Boys and pack energy
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Boys and pack energy
Boys are naturally social beings who love to interact and engage with others. They want to have friends, feel like they belong and be themselves with their peers. But ask any young boy to describe the older boys they know and they will readily share how they can be hard, rough and very mean. Boys who are caring and friendly one on one suddenly become heartless and harsh when they join in with a much bigger group. Why is that?
The schoolyard is a place where strong friendships and social skills are forged, but also a place where boys pick on others and bully them. It might start off as banter and ribbing, having a joke at another’s expense: you are fat, skinny, a sissy, have glasses, braces, hair, you’re a mamma’s boy – there is always something found to bring someone down and make the perpetrator look big.
At the school I went to the older boys felt it was their job to give everyone nicknames, but not the lighthearted endearing ones you might like; these ones were designed to crush you, knock your confidence, and make you doubt who you know yourself to be. It was as if they were saying, “I won’t bother to get to know who you really are – so I’ll say how you remind me of (insert cartoon character here)”. These nicknames were promptly adopted by every kid around, giving added kudos to the one who came up with it.
And what do you do with the whole school calling you a name you don’t like? “Can’t you take a joke? toughen up you wuss, it’s just a laugh”. If you react, the nickname sticks and stings some more, so after a while you accept it as a way of deflecting the hurt. You might even embrace it more than your real name; yes, I do look a bit like that cartoon character you say to yourself, I’ll even behave a bit like them and play along with the joke.
What seemed to be ‘harmless fun’ in the schoolyard at first is gradually revealed as the bullying, intimidation, and manipulation it truly is, where everyone’s raw nerves are mercilessly exploited to breaking point. In this atmosphere true friendship is rare; you seek allegiances for protection and security as a priority.
Many are left scarred and devastated, moving to adulthood clinging to coping strategies they continue to play out: everyone trying to fit in to an ever-changing flux of social ranking, to get ahead and be immune. When you put someone else down, your status is elevated or so it seems, you gain power, influence and others’ respect, and so this abusive behaviour is repeated again and again.
Showing your feelings only seems to make it worse so a boy learns to bottle it up inside, put on a tough exterior, retaliate verbally and join in the game: this was considered ‘becoming a man’. We all wanted to grow up of course, but it was clear to me that boys I knew were not becoming wiser and prepared for the world, but harder, less caring, more lost and hurt – disregarding the connection they once knew as a child.
I looked at the way one of my friends was treated by his older brother – the mood at their house was ‘nasty is normal’, competition reigned and reinforced the idea that ‘might is right’, the top dog ruled the family, similar to a wolf pack. The boys in the sporting club behaved as one, so strong was their unwritten code – if you acted the same you belonged and would be left alone, but if you didn’t you were ostracised and ridiculed. I saw the insecurity of those seeking the protection of the gang and selling out their old friends with slander and ridicule for a slap on the back from a fellow wolf.
Boys being cheeky and pushing the boundaries comes from insecurity, there is no malice, ultimately it does not sting. In an individual you can feel the behaviour comes from being hurt, but there is a rawness, and realness that is there: the door to Love is still ajar. The pack energy that takes over groups though is void of any of that: there is no remorse, no care. It’s insidious and destructive, harder, darker and packs more of a wallop than any individual can deliver on their own.
While those who deliver it might cop the blame, the reaction and the resentment, it’s the pack that is equally responsible and continues to fuel the abuse.
It is clear something significant happens when we join a group; when we give ourselves over to something bigger, everyone’s hurts insecurities and fears merge – it seems to be one huge force that comes at those close at hand. When we are on the receiving end it feels like the whole class, or school or even the world is against us. It feels intense.
When you watch mobs of boys in this energy, just like hooligans at a sporting match or men brawling outside a pub, it feels like what is taking place it is not coming from them per se but an outside force you cannot see. Like puppets in a show their strings are being pulled – but by what? What feeds the pack energy – what keeps winding it up like a rubber band when naturally in our essence we would never behave this way? Could it be there’s something at play in our everyday lives, something we have accepted as normal that continually feeds the lies?
When someone acts out of character we say, “What’s got into you?” – like something external made them play up or express that way. We might blame the violence in a computer game or movie, but what if the energy came from closer to home? This is the uncomfortable truth we don’t like to stop consider or address.
Every time a young boy that is told to “toughen up”, that “sensitivity is for girls”, “boys don’t cry” – when he hears that it seems to come from everywhere, parents, school, movies, etc; the very essence of who he knows himself to be is knocked out of him by a group force bigger than any one individual can deliver. This toxic masculinity is a direct attack on a boy’s natural sensitivity and tenderness.
