The Bully Paradox, Primate Hierarchies, and the Folly of Appeasement
Introduction
As we all know, bullies are cowards. Except when they aren't.
I. The Behavior of Bullies
In a phenomenon we will all remember from our schooldays (which is when most of us in our kind of society will have to deal with bullying), bullies will single out the most apparently physically-weak or socially-vulnerable people to most seriously attack. The big, strong, normal and popular kids are either left alone or only occasionally-teased: it is the small, weak, abnormal and unpopular who will be persecuted.
Very often, if someone stands up to a bully and puts up even a credible fight (not even necessarily a victorious one, just one in which hard blows are given and taken without immediate collapse), the bully will abandon his continued persecution of a victim. If actually defeated, he will tend either to avoid or (alternately) befriend his former victim (this is often called by us "toadying").
Given this behavior, it is obvious why we perceive bullies as "cowardly." Certainly, most of us don't go around looking for weak people to attack, nor do we respond to someone putting up a successful fight against us in the fights we do find by either avoiding or befriending them. So it's easy for us to simply state "bullies are cowards" and leave it at that. This is pretty much what we tell our children "Bullies are cowards. Standing up to them is the best way to deal with them" -- unless we are cowards, at least where our children are concerned.
And yet ... It's actually not that simple.
Bullies may be cowards, yet sometimes they will go after an obviously-stronger target, if the target is sufficiently abnormal (this is called on tvtropes "Bullying a Dragon," http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BullyingADragon and it rarely ends well for the bullies either in fiction or real life, for the obvious reason). Bullies may be cowards, yet often standing up to a bully does require fighting that credible fight, even if you are obviously stronger. And finally, bullies may be cowards, but sometimes they react to a defeat by escalating the battle to a level they know they can win (such as coming back after the guy who beat them in a fistfight with a gun) even though they know that the consequences of "winning" will go badly for them (as when the now-"victorious" gun-toting bully is sent off to do hard time for shooting his victim, or still worse for him dies in a hail of police gunfire).
How can we untangle this paradox. Why do bullies behave in a sometimes cowardly but sometimes fearless (even self-destructively fearless) fashion? And what can we learn from this which has wider applications?
What is the answer, explaining the behavior or bullies?
II. Primate Dominance
The answer is that "we" -- meaning most civilized, decent human beings -- are playing essentially a different sort of social "game" than are the bullies where physical violence is concerned. Most of us engage in physical violence only in defense of ourselves or others, or at least our territory or property. This means we fight only with "just" cause -- we attack threats to that which we love, with "courage" consisting of being willing to do what is necessary when in danger in order to defeat these threats, and "common sense" consisting of knowing when one can't win the fight and should thus retreat to fight again another day.
Decent men engage in physical violence in defense of their own moral codes, which means that they are more likely to fight the threatening than the meek, and that if they do decide to retreat it will be on a sober analysis of whether or not they can defeat the threat. Certainly, they will not seek out weak and innocent targets, or respond to defeat with irrational frenzies of aggression.
The bully, however, is engaging in physical violence to attempt to rise in a social hierarchy, the rules to which are written partially as instinct in the brain, and even though this is a social hierarchy which is to a great extent nonexistent in civilized societies, it is real in the bully's brain, and so he will work hard to rise within its rules.
The name of this social hierarchy is the "primate dominance hierarchy," and one rises in status in this hierarchy by demonstrating one's dominance over others. This is accomplished by doing something to anger another in the hierarchy, then either defeating one's victim in combat or forcing it to back down without a fight. By doing this, one affirms that one is higher-ranked than the victim. Some victims may decide to follow you and become one's allies: the dominant one is usually attended by by allies and followers, who will support him against anything but a formal challenge to his dominance by a perceived near-equal.
