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Why People Feel Like Victims

nautil.us

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Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#81

Post by revscat »

WalterBright wrote: post #14
pasabagi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a moral or a factual statement? I guess I'd reject the whole victim/perpetrator dichotomy and say that people's conditions are contingent on forces largely out of their control. That's a factual statement. Lots of people and societies find this very uncomfortable - we generally like the cosmos to be largely about us, down to our decisions, both for the better and for the worse.

> people's conditions are contingent on forces largely out of their control. That's a factual statement. It is a factual statement, I agree, but in the US it is not true. Peoples' lives are the sum of their choices, large and small. One can choose to learn how to make better choices. I spent a significant portion of every day learning to make better choices and doing things that will improve my life. Such as exercisi…

The single biggest and most accurate predictor of financial success, or lack thereof, is which zip code people are born in. Libertarian sentiments like yours refuse to acknowledge in any meaningful sense environmental effects upon a population’s well-being, instead almost exclusively focusing on individual choice.

Which is absurd, and why it is not respected despite decades of evangelical proselytizing.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#82

Post by tstrimple »

xupybd wrote: post #75
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another person of color, I agree. What really makes me nervous is the talk of "white privilege". Although it is not meant as such, it is saying that in the world as is, all things being equal, white people are superior to people of color. For example, if you had to evaluate totally objectively whether you should hire a white CEO or a person of color as CEO, and they were otherwise equal, if you believe in the fram…

My main problem with White privilege is that is drawing a big line between white people and people of color. IMO one of the big civil rights achievements was to get rid of that divide. To start seeing people as individuals of equal value, based on their character not group identity. I'm white, my wife is not. I fear where my kids will land in all of this. If we are drawing hard lines between people how will half whit…

> IMO one of the big civil rights achievements was to get rid of that divide.

This never happened. You can't just eliminate explicitly racist laws from your books and expect all the racism and bigotry which led to those laws in the first place to disappear by magic. Pretending like there aren't different outcomes and general experiences between races also doesn't magically eliminate those differences. If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it applies to racism as well which is why understanding and talking about systemic racism is so important.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#83

Post by brigandish »

mhoad wrote: post #57
slowmovintarget wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teaching that words can't do you permanent harm, yes. How you feel when being called a name, or having someone say something hurtful may not be a choice. But whether you dwell on it, whether you choose to continue to feel hurt, whether you choose to act in revenge... all of those things are within one's control. We absolutely should teach self-control and mastery of one's emotions to children. It helps them become sa…

I really don’t know what you mean by teaching mastery of ones self control to children. They are kids not monks. You can teach them all the self control you like, I don’t think there is a serious argument that let’s say for some particularly sadistic reason I wanted to bully them and do real harm. How difficult do you think it would be exactly? Kids or adults for that matter aren’t failures for feeling hurt. The idea…

> The goal of life isn’t to not feel emotions in response to words.

It’s not the goal of monks either, so perhaps mastery of oneself shouldn’t be taken as simply being stoic?

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#84

Post by tstrimple »

armenarmen wrote: post #76
arp242 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that didn't happen.

Who were the people that put forward the “say happy holidays not merry Christmas” issue? Or was the issue invented (and lost) by conservative talking heads?

Mostly the latter. Happy Holidays isn't about excluding Christmas and Christians. It's acknowledging that there are multiple religious celebrations in similar spirit going on around the same time. I'm not sure why so many people feel like more inclusive language somehow is meant to exclude them. Some more history on the usage.

https://www.history.com/news/the-war-of-words-behind-happy-h...

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#85

Post by XorNot »

armenarmen wrote: post #76
arp242 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that didn't happen.

Who were the people that put forward the “say happy holidays not merry Christmas” issue? Or was the issue invented (and lost) by conservative talking heads?

I like how at no point it's occurred to you that maybe people are just being polite or considerate towards the beliefs of others...or that a business might not want to stipulate a specific theological belief it's employees must put forward.

That just can't be it for some reason, it's got to be a conspiracy against christianity!

Talk about victimhood...

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#86

Post by heymijo »

armenarmen wrote: post #76
arp242 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that didn't happen.

Who were the people that put forward the “say happy holidays not merry Christmas” issue? Or was the issue invented (and lost) by conservative talking heads?

Roger Ailes, the man who made Fox News, generated the controversy around this when it was a non-issue and drove it into the public spotlight.

You can read the book The Loudest Voice in the Room or watch the mini-series based on it to learn more.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#87

Post by pseudalopex »

WalterBright wrote: post #64
pseudalopex wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most businesses fail. Why do you think that is?

80% of businesses fail in 5 years. There are many reasons, but the usual ones revolve around things like not understanding accounting, not putting in the effort, etc. It's also true that many very successful people failed at business time after time before figuring it out. Fortunately, American culture doesn't look askance at people that fail at business and try again.

What percent of businesses fail because the owners don't understand accounting? What percent fail because they don't put in the effort? Where did you find this data?

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#88

Post by XorNot »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #24

If you are a victim you are entitled to treat your victimizer with contempt and, increasingly, violence. It removes your victimizer from then normal moral calculus. All the better if the victimizer can be made a general category, and as amorphous and abstract as possible, thereby allowing your manipulator to direct your anger at whoever they choose from that category. Note that this does not necessarily mean that you…

I don't know if this covers how people "feel" so much as how they justify how they act but it does cover something important.

The language of victimhood is standard amongst despots and fascists. The enemy is simultaneously weak and easily defeated, and an imminent threat to which we can never let our guard down.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#89

Post by HwdSlle »

the manipulation process of the world populates in participation plots the permanence [of];

to which culrural situations where made from virtual insanity ro ponder the proceesing;

societies (groups) then seeking the trending phenomena is the absense of "talk shows" on which fame are made;

computers then provide the tools where sentinels in observation of own activities in lack of influence generate the delay, the acomplishment are seen from the views at the viewer expectations;

the lone path to which, are commented in vain;

posts is a value coin to be censored from the processing world;

being so held hostage of situations demanding the assimilation [of];

....

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#90

Post by XorNot »

WalterBright wrote: post #51
the_only_law wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's never been easier and cheaper to get an education in the US Source? even the most conservative people I know who went to school in the 80s/90s say they could never afford it now. I myself am trying to figure out how to pay for it without $40k grand in debt if I choose to go back.

MIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfQxyVuLeCs&list=PL9F74AFA03... K-12: https://www.khanacademy.org/ All free, available on the supercomputer in your pocket.

All completely irrelevant since they don't provide the official certifications which employers check.

Not to mention entirely dependent on the unsupported precept that traditional teaching structures were apparently worthless - but, it's cheap to put your money where your mouth is on this: are you going to save a lot of time and money and educate your children solely via these resources?

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