"Men are not naturally cruel.
Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations Volume I, ed 1, p 559
Their ease with being cruel has been introduced to them from young by a world that keeps telling them that they are to be tough and rugged"
For girls, this macho ideal of teasing and taunting attacks sacredness and makes her feel she can’t show it. So, when a girl in the schoolyard hears the lewd comments that boys think they must make in her presence, everyone is watching to see if she can handle the boy’s cheekiness and pushing the boundaries of what he can get away with, and handle it she may, yet the impact and goal is felt in a chipping away and eroding of her natural expression. But what knocks her wind out is the group force of how women all over the world are being degraded and all that pack energy comes through the boy in that moment and hits her all at once.
And yet again the pack energy is harder, darker and packs more of a wallop than any individual can deliver or withstand and the message is delivered loud and clear that any level of sacredness in the girl or sensitivity in the boy are not welcome here.
If we don’t like being bullied by the bigger boys when we start primary school, what do we do? We tend to feel like we are powerless and it is up to someone else to step in and stop it all. We find a way to cope, which usually means we shut down to protect ourselves – we pretend we don’t feel, we pretend it does not hurt, we toughen up and close our heart. In doing so we begin the abuse of ourselves and contribute to the pool of abusive energy in this world…
There will always be bystanders that think they are innocent because they are not the bully, but by watching and accepting it they are feeding pack energy to the perpetrator; this enabling is an energetic interaction that is often missed but always present. That is not to deny the responsibility of the individual perpetrator as they chose to wield a force over another, but those bystanders who think they are innocent are actually assisting the evil. Anyone who has been bullied knows it is one thing to be on the receiving end but what really hurts is that your friends don’t step in and defend you.
In the aftermath of a bullying event some remain in the pack energy for longer, some even gloat, enjoying another’s suffering. Some feel remorseful that they got caught up in the force that went too far. Some drop it and walk away like nothing occurred, like it’s a violent cartoon and there are no consequences; that another human being has been crushed and this is normal behaviour they will get over it like it didn’t hurt and nothing happened. Like they were entertained by the cartoon and want to watch the next episode. Meanwhile the adults justify it by saying “this is all part of growing up” and “it never did me any harm” and “boys will be boys”.
I used to think I was innocent, and was happy for the ringleaders to take the blame. But underneath there was a guilt for not stepping in – I knew that being a witness was not as passive as it seemed. By witnessing abuse and doing nothing there is acceptance of it; by doing nothing the bullying is legitimised and we enable it to carry on unrestrained.
I used to be one of the bystanders on the side who witnessed the abuse but was too scared to stop it. I was intimidated by the force of pack energy that I thought would quickly turn on me if I dared speak up.
Eventually I realised that when I watched abuse take place, I would feel the pain of the victim like I was being bullied myself. It started to feel as though the pain of my own guilt and inaction was worse than whatever the pack could do to me so I began at last to speak up, step in and break it up. I was surprised at how easy it was to do, and how quickly boys involved returned to themselves when given the opportunity and permission.
I avoided the mean boys thinking they were always mean; fear drove me to hate. All that withdrawing bottled up inside came out in angry outbursts and I would lose myself, go red in the face with rage, do and say things in a violence that was uncharacteristic and after I would not remember, like I had been in a drunken stupor for a time and all I could feel was the fuming hot heaviness of allowing that force to come through me. I now understand that if we lose ourselves a force can come through any one of us; the pack is not a mysterious thing to be feared but a group of my brothers who have momentarily given themselves over to a force. It’s not personal.
Now I trust myself and what I feel more, I know myself and can hold my own under pressure because I value this. Because I hold a love for myself, I can understand what is going on for others too. My awareness offers me everything I need to know about any given situation based on the energy that’s there at play behind it all.
So for us as ‘grown up’ men, what has changed from the schoolyard to the workplace? Are our adult interactions still fed by the same insecurity? Are we all still on the run from the bullying energy and the pack that we have given power to in the moments we choose to escape? What if we can stop it now, by simply reclaiming who we truly are? Then we might see that together as boys and men we can be tender, confirming, deeply honouring, respectful and very powerful and strong in the way we choose to live and carry on.
We all contribute to a group energy with every move we make and so have the capacity to boost the pool of love that supports others to care and be aware, all around the world. In this we can claim back our true place in the whole and the majesty and glory of what it is to be a true man – one of many brothers here to serve a bigger plan.
Filed under
Abuse, Anti-social behaviour, Bullying
