OF CAESAR DE SILVESTRI
The term is relatively new, but even during this short time has been gradually applied in different contexts rather than the original. It was in fact used by Konrad Lorenz and other ethologists then to describe group behavior in animals - including those of alarm, avoidance, escape, and also those of many small animals aggressive against a larger one. In the latter sense, the term was applied by Heinemann and Olweus behavior of groups of children and adolescents who then join forces against a peer (a phenomenon called "bullying" in the United Kingdom and Australia). And finally arrived Leymann to describe the marginalization, abuse, harassment or actual persecution against an adult by another adult or a group of adults in the working environment or simply in a social. Old stuff
Yes, scientists have finally come to consider it, but the practice is very old. Probably because the earliest human groups. I, for one, I saw it at work since I was a boy and did not know or Lorenz or the other authors mentioned above. It should be said that I grew for several years in Tuscany, where it is easy to switch between benign mockery (that is, one might say, in daily bread a group of friends), to the less benevolent and more aggressive behavior against a hapless collectively, targeting its some defect or weakness (sometimes nonexistent), making it the laughingstock of the group, often reaching levels of real cruel psychological torture. When
okay
The most effective defense is of course not to show displeasure, annoyance, anger or bad mood, right from the start of a joke that threatens to become more pungent. And because it's easy to happen, and because sooner or later it happens to every team member to become the victim of such an attempt, an attitude of indifference and almost fun to participate in bars more appropriate is the best way to dismantle the intention of the group more or less vicious. In fact, the intention of the group is not always strictly malevolent. Often it is rather a kind of ordeal - something like an exam, a test of arms - to see if the victim is able to withstand the pressure of seemingly hostile group instead of giving in and collapse. In fact, at the slightest sign of discomfort or pain, peer pressure increases, becomes more acute and persistent, sometimes it becomes really vicious, and the victim will continue to endure for unpredictable weather. Those who grew up in this school knows so well the bullying (or bullying) and knows how to take it lightly, check and perhaps reverse it at the expense of those who started the game. Even when it was dictated by hostile intentions seriously, persecution, slander or worse. Another advantage of those being targeted is the fact that those who would exercise effective operation of harassment against someone, for example in the workplace, usually does not know how to do it. Have you heard about in the abstract, maybe read something about it, but does not have first hand experience. He would need a starting point and can only realistically unfairly exaggerate or invent any pretext. Would require complicated and does not find or is it just someone with little or no reliable. Would need a systematic and coordinated plan and should instead limited to small, sporadic attempts of interference similar to tease from the parish.
Sometimes when it's bad, though, it happens that the victim is targeted by an expert. This may be a Tuscan raised in the school that I said above and who knows firsthand the strategy and technique of persecution. It may be a former student of colleges or schools clerical, especially Jesuit, where you can practice with taste and refinement, the system of "making life impossible" to a companion tried disliked for some reason. And sometimes the best example is instructive as to make war the same teachers, priests and priests. In these cases, if the victim is not as skilled in the persecutor or of the persecutors, the only available resource - know you know it and you have - is to have recourse to the sense of humor. I mean, if an objective is in a position of inferiority - whether it is for example, the employee more or less voluntary, and resentful of a despotic master who tries to vacuum around him to force him to leave - the sense of humor and humor that the victim is unable to produce the most powerful weapons that can be used against abuse, oppression and persecution. Of course, the victim if they could go and send the master to that country. This does not deserve another. But doing so would fall into his game and the game would win. If the victim instead wants to stay and accept this challenge and a bit unfair 'cowardly, may use humor and just shrug its direct or indirect provocations hypocritical. In a word, may decide not to take it seriously. If you take it seriously who do you doers, or t'opprime persecute you, you run the risk of ending up accepting and adopting the assessment, the assessment that he has of you. In other words, you could end up seeing yourself through his eyes and feel responsible or guilty of how it is considered. In short, if you take it seriously, he may be able to crush you, break you and destroy you. If you're able to laugh at him, to see his vanity and weakness of his claims of superiority, if you realize his dishonesty and cowardice, its contradictions, its dishonesty and bad faith, humor will make you more protected, stronger, tougher, stronger. And then the victory, or at least maintaining your emotional balance and your location, it becomes possible.
