, I couldn't catch a ball until it hit me in the nose.
At puberty, I became more popular--read that as every little hormonally deranged male decided to make rude sexual comments, but we had nothing in common.  As one homely C student told my mother on the phone,  "I might ask her out but she has to quite acting like an egghead".  I was fine without him, having no interest in listening to his group talk about coon hunting or what truck they eventually hoped to buy.
By twenty, I was decidedly seeking a "soulmate" although it might be that all the cousins having married by 19 in their white satin, or maybe the biological clock was ticking.  At any rate, two kids later I had learned a few things.
One, being a good listener is fine for a therapist, but lonely in a relationship when it is only one of you listening.  Two,  you really do need to have mutual interests.  Three, it doesn't matter what society says everyone needs, what do I need?
Reality is that I have always been fine with a good book or working on a project.  I have enjoyed some wonderful conversations about things I am interested in, but don't really enjoy that feeling of wasting time listening to someone else go on and on about themselves.  I don't want to be a therapist.  Shoot, a good therapist will just point out the person's narcissism and ask if they want to work on that.  If they don't, they can go on about their business.  I don't want to play a role.  I definitely don't like meeting societal expectations to play a role.  I still haven't given up on stopping the waste of energy on mowing lawns to make them look---why do we do that, I don't get it at all.
So, am I lonely? Occasionally.  I listen to family members periodically.  I don't talk to them much about my concerns and interests.  That is what this blog is for.And pretty much, it works.  Other than no feedback its about perfect.  Am I a loner?  I don't know that such a thing even exists.  There are a lot of people in the world.  People like to interact with people like themselves.  The bigger the world gets, the more outliers there are.  Amazingly, some of them even find each other.  For those that don't, keep writing, painting. sculpting, you know--expressing yourself in a way that maybe will make you feel less alone, more a part of the world.
Those individuals that don't fit easily into the current social scene have their destiny.  Maybe some day I'll figure out what mine is.

Middle-class

When I was a kid, I considered my family middle-class.  And yes, I was living in the U.S., which is supposed to be a classless, "we are all equal"  kind of place.  But that has never actually been a reality; just the ideal.
Today, I watch who calls themselves middle class, and it is everyone that is not receiving full government subsidies to the top 2 percent.  That translates to everyone making from $23,851 to $224,000.  All the families or households in this range are middle-class.  That is a lot of range, and the actual way of life of the bottom third of that has little in common with the top third.  
So what are we really talking about?  Maybe a way of life?  A way of thinking?  A self-image?  Who says  "I am middle-class"  
First, people whose parents said it.  Perhaps it is genetic. (it is early in the morning, i like to be ridiculous early in the morning)   It is definitely part of a family's identity.  And for a lot of people I have met, it is a positive thing,  like saying they come from a good family, are good people, have value to society, are givers not takers, work hard, do the right thing, care about each other, live right.  
Sometimes, I hear people divide the middle-class into its own 3 levels, the upper-middle-class, which is what television loves to display in its sitcoms and dramas as the the regular people of this country; the working class, which are those people that are not at poverty level(barely), consider themselves middle-class, and frequently get displayed in movies that are more gritty, you know, the ones where people struggle a bit, have dramatic emotional lives, and the lighting seems to be a bit dark--what film are they using for that, or is it all digital and using filtering effects?  
Reality is, my family was very much working class--first generation off the farm.  Not the corporate farm, more like the "grapes of wrath" farm.  And it may have been genetic.  I used to chide my grandmother that we had great genes, came from good hardy peasant stock.  She had been raised with certain Victorian sensibilities and did not find that funny.  Reality is, most of this country has similar roots.  We aren't all the lost descendants of royals and nobles.  We all have relatives that excelled in something, maybe a lot of relatives, maybe direct ancestors, maybe someone we highly respect and have no idea we share a few genes with.  There is a lot more to life than genetics.
