March Blog Post

Andrew Orejuela

Ivey

Communication 160

30 March 2017

March Blog Post

            This month we touched on a subject of family bullying and the impacts that it has on the victim of such bullying. Family bullying is when the bully is a person in the family, like an older sibling, is bullying another family member. The main difference in family bullying opposed to a bully at school is that the victim cannot really get away from their bully. When there is a bully at school, the victim can go home and not have to worry about anything happening to them until the next day. But a family bully goes home to their bully, they are constantly in fear when they are supposed to be in the comfort of their home. This article talks about two different experiences from two people and how they were affected by family bullying.

            The ideas brought up in class that related to family bullying is the I-it and the I-thou. I-It is defined as object centered, while I-thou is person centered. When someone is I-it, they think of others as objects and not people, and try to take advantage of the person. I-thou considers people as people, and takes their feelings into account. I-thou is what most people I think people should strive to be. It leads to selflessness and makes people courteous of others feelings.

            When discussing the I-thou and the I-it, the majority of the people in my group described the bully as I-it and the victim as i-though. The reasoning behind it is the bully sees the victim as something they can gain something from, as the bully may be insecure about themselves and this makes them feel better, while the victim considers the bully someone they still care about (as they are a family bully) and do not want to hurt them the same way the bully does to them. This was the consensus of the group and I do not believe anyone believed differently. But me on the other hand thought that they both look at each other in the i-it perspective. I believe this because I think the victim looks at the bully as someone who strikes fear into them and nothing else. When someone is being bullied, I don’t think the victim really cares about the bully and how they feel, even if the bully is a family member. It is hard for me to think that a victim of bullying really cares about the feelings of someone tormenting them.

            I remember when I was in 6^th grade and these 9^th graders were picking on my friends at I at our local elementary school. We were just playing basketball and these guys came up and wouldn’t get off the court we were playing on, they were just skating around and throwing a football at the backboard as we were trying to play. At this point, I didn’t care about them or their feelings, I just wanted them to leave us alone. So when we stopped and said something to them, they proceeded to take my friend Louie’s bike and throw it in a dumpster, and while Louie was running they grabbed him and said they were going to break his arm. In this situation, my friend Alex and I were I-thou to our friend Louie, but I-it towards the bullies. We cared about Louie and his personal health, so we did whatever we could to get him out of this situation. We just told them we were going to leave and they actually let him go, but when we were walking back the things we said we wanted to do to them for what they put us through, probably would be better if not explained. In my own personal experience, I don’t think of a bully at all of I-thou only an I-it.

            I found the I-thou and the I-it to be rather interesting ways have a perspective on different people. I can now analyze people and kind of recognize when a person is either of the two. I also can see when I am being either or, and try to lean more to I-thou than I-it when I realize I am I-it.