A tyrant is a person whose self-confidence borders on stupidity. As a rule, this word is used in relation to a superior person: boss, teacher, parent. This person does not take into account the opinion of the people around him, does not listen to anyone, does everything in his own way and tirelessly oppresses his subordinates.
Where did the word "tyrant" come from?
The word "tyrant" was previously present only in the Russian folk speech. It was introduced into the literary language by Alexander Ostrovsky. Ostrovsky borrowed a word from a merchant-bourgeois dialect and used it in the play "Hangover in someone else's feast." In one of the dialogues of the play, the provincial secretary Agrafena Platonovna, talking with the teacher Ivanov, talks about a man and calls him a tyrant.
Dobrolyubov in his article on "The Dark Kingdom" reveals the essence of tyranny and tells about the harm of this phenomenon. According to Dobrolyubov, tyranny is a consequence of the oppression of the powerless by those in power. Not meeting resistance, the tyrant knows no restraint: he demands complete worship for himself and does not tolerate purposeful, rational activity.
Causes of the phenomenon
Psychologists identify several reasons for the manifestation of petty tyranny. A tyrant can become a person who is offended by the whole world due to personal failures and complexes. The first case is typical for university professors. In a university, a person with high self-esteem has a hard time, it is very difficult, and sometimes impossible, to make a career. There is only one thing left: to take revenge on the students and turn into a "harmful teacher."
Personal complexes are even more difficult. The overweight take revenge on the slender, the ugly - on the beautiful. Very often there are cases when the bosses, who put youth on the altar of their careers, simply harass young and beautiful subordinate employees. Business women do not want to live a full life, so they strictly monitor that their subordinates are not happy either. Unlike offended losers, notorious bosses achieve career heights, as they do everything in order to achieve power and show all the "beautiful" who is in charge here.
Sometimes it happens that a completely adequate boss suddenly becomes a tyrant. In this case, you need to look for the hidden causes of this phenomenon. Among these reasons, psychologists call a midlife crisis in men and menopause in women, diabetes mellitus, taking alcohol or drugs, the presence of a latent disease, nervous exhaustion.
It is useless to fight the tyrant. This person does not tolerate resistance and prefers to be surrounded by faithful "slaves". A smart subordinate, interested in building his own career, can pretend to be a "slave" for a while and try to use the situation for his own purposes. As a rule, the tyrant behaves inadequately already at the interview, so the applicant has enough time to decide whether to contact such a boss.