Highly under-rated is luck.  The differences in the life of a person with great giftedness in iron works and when they were born could send then to a decidedly middle-class blacksmith position in a certain time periods, a very low-wage industrial position in the bottom of the working-class at other times, or the top of the art industry with timing and luck, guaranteeing the upper-middle-class, or even above. (think Anish Kapooar. Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns)  Most artists feel lucky if they get to make a basic living that includes not have 1-3 other jobs to pay the bills. 
Successful people that make it to the top of their field usually deny the impact of luck.  It was hard work, perseverance, incredible planning, goal-directedness---.  Who are they kidding?   We have all seen people that did all those things all their lives---truly middle-class beliefs guiding them--and died no closer to that goal than they started.  Their lives were not wasted.  We learn during our lives and influence the people around us.  Some people, like the highly unlucky Van Gogh, become Iconic after their deaths, their talents only recognized when they can no longer be lucky enough to become successful. (post-mortem success--what does that even mean?)  Others gain wisdoms in there lack of luck, learning to appreciate the lessons life has taught them and valuing more than the ideal they started with.  Some of them get to star in documentaries about how Mr. or Ms. middleclass ended up homeless for 20 years.  Luck.
So who are the middle-class?  What is their place in society?  Why do they even exist?  And they have always existed in some form.  The world has never been just the rich and the poor.  The middle-class is the meat of the sandwich---the rich need us because they couldn't be rich without our work efforts and consumerism; the poor need us because without us, the rich would probably exterminate or enslave them.  The middle-class people with their empathy and compassion are  who actually volunteer to help the poor, who points out the inequities of society, who fight in revolutions when those inequities quit being addressed at the level of the government law-making.  The Middle-class, with its large numbers and wide range is the majority of the population and thus has the ability to turn the country in any direction it desires.  
Currently, the middle-class has a large number of people that are sure they are dependent upon the rich for their place in society.  They have "drank the koolaid" so to speak.  They have bought in to the idea that everything good they have is dependent upon rich people letting them work and rich people making them jobs, rich people supporting their cities arts projects, schools, etc, etc, etc.  But not one rich person has ever hired anyone to do a job that they didn't need done.  When you go to work, your work is necessary to your place of employment.  No one puts in a machine part that 's not needed for the correct function of the machine.  Our jobs are not charity.  And we are paid only as much as the machine feels is necessary to keep us--supply and demand.  If a lot of people can do the job with little training, then no matter how physically difficult, dangerous, or hard on the workers mental health, the job will pay little and will have lots of people willing to do it for that.  That is why we try to get our children the education and skills they need to do something they enjoy and that there is high demand for or in which the requirements are so specific there is little competition.  And we want them to be lucky.  Luck is required for almost all of the jobs that can carry a person from middle-class to rich.  If you doubt that, check out the number of wait staff in Hollywood waiting on their big break.  Watch the career of a few of the singers on American Idol, or the Indies out of Nashville.  And find the stats on the amount of money spent on competitive sports in elementary school and the number of them that are involved then compare it to the number professional athletes that moved to rich, or even the number that were able to get a full scholarship out of it.   
In my lifetime, most of the young people I have talked to expected to get lucky.  The goal is not middle-class, its moving to rich.  Some have a plan.  Some are brilliant or talented or creative.  Some have parents that are already at the top of the middle-class income and have no doubt they can make it.  The latter are probably the only ones that don't require much luck.
If, on the other hand, your goal is "rich" and your currently living in subsidized housing with a father in prison and a mother who can't get enough meth to make the day ok, you need a lot of luck no matter how brilliant, and talented and creative you are.  I have met several young people that should have been highly successful due to their giftedness, but by twenty they were dead.  And god help the children born in poverty that suffered from the neurological effects of poor diet, lack of cognitive stimulation, emotional and physical abuse and no role models that could show them what success looked like.  No amount of luck can fix that.
The middle-class needs to take back its position of power and control.  Majority rules.  And the majority is not a political party--its people that share an ideal and goal.  The middle-class heart needs to open up and stop letting the fearmongers run them toward the cliff.  We can be strong.  We can save the world.
With a little luck.
I'm going to go buy a lottery ticket.