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Why People Feel Like Victims

nautil.us

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Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#181

Post by spaetzleesser »

zwieback wrote: post #17
bmmayer1 wrote: post #11

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 really like their original The Atlantic article of the same name ( https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-cod... ) but was disappointed by the book, too much repetition and filler material. Still worth a look, though, and the situation has not gotten better in the last 5 years.

“ too much repetition and filler material”

That describes a lot of popular business, psychology and science books. I don’t really understand why authors feel pressure to fill hundreds of pages. A lot of books would be much better if they got to the point in 50 pages.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#182

Post by [deleted] »

anonfornoreason wrote: post #25
baleeeeeeve wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but you have to acknowledge that your experience was with a version of the United States that no longer exists. Things have changed a lot for people on the bottom rungs since the '90s, Walter. Some sympathy for the fact that bootstrapping is vastly more difficult for young people today might be a better look.

Disagree, it's never been easier. The country is awash in vast amounts of money, trying to find ways to be invested, to be spent. Access to information and resources is higher than it has ever been. Sure, it's hard to just get by if you aren't out there hustling. The time of getting an average job with an average pension, which lets you buy a reasonable price house is over. The world is your oyster if you are willing…

[deleted]

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#183

Post by chillwaves »

refurb wrote: post #105
arp242 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even before that; the religious right has been posing themselves as victims for decades. Bill O'Reily started talking about "you're no longer allowed to say 'Merry Christmas'" in the earlier '00s, which aside from being nonsense, is also a good example of their supposed victimhood.

I took that as more social commentary than victimhood. Victimhood would infer some real harm. O’Reilly never said that, just that the situation was ridiculous.

Ridiculous and completely non existent.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#184

Post by juve935 »

f00zz wrote: post #154
rejectedandsad wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Id wager if you asked most of your graduating classmates if $200k@25 is impressive, most or all would say no. That’s a new grad’s total compensation and I’m several years in already. Appreciate the correction on spelling. I’m more a Midwest guy myself.

You should negotiate working remotely and move out of the US, with that kind of income you could live like a king in most of the rest of the planet. I'm not even being snarky

lol with that income you'd live like a king in most of the US

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#185

Post by rayiner »

breakyerself wrote: post #94
slowmovintarget wrote: post #46

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.

> 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.

Because “systemic racism” is a term used mostly by college educated white people for other college educated white people. Not only that, it deliberately repurposes a label that ordinarily refers to prejudiced beliefs, and applies it to structural forces that operate without any individuals being consciously racist. The same academics who talk about “systemic racism” readily admit that prejudiced beliefs have actually declined.

If you educated people about the history of e.g. FHA redlining and how that affects people today, I think you’d find far fewer people deny that those effects exist.

Besides that, we’re now teaching it to all children of color, who definitely don’t suffer from systemic racism. Asians and Latinos are on a course to achieve economic parity with whites, just like previous immigrant generations:

https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/2/711/5687353

> It may be better for children of color to be ignorant about it, but certainly not adults of any racial background.

Sure, we should definitely teach kinds about the history of these things, how they create structural barriers, statistics on persistent disparities, when they’re old enough to understand. But even then, we should actually say what we mean instead of using rhetoric chosen by activists for shock effect.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#186

Post by WalterBright »

staticman2 wrote: post #91
WalterBright wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You could have made the same argument in 1908, telling people to self educate at their local library. If everyone watched a 2007 youtube course on circuits at MIT and learned the material, the value of such a skillset would be equal to the value of flipping Burgers at Burger King.

> in 1980

Ironically, my grandfather at the time made his career by selling correspondence courses for college degrees. It was the equivalent in those days. He met my grandmother selling her a course in mechanical engineering she used to get a better job at the phone company.

My grandfather started literally at the bottom - shoveling coal into a steamship's boiler. A dirty, dangerous, sweaty job he did for years. He improved his lot by taking correspondence courses, and liked them so much decided on a career in selling them, primarily to sailors.

> If everyone

I wouldn't conflate "don't" with "can't".

I know about the MIT course because I took it myself (along with others) to fill in gaps in my education. And why not? Education doesn't stop with the diploma.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#187

Post by [deleted] »

WalterBright wrote: post #21
baleeeeeeve wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but you have to acknowledge that your experience was with a version of the United States that no longer exists. Things have changed a lot for people on the bottom rungs since the '90s, Walter. Some sympathy for the fact that bootstrapping is vastly more difficult for young people today might be a better look.

It's never been easier and cheaper to get an education in the US, start a business, reach a global marketplace, learn how to do anything you want to do, etc. When I was young it was pretty much unheard of for people to get wealthy before 25. Now it's commonplace and unremarkable.

[deleted]

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#188

Post by listless »

rayiner wrote: 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 agree with this 100%. The problem is that I present white (although I do not identify that way) and so I have been stripped of the right to even suggest the very point you just made under extreme penalty of being labeled a “racist”. Which is…the worst thing you can be in American culture.

My voice isn’t worth much and I am afraid, but if you stand, I will stand with you.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#189

Post by rayiner »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #101
rayiner wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a good point about how your attitude affects your behavior. I see it with immigrants who didn't grow up in the south like I did. I've repeatedly heard "oh, I wouldn't want to go visit southern Virginia because of all the racists." I kid you not, I was just in southern Virginia with my white wife, our mixed kids, and a Chinese friend and her Jewish husband. It was great! Everyone was great. It's a lovely part…

You can be poor and still be a white supremacist, because white supremacy is not about being rich or successful. It's about believing that non-whites are not just irredeemably inferior and threateningly different, they're born that way. Just because you personally haven't experienced it does not mean it doesn't exist. That's such a self-evident logical fallacy it shouldn't even need to be stated. Systemic racism mean…

Obviously skin heads exist. I’m referring to the academic usage of “white supremacy”—an overall system that keeps non-whites from advancing. That’s just not true. Asians and Latinos are economically converging with whites, just as previous generations of immigrants did. Asians are the richest demographic. They live the longest. They’re over represented in elite institutions. And when you adjust for age and citizenship status, the supposed “bamboo ceiling” disappears too. Asians are evenly represented among Fortune 500 boards and over represented among new board member appointments.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#190

Post by rayiner »

renewiltord wrote: post #106
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…

There are systemic injustices. If you're chasing pure outcome it is advantageous to be aware of them so that you can access underpaid underprivileged people or back people whose performance is boosted by privilege. If you think that a founder being black makes it very hard for him to access debt because of systemic bias and his company plans heavily on debt financing, then yeah, it makes total sense to pass on it if…

That’s a good point—there is a difference between knowledge you’d want policymakers and academics to be thinking about, versus how you socialize children to view the world to maximize their individual potential.
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