The only rule for these confrontations is "whatever works." Like Brian Jacques "vermin," which is probably based on what Jacques actually observed among criminals as a police officer, fights don't have to be "fair" in any sense of the word in order to confer dominance (though beating a foe at his prime one-on-one confers more dominance than ganging-up on him when he's sick), and anything is permissible -- the level to which one can escalate need not be governed by the extent of the original provocation. Indeed, "provocations" are mere excuses, useful to work oneself up into a fighting frenzy or manipulate the behaviors of others into attempting to appease oneself -- they are not really "justifications" for the bully attack in any moral sense.
This explains everything about the "cowardly" behavior of bullies. One attacks weakness and avoids attacking strength because one is initiating these encounters in order to win -- and one is more likely to win attacking those weaker than those stronger than oneself. One attacks the unpopular and avoids attacking the popular because the popular have allies, and one may be brought down by the allies of the weaker but more popular victim. One attacks the unusual as opposed to the normal, because the unusual is more likely to already be rejected by the group for its unusuality and hence one will be perceived by others in the group as performing them a service: if one attacks the normal, however, others in the group will feel threatened by oneself and someone else may perform the group a service by attacking oneself.
One remembers victories and defeats. Someone one has defeated is subordinate to oneself and this subordination must be reinforced by occasional petty aggression against that one, lest he forget and a full-scale dominance fight be needed to regain that status. Someone who has defeated oneself is dominant over oneself, and it is a bad idea to attack him again until oneself has become stronger or the dominant one weaker for some reason. One may even attempt to ingratiate oneself with the one who has defeated oneself, because it may be a better strategy to voluntarily become his ally or at least follower than to be bullied by that one.
This explains everything but the classic bully overreaction -- the point at which a defeated bully refuses to accept defeat and instead escalates to a level which gets him killed or seriously impaired, whether by his intended victim or by an ally or supporter of the intended victim (should the bully's attack prove successful). It is actually this bully overreaction that leads to some claiming that bullies are "brave" rather than "cowardly."
This is explicible by the fact that when a bully is defeated in a dominance battle, he sinks not merely in the esteem of other bullies, but also in his OWN esteem. This has direct psychological and indirect physiological consequences that make him less able and likely to succeed in future dominance consequences. This "deflation" is the more extreme the lower the bully's original esteem for his intended victim.
When a "worm turns," the defeated bully essentially has two internal choices. He can accept his defeat, and by the rules of the dominance hierarchy accept that he is lower than that "worm" (and perhaps then display displaced-aggression against others in his hierarchy, re-establishing his place by re-fighting dominance battles or displays against those he has previously defeated), or he can seek to regain and even enhance his former position by resuming the attack against the original "worm."
The thing about resuming the attack is that, if the bully fights the same contest against the same person who defeated him in the same manner, he will expect to lose. And this expectation may be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Only if he escalates the contest to a more dangerous level -- more dangerous generally to both bully and victim -- can he hope for victory. He may psychologically-need victory so much that he is careless of the consequences: thus, the criminal who "avenges" himself on the long-time habitual victim who successfully defied him by killing him, even though this means the criminal will do hard time; or the aggressor-state who "redeeems its honor" against the former vassal who successfully fought for freedom, even though the former vassal has such strong allies that this is the first act of the dictator's own demise.
III. The Folly of Appeasement
The important lesson to draw from this is that it is far more dangerous to first submit to and then defy a bully than it is to stand up to the bully in the first place. If one stands up to a bully when he is launching his first dominance attack against oneself, the bully will perceive one as strong and resolute. If he loses the fight, he may just take it in stride -- "ya win some, ya lose some" -- indeed, he may abort the attack, because he senses that he misjudged his intended victim.
But after one has submitted to a bully -- especially in repeated encounters -- the bully has one firmly fixed in his mental map of the dominance hierarchy. One is a "subordinate" -- the more extreme a subordinate the easier it was to obtain submission -- and part of the bully's own sense of self-worth now derives from the fact that one is his subordinate. If one then starts fighting back, the bully faces not the failure to acquire an element of "territory" in his network of subordinates, but the loss of an element of territority which had previously belonged to his "empire."
