Finding the Antidote to Bullying

 We (individually at Voices Education Project) and collectively as a culture, have done a good job of pointing the finger at bullies and bullying. We have raised consciousness to the ceiling.

But the culture of violence continues. Why?
Because we have created school curricula, documentaries, anecdotes and antidotes; we say "It Gets Better," or "I Choose."

We pronounce with any number of clichés, tired pseudo-encouragement slogans, and we think we motivate change. But as long as we miss the point, support and demonstrate a culture of violence, or perpetuate a disconnect between adult behavior and childrens' bullying, the violence is not going away.

We need to teach and role model social wellness.

We can't have it both ways. We can't mourn for Newtown but place the value of guns above the value of children. We can't favor the purchase of semi-automatic weapons with magazines that hold multiple rounds of rapid fire deadly mini missiles over sensible laws about background checks and responsible ownership. And I've never seen a deer ferocious enough to require an AK-47 to bring it down.

We can't feature bullying, ridiculing at a distance and cat fights on prime time TV and expect our children not to notice. We can't cut someone off in traffic or make a hand gesture that our children witness and expect them to behave compassionately with their peers.

We can't keep dragging our children through the gauntlet of bullying and dismembering people on the front pages of magazines and tabloids at the supermarket checkout and wonder where they learn to post bullying messages on public forums. Public figures, the famous, politicians, and celebrities are people despite the tabloids' deliberate formula to gradually de-humanize them in order to make you more comfortable with bullying them and dismembering them publicly more palatable.

We, as adults and role models can't call others names or epithets, or marginalize and bully other groups and peoples, offer hypocritical and empty speeches or pay only lip service to real problems of real people and social justice; we can't place profit above people or show indifference to someone else's misfortune or rights, or access to work or healthcare; and we can't ignore the common good in favor of the "entitled" few or grab and hoard planetary resources privately that are meant for everyone, and expect our children to be respectful, inclusive, kind or compassionate toward others.

If we don't walk the talk we are not credible. And if we talk the walk and don't walk it, our words are empty, our values are empty and our children will be as empty. Words are employed for violent means all the time, and that is where the disconnect lies. If we don't walk the talk, we have no credibility when we talk to kids about bullying.

Then when communicating with kids, we need to talk their talk or speak their language. Lecturing about bullying doesn't work when hypocritically pious adults preach while at the same time demonstrating bullying to youth with our own behaviors. We can't speak about how unethical bullying is and how dangerous the consequences while we role model it to them.

It's time to connect the dots and walk the talk while talking it." Preaching and anti-bullying rhetoric doesn't work while our own lack of ethics shows. We need to demonstrate the antidote for bullying... compassion, empathy, community building and stewardship.

The new edition of "Words and Violence" features "performance art" because I believe that is the most powerful contemporary forum for demonstration and it's where hope for change lives.