Bullied by Global Capital: Revolt of The Consumatrons

We are all bullied into working for an economic system which in turn bullies the planet.  This chain of exploitation, injustice and inequality is not simply a side effect of capitalism.  It is what drives it.  And like all bullies, this system depends on the subordination and psychological control of its victims.  Our society is so oppressive that, simply questioning our system requires tremendous personal courage and imagination.  But doing so allows one eventually to begin to see the absurdity of our manufactured institutions, arbitrary nature of our social norms, and anthropocentric biases which have kept this economic necrosystem running all along.

Capitalism became successful by normalising mutual bullying and abuse as part of the otherwise free economy.  The worst bullying is the one which the victim cannot even acknowledge, because of how hopelessly powerless they have been made to feel.  This is how corporate employers bully us today.  We are slaves to the clients and to overtime, forced to put on fake big smiles whatever the situation, whether the customer is being an asshole or not.  The stress, job insecurity and fear of dismissal become a mental illness which turns into PTSD.  Many employees choose to become bullies themselves in order to survive.  The most psychopathic ones, i.e. your manager, are usually natural-born bully pros.  It is these psychopaths today who call the shots in our politics and corporations, refusing to acknowledge the bullying of people and nature which has brought this planet to the polycrisis of overshoot.

One of the very first detrimental effects bullying has on its victims is to terrorise them into self-doubt and shame for who they are.   They struggle to fight back because their self-esteem has been weakened.  They’ve been called names, threatened and humiliated to the point where it is easier to take flight, move on, “take the higher ground” as we say, because they are “better than their bully”.  They find some dark corner to hide in, giving their bully all the sunlight to enjoy.  The reality is that they have stopped believing that they deserve their own place in the sun.  They forgot to get angry.

But forgiving and forgetting a bully is a mistake, because it allows the bullying to continue long after the bully has left the building.  The trauma to self-esteem is there, always fresh, and will slowly boil up into unprocessed anger over the course of years if it is not opened, cauterized and healed.  In their attempt to make peace with their bullies and put the unpleasant incident behind them as quickly as possible, some victims may even try to rationalise it: accept in some way that maybe this abuse was deserved, that it was “part of life”.  It happened to them because of something they did wrong, or maybe just who they are as an individual.  Or maybe it was just the lucky draw.  Most of them will take their experience as a message that they, in turn, must learn to become bullies in order to survive.  Our psychonomic necrosystem thrives by turning each of us into dedicated bullies specialised in their own field.  Those who do it best are set to reap the greatest rewards.   

But this is yet another way to compartmentalise the trauma.  It is a missed opportunity to take stock and learn, rather than pass on the abuse.  Bullying should never be “accepted”.  Giving the bully even the slightest bit of leeway or credit doesn’t do justice to the victim.  If anything, it makes the trauma worse.  Both the body and the mind remember the trauma, and they won’t rest until true forgiveness, true justice, or both, are served. The only way forward is to realise that what happened to you was wrong.  You did nothing to deserve this, under any circumstances.  The healthy reaction is to be angry, very angry.  You should be out there fighting back, toilet-papering your bully’s house if that makes you feel better, maybe even setting their car on fire or at least pouring a couple truckloads of fast-setting cement into their drainage system.  If you didn’t do this at the time you can do it now, even decades later!  Your anger must be acknowledged and honoured, rather than stifled and strangled.  By getting angry you are taking the very first step to regaining sovereignty of your emotional world from your bully.  You are beginning to dig yourself out of the hole of silence they threw you in.

Anger is a natural emotion and a vital response of our immune system which, if suppressed, can begin to take its toll on us.  Anger must be lived, externalised, and expressed.  Anger is not a vehicle for revenge.  It is the first step in processing events and learning from them, rather than forgetting they ever happened.  Anger helps us develop healthy new behaviours and strategies that will make us more resilient to future abuse.  Processing a trauma means recognising what the bully has done to you, acknowledging them for being a bully, and getting angry.

Only after the anger has been processed and set aside can one finally begin to walk away, this time for good, rather than return to their trauma every few years, and to a new therapist each time.  PTSD is real, and the surest way to become trapped in PTSD for life is to refuse to deal with anger and trauma.  Yet our repressive system of institutionalised toxic positivity rarely ever provides us valid avenues through which we can express healthy anger.

For me, it was recurring episodes of bullying I experienced within corporate environments which led me to seek therapy, not knowing at the time that I was ultimately seeking help for unprocessed bullying that had begun in childhood, before I was even a teenager.  Having kept quiet all my life out of shame for the nasty and dehumanising names that other kids called me, I never dealt with my bullying trauma, or my anger.  I never cried either, because boys are not supposed to cry.  I became an emotionally stunted zombie, denying myself the opportunity to process the harassment I had been subjected to, express healthy anger, and stand up to the internalised fear, shame and humiliation.  I compartmentalised unpleasant feelings and false messages about myself, rather than questioning them and putting an end to them, once and for all. 

I only grieved and cried for the first time 45 years after the bullying.  It was like being reborn: being able to acknowledge what had happened to me, see it with more mature eyes, and finally shrug it off.  The processing I went through allowed me to recount events with a whole new perspective, and prevent the past from messing with my present, ever again.

In a world which bullies us into submission from an increasingly early age, we need to find ways to get in touch with our anger, connect with it and listen to what it tells us.  Connecting to our anger is an unpleasant experience which in fact forces us to relive our trauma, and this is why few of us dare to do it.  That’s why it is called PTSD.  But by taking this brave step and connecting to our anger, we start a conversation with our past, and with any bullies from our past – whether it was a parent, an employer, or a life partner.  This time, we can talk back to them and say to them what we never had the strength to tell them to their face, there and then.

It took me four decades and a fortune spent on therapy to even begin to acknowledge that I had been bullied in the first place, and that it had damaged my self-esteem and relationships with people.  You see, during the 80s, you couldn’t go home and tell your mom, “mom, the other kids are calling me a faggot”, or “mom, what is a whore?”.  I was verbally abused for my skin colour, femininity and just about everything else from the age of five, not realising that some of these kids were actually jealous of me. Instead of standing up to my bullies, I became a “straight A” student because I thought this was the way for me to escape, leave this piss-smelling small-minded town with its small-minded people, and never come back.  And I did.  And I had a successful career. 

But neither did I escape my PTSD, nor did I prevent myself from further bullying.  Because I found out that bullying is everywhere in our world, even in the most “educated” sectors.  Bullying is rife within corporate cultures, who actually endorse and encourage it through their HR and Employee Conduct protocols which favour bullies over victims, as this increases “productivity”.  Bullying is perpetrated by the most senior managers and tenured asshole psychopaths who have turned it into a game.  Most of all, it is perpetrated by a system which has chained us to salaries, brainwashed us into meaningless consumption, and turned us into accomplices in the destruction of the planet.

If you think you have never been bullied, you probably need to reconsider your position and discover the anger inside of you: the anger which unites us, and which can be harnessed to revolt against this self-destructive and planetary-ending system. The time to get angry was yesterday.  The time is running out, and you are not as trapped and powerless as you might think. The bullies and psychopaths are out in force, using you to destroy the planet, while distracting you with Netflix and air conditioning to make you think everything is fine.  Will you continue to let them do this?

George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist. You can follow him on Twitter @99blackbaloons

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