In short, the bully will fight harder and be less likely to accept a defeat because the powerful psychological mechanism of territoriality has been engaged in defense of the dominance relationship. He will think "But ... you're just a nerd. You're a dhimmi. I can't lose to you. I just can't!" and may be willing (depending on his courage) to escalate to whatever level of violence may reverse the contest -- even if it actually won't serve the bully's long-term ends.
For this reason, it is foolish for the victim to submit in the first place, if the bully in fact be not so much stronger than him that fighting might be practical. The initial submission means that the victim has surrendered and now by right can be forced to give submission to the bully whenever the bully so demands. (It's more complex than that: there are degrees of surrender and submission and hence degrees of right to duties from the subordinate, but that's the nub of the issue).
Such submission may be termed "appeasement," and the problem is that once one has submitted by offering appeasement, it becomes more difficult to change the relationship, both in terms of psychology of both victor and victim, and in terms of the actual likelihood of serious violence should the subordinate attempt rebellion against his superior.
IV. Lessons for Life
This means that one should not be overeager to avoid a fight by submission, if the demand be unjust and he who demands not be overwhelmingly stronger. On the small scale, it means that parents should not tell their children to try to "ignore" or "understand" bullies -- the former ("ignoring") is a dominance mechanism called the "primate cut-off" which is a form of dominance display and only works if the target really doesn't think he'd win a fight; while the latter, "understanding," will be perceived by the bully as an act of submission and attempt at ingratiation, and if performed before he's even attacked the target will convince him that the intended victim is pathetically weak. Instead, they should tell them to fight back if victory is possible, evade-and-return-with-allies if not possible.
This applies to the bullying behavior of groups, as well. Appeasement is unwise when confronted with an importunate demand, because it whets the aggressor's appetite. If one yields easily on on issue, the aggressor will probe further to see what else he can win from his unexpectedly-weak opponent. And once he's won a few concessions, he will now feel that he is dominant and that futher concessions are now his fight and due from the group he has vanquished.
Since the essence of Islam is such a dominance hierarchy, extended up to God and down to pagans and animals, which directly and explictly COUNSELS bullying as the proper way to deal with inferiors, this is why we cannot successfully deal with Islam by appeasement. Domestically, when we try to "understand" the "Muslim street" and offer them concessions, we are reinforcing their image of us as dhimmis in their own minds, and hence making it more likely that they will treat any attempt to enforce our inferior infidel laws upon them as acts of unwarranted aggression -- as we are already seeing in Europe. Why else is it that the arrests of Muslim criminals lead to violent rioting in Europe, but only at most demonstrations in America, when America is tougher on these criminals?
Our almost-apologetic approach to the War on Terror, in which we exhort our own people not to get angry, punish any on our own side for the most trivial "atrocities" (such as urinating on corpses or burning Korans), and fail to punish those on the other side for the most blatant atroctieis, does not achieve its intention of pacifying Islam. Instead, it informs Islam that we are weak, that now is the moment to strike us, that just a little more effort will surely secure our complete surrender.
To take an example from the current news, if the President had responded to the Afghan riots by asking Karzai what Karzai would do to atone for the misbehavior of his people, he would have gotten Karzai to submit to America. Instead, by pre-emptively apologizing, all Obama has gotten have been demands for more concessions. This is basically the same "appease the bully" dynamic that Carter had with Khomeini, but all the worse because Khomeini was at least a hostile foreign head of state, while Karzai is a minor ally wholly dependent upon America for his physical survival. If we continue on this course, we can expect only further humiliation -- and the longer we continue on this course, the more likely it is that we will have to fight a war against Karzai as well as against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, because Karzai's psychological and political fortunes will depend on maintaining the dominance he is unexpectedly winning over Obama.
Conclusion
Our expectations that bullies are decent and civilized people like ourselves only work to our disadvantage. Not only do they cause us to submit and yield concessions where standing up and fighting would have achieved our ends, but they ensure that the fights will eventually happen anyway, and when they do happen, they will be more extreme and more violent and far more destructive than they would have been had we not repeatedly attempted appeasement.
