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Why People Feel Like Victims

nautil.us

131–140 of 510 posts

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I live in a 90% Christian country and everyone says "Happy Holidays" and it doesn't have anything to do with religious tolerance but rather with the fact that there are multiple Christian holidays around Christmas time.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#132
post #58

It's popular to be a victim these days. Much more popular than I recall it being earlier in my lifetime. It even goes so far as to regard people who aren't victims with contempt.

I’m a big fan of David Goggings and the self reliance messaging. A treasure. He should be getting more attention but I guess he runs a bit against mainstream narratives. A taste: https://twitter.com/davidgoggins/status/1386386177184333829?...

And Jocko Willink. Unsurprisingly, special forces types tend not to be very "woe is me."

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#133
post #68
post #30

> So victimhood is a learned behavior after a certain age. As a brown guy with kids in the school system, that's why recent trends in education alarm me. I don't want my kids to be taught that there's this amorphous but pervasive "systemic racism" and "white supremacy" out to get people who look like them, but which they can't do anything about. It's dangerous experimentation with kids' psychology. Growing up as one…

It's learned by going through trauma or PTSD enduring experiences. That's what the empirical data showed. It is not learned by simple teaching and seeing others attitudes, that bit was a non proven hypothesis that the interviewee said they think cultural differences might have an effect, but their experimentation were only done in Israel. So when you hear "learned behavior" don't think as in this is what my parents t…

You're overgeneralizing. The data showed that it can be learned through trauma or PTSD experiences, but to claim "It is not learned by simple teaching and seeing others attitudes" is not defensible. Based on the researcher's comments about kindergarteners, they seem to think it can be learned through simple teaching.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can debate all day long about the merits of explaining systemic racism to young black kids vs keeping them ignorant about it. However the people ignoring the facts are the ones who deny systemic racism exists. It may be better for children of color to be ignorant about it, but certainly not adults of any racial background.

Instead of just saying systemic racism exists, why not point out examples? Then people can judge for themselves what effect it may have on them instead of feeling like there's this oppressive "other" which is the cause of anything they don't like about their life and there's no point struggling against it because it'll just crush them anyway.

"systemic racism" is intentionally deceptive language. I think you'd be hard-pressed to constructive uses of this jargon where people are actually trying to solve specific, well-defined problems.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#136
post #13

An interesting article, though note the easy conflation of Jewishness with Israelis. Being Jewish ≠ being Israeli and for many people they are quite distinct identities. Indeed, Israeli identity can be quite anti victimhood. While I would hesitate to call the conflation anti-semitic it is at minimum quite misleading - and also a gross overgeneralisation of Jewish identity.

The interview is with a Tel Aviv University researcher about studies performed only on people from Israel, so whatever they say about Jewish identity they quite clearly mean it about Israeli Jewish identity and non-Israel Jewish communities/identities are "out of scope".

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mere act of caring about your children's schooling, and taking measures to ensure its quality is a far more solid predictor of good outcomes than nearly anything else. At least, that's what economic data from the last fifty years says. These "narratives" are just that, fictional stories told to support a prevailing social ideology, and yes, they are dangerous, not the least because they ignore the facts.

We can debate all day long about the merits of explaining systemic racism to young black kids vs keeping them ignorant about it. However the people ignoring the facts are the ones who deny systemic racism exists. It may be better for children of color to be ignorant about it, but certainly not adults of any racial background.

True. I don't see how you can possibly deny the existence of systemic racism in a country where all the top educational institutions actively discriminate against asians.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#138
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: do you think that was some great thing that we should continue doing?

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…

We're you ever bullied? This is such a ridiculous view. Those words turn you into an outcast

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#139

This is a good time to recommend some supplementary reading: The Coddling of the American Mind[1], a book that does a great job of outlining what has changed in the last 30 years and why there is very much a generational gap at play with how people perceive themselves. It turns out, raising kids in an environment of "safetyism" where nothing ever goes wrong makes full-grown adults really unresilient, and more prone t…

I liked this book as well. Going into it, I was pretty baffled by some of the recent stories I'd heard from academia- Evergreen and the like. This book makes a compelling case that the post 2013 or so era of college kids are victims to a certain degree (new psychological problems and whatnot), or at least provides substantial evidence that they are suffering from various psychological issues to greater extent than previous generations. This book helped me emphasize better with some of the college debacles that seem batshit crazy to me.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#140
post #30

> So victimhood is a learned behavior after a certain age. As a brown guy with kids in the school system, that's why recent trends in education alarm me. I don't want my kids to be taught that there's this amorphous but pervasive "systemic racism" and "white supremacy" out to get people who look like them, but which they can't do anything about. It's dangerous experimentation with kids' psychology. Growing up as one…

I value what you've written, and I agree although my experience was (possibly?) the inverse. I was a poor white kid in a wealthy white area. While I lived in that area, I only got to briefly attend a private school because of my mothers boyfriend. Everyone knew I was the "poor kid", and my mother, who did her best, was _obsessed_ with the fact that everyone knew we were "imposters" - not wealthy, not married, from a…

If you don't mind my asking, how do/did you deal with the contradiction that the very same people whose judgements and thoughts you derived your view of the world from (or felt you were supposed to) were unaffected or unconcerned with yours?
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