There are a lot of shades between black and white when it comes to bullies, and this effects what you can do against the bully. Whether it's in your family. Whether it's somebody outside your family. Whether it's somebody who stands six foot eight or two meters tall and weighs 100 kilos or 200 pounds. Whether it's somebody who is holding a knife or gun in their hand at that time. Whether it's somebody you need to help you in a different way, even though they are bullying you for now. These situations can be so diverse, and they affect how we deal with bullies. It's so diverse. So it's not easy to answer this question.
Sometimes we will stand up very strong. Sometimes we will phone the police to help stand up very strong. Sometimes we have to back totally away and have equanimity towards the situation, because it's absolutely nothing we can do. I mean what possibly could you do if some Thai police officer starts bulling you. There's almost nothing that you can do. If you want to resist or fight back, you can if you want to spend time at a Thai jail, because that's what you will probably get.
So there are times when we simply can't do anything. There are other times when we absolutely have to do something. And at those times, even if our life is at stake, we have to do something. And that's pretty tough, that's a pretty delicate situation. But it would have been nice if the average German person stood up more to the bullies 60 / 70 years ago. They felt they could not. In the beginning there were possibilities. Maybe they could have done something, but as time went by and it got worse, the thought for most people, was that they can't do anything. But some people did keep trying, risking life lives and many other people lost their lives in trying.
Now the person who never tries and allows the bully to continually beat up on them and others, they never try to stop it and over and over it's happening again, and over and over it's happening, they watch other people who do try to stop the bully. Think for yourself who would you rather be? Would you rather be someone who stands up for goodness, someone who stand up against evil, even if it means risking your life. Or would you rather be someone who just sits back and allows evil to continue and tries to hide away and think, "No, no, it doesn't matter to me"
These are very important questions that are personal questions. It's not a blanket, "yes or no" here but these are very deep questions, on how much you personally would be willing to step up and try to stop a bully. Sometimes it's not that difficult, you can step up and say, "Stop." Sometimes you can't do more. Sometimes you can't effectively stop bullies.
For me personally I have had a number of issues in my life where I stood up and stopped people from bullying me. I did it on principles. And that is an important thing, too. When you work on principles it's more important than working on a selfish ego.
As a kid, there was a guy who was a kind of a bully. He was much bigger than me. But I wasn't going to let him bully me. So I would scuffle with him occasionally, and every once in a while, we were actually good friends. But this wasn't really a huge issue.
As an adult, I have had to take legal action against people. Rosemary and I have fought, getting close to going to court against bullies who were trying to push us around. We won. We didn't do it in order to win a lot of money or whatever else. We did it because we didn't think what they were doing was right. We felt that if they got away with doing it to us, then they will do it to more people and then more and more and more people. We felt that we were not in danger by standing up against these people, so we weren't risking our lives at the time. We actually did this on a number of occasions.
It's not always pleasant. That is something else. It can be extremely difficult. They are going to be throwing all sorts of abuse at you, they may talk to more and more people who will turn against you. Slander and libel are normal courses of action for people who are bullying you as an adult. Slander and libel cases usually mean that they have been talking to other people negatively about you. Or they write things in newspapers that are not true about you. These things are against the law if you can prove that they are lies.
Sometimes you have to stand up, sometimes you have to take action. One thing about standing up against a bully and winning, is that you gain a lot of self belief, you gain a lot of confidence in yourself. When you don't stand up and you allow the bully to gain strength, when there is the ability to stand up, then what often will happen later, is a lot of self-hatred and negativity. So it's up to each individual when you can stand up and when you can't. But if you can and if you feel you can win and it would be good for everyone involved, then it can be worthy to try to stop the bully.