This is true in the playground, and it is true on the world stage. It is folly to submit to a bully.
As we all know, bullies are cowards. Except when they aren't.
I. The Behavior of Bullies
In a phenomenon we will all remember from our schooldays (which is when most of us in our kind of society will have to deal with bullying), bullies will single out the most apparently physically-weak or socially-vulnerable people to most seriously attack. The big, strong, normal and popular kids are either left alone or only occasionally-teased: it is the small, weak, abnormal and unpopular who will be persecuted.
Very often, if someone stands up to a bully and puts up even a credible fight (not even necessarily a victorious one, just one in which hard blows are given and taken without immediate collapse), the bully will abandon his continued persecution of a victim. If actually defeated, he will tend either to avoid or (alternately) befriend his former victim (this is often called by us "toadying").
Given this behavior, it is obvious why we perceive bullies as "cowardly." Certainly, most of us don't go around looking for weak people to attack, nor do we respond to someone putting up a successful fight against us in the fights we do find by either avoiding or befriending them. So it's easy for us to simply state "bullies are cowards" and leave it at that. This is pretty much what we tell our children "Bullies are cowards. Standing up to them is the best way to deal with them" -- unless we are cowards, at least where our children are concerned.
And yet ... It's actually not that simple.
Bullies may be cowards, yet sometimes they will go after an obviously-stronger target, if the target is sufficiently abnormal (this is called on tvtropes "Bullying a Dragon," http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BullyingADragon and it rarely ends well for the bullies either in fiction or real life, for the obvious reason). Bullies may be cowards, yet often standing up to a bully does require fighting that credible fight, even if you are obviously stronger. And finally, bullies may be cowards, but sometimes they react to a defeat by escalating the battle to a level they know they can win (such as coming back after the guy who beat them in a fistfight with a gun) even though they know that the consequences of "winning" will go badly for them (as when the now-"victorious" gun-toting bully is sent off to do hard time for shooting his victim, or still worse for him dies in a hail of police gunfire).
How can we untangle this paradox. Why do bullies behave in a sometimes cowardly but sometimes fearless (even self-destructively fearless) fashion? And what can we learn from this which has wider applications?
What is the answer, explaining the behavior or bullies?
II. Primate Dominance
The answer is that "we" -- meaning most civilized, decent human beings -- are playing essentially a different sort of social "game" than are the bullies where physical violence is concerned. Most of us engage in physical violence only in defense of ourselves or others, or at least our territory or property. This means we fight only with "just" cause -- we attack threats to that which we love, with "courage" consisting of being willing to do what is necessary when in danger in order to defeat these threats, and "common sense" consisting of knowing when one can't win the fight and should thus retreat to fight again another day.
Decent men engage in physical violence in defense of their own moral codes, which means that they are more likely to fight the threatening than the meek, and that if they do decide to retreat it will be on a sober analysis of whether or not they can defeat the threat. Certainly, they will not seek out weak and innocent targets, or respond to defeat with irrational frenzies of aggression.
The bully, however, is engaging in physical violence to attempt to rise in a social hierarchy, the rules to which are written partially as instinct in the brain, and even though this is a social hierarchy which is to a great extent nonexistent in civilized societies, it is real in the bully's brain, and so he will work hard to rise within its rules.
The name of this social hierarchy is the "primate dominance hierarchy," and one rises in status in this hierarchy by demonstrating one's dominance over others. This is accomplished by doing something to anger another in the hierarchy, then either defeating one's victim in combat or forcing it to back down without a fight. By doing this, one affirms that one is higher-ranked than the victim. Some victims may decide to follow you and become one's allies: the dominant one is usually attended by by allies and followers, who will support him against anything but a formal challenge to his dominance by a perceived near-equal.
The only rule for these confrontations is "whatever works." Like Brian Jacques "vermin," which is probably based on what Jacques actually observed among criminals as a police officer, fights don't have to be "fair" in any sense of the word in order to confer dominance (though beating a foe at his prime one-on-one confers more dominance than ganging-up on him when he's sick), and anything is permissible -- the level to which one can escalate need not be governed by the extent of the original provocation. Indeed, "provocations" are mere excuses, useful to work oneself up into a fighting frenzy or manipulate the behaviors of others into attempting to appease oneself -- they are not really "justifications" for the bully attack in any moral sense.
