Have you ever thought about those who start, partake in or are victims of psychological Witch hunts?

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I have been thinking about this and I have been a victim of a witch hunt. I have been part of one and I felt guilty my whole life for it.

I was 8 and a gang of people at school decided to go around chasing a girl around the playground calling her names. I remember finding the being part of a gang thing and not being the victim great at the time. We then all got called in by the teacher who explained how it felt for the girl, I still remember her name, it was Karen. I felt so bad for her and very guilty, I never did anything like that again and was very nice to Karen from then on.

I do not understand why any adult would do this to another human. I know some people have untreatable personality disorders be that APD or NPD. Those people do not make up more than 5% of the population.

What I do not get is the adults that join in who don't have a personality disorder as an excuse.

Humans have a seemingly limitless capacity to be horrible to each other -- witch-hunts, persecution and bullying are only three of the myriad ways perfectly sane and normal people, just like you and me, find to be vile to other people.

I'm sorry to hear that you have been the victim of a witch hunt. It is terrifying to be on the end of that kind of behaviour. No-one deserves it. There isn't a link between the episode in the past when you were part of a gang being cruel to someone, and what has happened to you more recently. She didn't deserve it, and neither do you.

I hope you are able to find someone to stick up for you, and for empathy and justice, just as the teacher did for the girl.

The bonding together of a group to attack an outsider is part of our nature. In a group like that you lose some of your fear and the normal empathy for other people that might make you hesitate to fight.

We were shaped by evolution when we lived in tribes to have that tendency. A useful one when a strange tribe is attacking, but out of place now.

The fact that the tendency is built in is no excuse for acting on it, but it's not random evil when we do. It's something to recognise and resist.

I think that some people use gangs and groups to make up for the lack of love that they are receiving elsewhere.

And coupled with that, they like the belonging feeling.

Some very good points here.

It's why urban teens get into gangs, isn't it, and start killing people? They need to feel they belong, and belonging to the gang involves persecuting other human beings who are not members of the gang.

Often the bonding in such groups is based on fear. Followers are so afraid of becoming victims that they will not speak out and even breaking away is difficult.

I think there's a problem with saying that our capacity to attack in groups is shaped by evolution, and that the impulse to attack outsiders is something to recognise and resist.

Evolution tends to act as an alibi to evade moral responsibility for actions: it is tantamount to saying that certain behaviours are natural, and therefore we cannot be blamed for doing them. It also suggests that certain behaviours are an inherent part of our make-up, and that we are not shaped or changed by doing them.

But this is not so. When we do something cruel, it does shape us. We are the person who has done this thing, and we have taken a step towards becoming a person who is defined by this behaviour. If we have done something that is cruel, we have taken a step towards becoming a cruel person. We have a choice: we can turn away from our act, and try to become someone different, or we can carry on and repeat it. Our moral growth is made up of hundreds, thousands of these choices -- and our choices to turn away are much harder than those to carry on, for the most part.

But it isn't just an act of will. We all know what it is like to know that something is wrong, and will ourselves not to do it but still to do it. As Paul says, 'For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate ... for I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.' We get caught up in things that we know are bad through fear, through wanting to fit in, because we can, because we like it. Not joining in is hard, it's not a simple act of will, but a matter of practicing and having help and support to do what we know is right.

That's a very interesting post, niminy.

Presumably that concept explains the role of regret and remorse. They would be part of the process of refusing to move further down the road of becoming a cruel person. Another part would be atonement. Kind of rescuing yourself from becoming that person you don't want to be.

Gollum in the Hobbit also springs to mind. He was a Hobbit once, but the Ring turned him evil. He couldn't turn away from it, and the longer he kept it, the harder it got to escape its influence.

I'm on the receiving end of a witch hunt at the moment. It's so bad that we're actually moving in a couple of months because it's damaging to have to live with such a thing on a long term basis.

I'm on the receiving end because we're what you might call 'different' as a family. We're outsiders in that we weren't born or raised here and we have different accents and some out of the norm hobbies (nothing bizarre, but not mainstream).

All the people who are perpetrating it are women and older/middle aged.

I find that people are highly intolerant of anybody/thing that's different and takes them out of their comfort zone. We're not unpredictable people, but nobody can 'read' us or know what we're doing and I think they find it uncomfortable and unpleasant to have us in their midst.

The people who are doing it are also very miserable and angry types. I call them 'haters'. I feel that they hate themselves far more than they hate us which gives me some comfort

So sorry you're going through that Hidden.

Take care Hidden. I think it can be very true. People can gang up as well.

Hidden