From the playground to politics: it’s the bullies who rule. But it doesn’t have to be this way | George Monbiot

a large and impressive study Children’s progress into adulthood has shown that those who engage in bullying and aggressive behavior at school are more likely to thrive at work. They get better jobs and earn more. The researchers claim to be surprised by their findings, but is it really that remarkable? The association of senior positions with bullying and dominance behavior will undoubtedly come as a shock to many.

This is not to say that all people with good jobs or who run organizations are bullies. Far from it. It’s not hard to think of good people in powerful positions. What this tells us is that we don’t need aggressive people to organize our lives for us. Neither good leadership, nor organizational success, nor innovation, insight or foresight require a dominant mindset. In fact, anything can be slowed down by someone throwing their weight around.

Whether in game theory or the study of other species, you quickly discover how the dominance behavior of a few can harm society as a whole. For example, a study of cichlids found that dominant males have “lower signal-to-noise ratios” (noise and anger, which mean nothing) and have counterproductive effects on group performance. Does anything sound familiar?

A win for bullies is a loss for everyone else: their success is a zero-sum game. Or negatively: the first study I mentioned also showed that school bullies are more likely to abuse alcohol, smoke, break the law and develop mental health problems later in life. But the triumph of the bullies is also a result of the dominant narrative of our time: for the past 45 years, neoliberalism has characterized human life as a battle that some must win and others must lose. Only through competition can we distinguish between who is worthy and unworthy in this quasi-Calvinistic religion. The competition is of course always manipulated. The point of neoliberalism is to provide justifications for an unequal and coercive society, a society ruled by bullies.

It’s a perfect circle: neoliberalism generates inequality; and inequality, such as another paper shows, is strongly associated with bullying at school. With greater differences in income and status, stress increases, competition becomes fiercer and the urge to dominate increases. The pathology feeds on itself.

The researchers who conducted the first study, after finding that bullies thrive, suggest that we “need to help channel this trait in children in a more positive way.” In my opinion this is a wrong conclusion. Instead, we should try to build societies where aggression and dominance are not rewarded. It would be better if schools focused on discouragement and counseling.

But at every stage of our lives we are forced into destructive competition. Not only are children repeatedly forced into mismatches, but so are schools. For example, in England, with its Sats tests and brutal Ofsted regime, these competitions are damaging the well-being of the population children And teachers. As always, the competition is organized to enable the rich and powerful to win. But as Charles Spencer explains in his memoir of boarding school life, winning is also losing: Parents who send their children to private schools pay to create a dominant outward personality, but the shelled child can become tangled in a knot. of fear and anxiety. flight and anger.

This counter-education is reinforced later in life by a thousand self-help books, websites and videos. For example, a popular site and program called The force moves, run by social scientist Lucio Buffalmano, teaches “10 Ways to Be More Dominant.” These include applying social pressure, claiming territory, ‘aggression, assertiveness and punishment’ and slapping the face. You can also learn eight ways to dominate women, an essential lesson because apparently “women sleep with men who force them to submit.” The techniques Buffalmano promotes include “hold her face when she refuses to kiss you”, “jokingly push her into a horizontal position”, “jokingly drag her to the bed” and “penetrate her mind with ‘Daddy Dominance'” .

Buffalmano claims he wants to “advance humanity by empowering good men to progress, lead and win.” The most likely outcome is an increase in the number of full-blown shocks. Instead, we must learn to be thoughtful, prosocial, and kind: resisting dominance, no matter who exerts it.

Obvious bullying in the workplace is generally no longer tolerated. But I suspect that in many cases the apparent improvement is a result of bullies learning to mask their impulses while continuing to control and manipulate without crossing the HR line.

But open bullying is again the order of the day in politics. Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, Orbán, Milei and others do little to disguise their gross dominance behavior. When Trump went after Hillary Clinton during their presidential debate and when he shamefully mocked a journalist’s disability, we were able to see the child he was and the child he still is. Our political systems – centralized, hierarchical – are ripe for exploitation by bullies. Just like in the old days on the schoolyards, the worst people end up at the top.

The same dynamics are at play at a global level. Governments assure their people that they are involved in a “global race”: if we fall behind, another country will catch up. This narrative of zero-sum competition justifies any abuse. It was used by European countries to rationalize their empire building and wars of choice. It quickly became accompanied by a selfish myth: that the dominance race will be won by the “dominant race.” As Charles Darwin put it: “The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world.” Through subtler means and with subtler justifications, the rich countries are still playing the same game: their wealth depends largely on extraction from other countries.

But as the one-sided race between countries continues, we are collectively racing towards the abyss of environmental collapse. If ever there was a need for cooperation and cooperation, it is now. But competition rules, a competition we will all lose.

In short, we need to stop celebrating coercive and controlling behavior. At every stage of education and career development, and in politics, economics and international relations, we must seek to replace a competitive ethos with a cooperative one.

Here’s the amazing thing about humans, unlike cichlids: that’s not the case must be so. We can control our own behavior and devise and build better forms of organization. Through deliberative, participatory democracy, both in politics and in the workplace, we can create systems that work for everyone. There is no law of nature that dictates that playground bullies must continue to demand tribute for the rest of their lives.