This explains everything about the "cowardly" behavior of bullies. One attacks weakness and avoids attacking strength because one is initiating these encounters in order to win -- and one is more likely to win attacking those weaker than those stronger than oneself. One attacks the unpopular and avoids attacking the popular because the popular have allies, and one may be brought down by the allies of the weaker but more popular victim. One attacks the unusual as opposed to the normal, because the unusual is more likely to already be rejected by the group for its unusuality and hence one will be perceived by others in the group as performing them a service: if one attacks the normal, however, others in the group will feel threatened by oneself and someone else may perform the group a service by attacking oneself.
One remembers victories and defeats. Someone one has defeated is subordinate to oneself and this subordination must be reinforced by occasional petty aggression against that one, lest he forget and a full-scale dominance fight be needed to regain that status. Someone who has defeated oneself is dominant over oneself, and it is a bad idea to attack him again until oneself has become stronger or the dominant one weaker for some reason. One may even attempt to ingratiate oneself with the one who has defeated oneself, because it may be a better strategy to voluntarily become his ally or at least follower than to be bullied by that one.
This explains everything but the classic bully overreaction -- the point at which a defeated bully refuses to accept defeat and instead escalates to a level which gets him killed or seriously impaired, whether by his intended victim or by an ally or supporter of the intended victim (should the bully's attack prove successful). It is actually this bully overreaction that leads to some claiming that bullies are "brave" rather than "cowardly."
This is explicible by the fact that when a bully is defeated in a dominance battle, he sinks not merely in the esteem of other bullies, but also in his OWN esteem. This has direct psychological and indirect physiological consequences that make him less able and likely to succeed in future dominance consequences. This "deflation" is the more extreme the lower the bully's original esteem for his intended victim.
When a "worm turns," the defeated bully essentially has two internal choices. He can accept his defeat, and by the rules of the dominance hierarchy accept that he is lower than that "worm" (and perhaps then display displaced-aggression against others in his hierarchy, re-establishing his place by re-fighting dominance battles or displays against those he has previously defeated), or he can seek to regain and even enhance his former position by resuming the attack against the original "worm."
The thing about resuming the attack is that, if the bully fights the same contest against the same person who defeated him in the same manner, he will expect to lose. And this expectation may be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Only if he escalates the contest to a more dangerous level -- more dangerous generally to both bully and victim -- can he hope for victory. He may psychologically-need victory so much that he is careless of the consequences: thus, the criminal who "avenges" himself on the long-time habitual victim who successfully defied him by killing him, even though this means the criminal will do hard time; or the aggressor-state who "redeeems its honor" against the former vassal who successfully fought for freedom, even though the former vassal has such strong allies that this is the first act of the dictator's own demise.
III. The Folly of Appeasement
The important lesson to draw from this is that it is far more dangerous to first submit to and then defy a bully than it is to stand up to the bully in the first place. If one stands up to a bully when he is launching his first dominance attack against oneself, the bully will perceive one as strong and resolute. If he loses the fight, he may just take it in stride -- "ya win some, ya lose some" -- indeed, he may abort the attack, because he senses that he misjudged his intended victim.
But after one has submitted to a bully -- especially in repeated encounters -- the bully has one firmly fixed in his mental map of the dominance hierarchy. One is a "subordinate" -- the more extreme a subordinate the easier it was to obtain submission -- and part of the bully's own sense of self-worth now derives from the fact that one is his subordinate. If one then starts fighting back, the bully faces not the failure to acquire an element of "territory" in his network of subordinates, but the loss of an element of territority which had previously belonged to his "empire."
In short, the bully will fight harder and be less likely to accept a defeat because the powerful psychological mechanism of territoriality has been engaged in defense of the dominance relationship. He will think "But ... you're just a nerd. You're a dhimmi. I can't lose to you. I just can't!" and may be willing (depending on his courage) to escalate to whatever level of violence may reverse the contest -- even if it actually won't serve the bully's long-term ends.
For this reason, it is foolish for the victim to submit in the first place, if the bully in fact be not so much stronger than him that fighting might be practical. The initial submission means that the victim has surrendered and now by right can be forced to give submission to the bully whenever the bully so demands. (It's more complex than that: there are degrees of surrender and submission and hence degrees of right to duties from the subordinate, but that's the nub of the issue).
Such submission may be termed "appeasement," and the problem is that once one has submitted by offering appeasement, it becomes more difficult to change the relationship, both in terms of psychology of both victor and victim, and in terms of the actual likelihood of serious violence should the subordinate attempt rebellion against his superior.
IV. Lessons for Life
This means that one should not be overeager to avoid a fight by submission, if the demand be unjust and he who demands not be overwhelmingly stronger. On the small scale, it means that parents should not tell their children to try to "ignore" or "understand" bullies -- the former ("ignoring") is a dominance mechanism called the "primate cut-off" which is a form of dominance display and only works if the target really doesn't think he'd win a fight; while the latter, "understanding," will be perceived by the bully as an act of submission and attempt at ingratiation, and if performed before he's even attacked the target will convince him that the intended victim is pathetically weak. Instead, they should tell them to fight back if victory is possible, evade-and-return-with-allies if not possible.
This applies to the bullying behavior of groups, as well. Appeasement is unwise when confronted with an importunate demand, because it whets the aggressor's appetite. If one yields easily on on issue, the aggressor will probe further to see what else he can win from his unexpectedly-weak opponent. And once he's won a few concessions, he will now feel that he is dominant and that futher concessions are now his fight and due from the group he has vanquished.
Since the essence of Islam is such a dominance hierarchy, extended up to God and down to pagans and animals, which directly and explictly COUNSELS bullying as the proper way to deal with inferiors, this is why we cannot successfully deal with Islam by appeasement. Domestically, when we try to "understand" the "Muslim street" and offer them concessions, we are reinforcing their image of us as dhimmis in their own minds, and hence making it more likely that they will treat any attempt to enforce our inferior infidel laws upon them as acts of unwarranted aggression -- as we are already seeing in Europe. Why else is it that the arrests of Muslim criminals lead to violent rioting in Europe, but only at most demonstrations in America, when America is tougher on these criminals?
Our almost-apologetic approach to the War on Terror, in which we exhort our own people not to get angry, punish any on our own side for the most trivial "atrocities" (such as urinating on corpses or burning Korans), and fail to punish those on the other side for the most blatant atroctieis, does not achieve its intention of pacifying Islam. Instead, it informs Islam that we are weak, that now is the moment to strike us, that just a little more effort will surely secure our complete surrender.
To take an example from the current news, if the President had responded to the Afghan riots by asking Karzai what Karzai would do to atone for the misbehavior of his people, he would have gotten Karzai to submit to America. Instead, by pre-emptively apologizing, all Obama has gotten have been demands for more concessions. This is basically the same "appease the bully" dynamic that Carter had with Khomeini, but all the worse because Khomeini was at least a hostile foreign head of state, while Karzai is a minor ally wholly dependent upon America for his physical survival. If we continue on this course, we can expect only further humiliation -- and the longer we continue on this course, the more likely it is that we will have to fight a war against Karzai as well as against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, because Karzai's psychological and political fortunes will depend on maintaining the dominance he is unexpectedly winning over Obama.
Conclusion
Our expectations that bullies are decent and civilized people like ourselves only work to our disadvantage. Not only do they cause us to submit and yield concessions where standing up and fighting would have achieved our ends, but they ensure that the fights will eventually happen anyway, and when they do happen, they will be more extreme and more violent and far more destructive than they would have been had we not repeatedly attempted appeasement.
This is true in the playground, and it is true on the world stage. It is folly to submit to a bully.