Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why People Feel Like Victims

nautil.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 510 posts

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#411

Post by bradlys »

collyw wrote: post #377
indigochill wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up a middle-class white kid in a good family in California so was pretty much oblivious to victimhood until I went to college in Missouri where the notion of racial inequality was drilled into me to the point I actually learned to fear people of other races held a grudge against me. Although I've been aware of this learned fear and done what I can to mitigate it, this means I might sometimes fear interracial i…

I grew up as a white kid in a good middle class family in the UK. I still got bullied by (white) kids at schools. The idea that all bullying is race related seems nonsense to me. Maybe it's different in the US.

It is different. Race based bullying is very much a thing when/where I grew up. (Oregon, 90’s to 2000’s)

I like how I get downvoted for my own experience...

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#412

Post by reaLg_move_in_3 »

Klinky wrote: post #388
4gotunameagain wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there will be localized differences, and scale differences in civilizations that scaled more. Also, realizing that it is a universal human problem helps with pointing the finger inwards rather than outwards.

Inward to whom? Every human? Isn't that just as "vague" and unfair to blame even the slaves for their slavery?

Blame the slaves themselves? no.

But stating the reality that as a human there are other human beings who have things in common with them(skin color, national origin, culture, ethnicity) who also enslave and mistreat other people; helps people see the bigger picture of predatory behavior that were all potentially capable of.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#413

Post by qchris »

michaelmrose wrote: post #306
qchris wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a way I'm missing to save comments on HN besides also commenting on them so they can be revisited later? I'd like to save this. This is one of the best meta-summaries I've ever seen, on any topic.

You can get a link to a particular comment by clicking on the timestamp next to the posters name. May I recommend an organized note taking system copying the literal text and link for reference. I like org-roam with a hotkey to capture title and if existent any highlighted text. https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam There are of course about a million ways to skin this particular cat and plenty of them are good. The b…

Thanks for the information, and for the recommendation--I'll take a look!

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#414

Post by patcon »

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…

I see what he's saying, though I have different philosophy of what the world needs.

If I'm attempting to repeat back his sensibility: It's an aspiration for people to be self-responsible. Look after self, then others. We're individuals first, and must look after ourselves, and then the collectivist-minded activities come after looking after the self.

This self=>others axis is the basis of Maslow's hierarchy. But it's the inverse of many cultures' (including the blackfoot tribes from which Maslow borrowed the model, which put community at the bottom of the pyramid of needs, oddly enough)

I respect his view (it's rather effective in some contexts, esp environments of scarcity), but I'd rather embrace the collectivist and interdependent aspects of humanity as the foundational principle.

My general impression is that both of these worldviews could save us in different contexts. Maybe the collectivist would save us from climate change, and individualist would save us in some armed conflict. I feel we need to keep both, and keep them balanced, and respecting one another. It's like keeping a seed vault -- different wisdoms for later, and part of a diversity of thought we should probably preserve for unknowable future challenges.

> 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

I think you'd be surprised. I had some tough great uncles who taught rough lessons and were damn proud of it.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#415

Post by Klinky »

reaLg_move_in_3 wrote: post #407
Klinky wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly, if you want to narrow it down to North American history, compared to some other countries, NA was rather slow at coming to terms with these issues, and compromises were made over the decades which propped and continued institutionalized racism, bigotry, and misogyny, which have had lasting effects to this day. Also saying it's a universal humanitarian problem doesn't make it "not a problem" or victimless…

> NA was rather slow at coming to terms with these issues But so were other parts of the world. Many countries in the Middle East continued to have slavery far beyond North America (Saudi Arabia did not outlaw it until 1962) and the Middle East is certainly culturally and historically very different from NA.

This was a critique on American Exceptionalism and its failure to actually apply "all men are created equal" in spite of better examples existing in the world. The US still legally allowed segregation into the 60s.

So many people rushing to use the "other countries were also horrible as well" defense. That's not really a defense.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#416

Post by kian »

bingbong70 wrote: post #374
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 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. Learning this history is the first step of "doing something about it". Brown/black people should know their history too, we can't just paper over the historic criminality of certain groups of people because it feels uncomfort…

The first step to doing something about it is actually believing you're capable of it. I believe what the person you are responding to is trying to get across is that if we first focused on the achievements of a people, then when they later learn of the hardships endured, they will have a belief in themselves that they have the power to change it.

And as importantly, that doing things in the other direction may have the effect of blunting that.

Which, given that it's pushed so strongly, and mostly by upper class whites, is starting to feel like the point.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#417

Post by bradlys »

gherkinnn wrote: post #300
giantandroids wrote: post #253

US tech appears rife in this right now. I follow lots of engineers on twitter and some folks seem to spend more time enrolled in their own victimhood or the victimhood of others who cause they love to rally to (because they get to point victims and their own invented perpetrators). I often want to point this out, but I would risk losing my job.

I remember seeing one of these very outspoken tech people at a conference. He tweeted a photo of a Mexican woman holding a presentation and saying what a great topic it was. Then he preceded to sit in a corner, ignore the talk, and work on his laptop. Or people who pull in >300k, go on about communism, but buy fast cars. Full of shit, the lot.

I don’t think having a preference towards communism or socialism in some form over our current form of capitalism means that you cannot partake in being good at capitalism.

It’s like saying to someone - jeez, if you hate your job so much then why are you so good at it? Stop complaining about the job sucking when you do so well! People can be good at things they don’t enjoy or find fulfilling.

For instance, I’m very pro-ev and for taking significant action on climate change. Yet, I ride and drive sporty ICE vehicles. I travel around the world. You can still use or even enjoy one thing while still being a proponent for another that might seem to go against the thing you currently enjoy/use...

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#418

Post by JamesBarney »

tolbish wrote: post #409
JamesBarney wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem is the narrative makes it harder to make progress on systemic racism. Outside of very liberal strongholds identity politics can't get passed and they get in the way of any progress you want to actually make at trying to minimize the difference in outcomes between races.

You are assuming that admitting existence of systemic racism is identity politics.

No I'm not I'm arguing that selling the vast majority of policies and legislation as being about equity is bad politics.

People define systemic racism as different outcomes for black people than white people.

Basically no one denies that.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#419

Post by jacobolus »

rayiner wrote: post #398
jacobolus wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s gross to choose Ilhan Omar here as your throwaway example. Omar gets dumped on all day every day by a parade of disingenuous GOP-partisan bullies who are essentially indifferent to her words and actions, but feel profoundly threatened by the mere presence of a young, African, Muslim, refugee woman in a position of power. Though she grew up in a really tough situation and has worked hard to overcome it, she does…

I’m not dumping on Ilhan Omar. I’m dumping on the mostly white people in the media who have made her, in my dad’s words, “the face of American Muslims.” She has views that are far outside the mainstream for American Muslims, particularly with respect to social issues and activism. She’s welcome to have whatever politics she wants—it’s America! But it’s wrong for the media to amplify her as if she is representative of…

White “progressives” have not made Omar (or Tlaib) the face of anything, nor does Omar pretend to speak for all Muslims (or all Somali refugees for that matter). Omar also does not have “extreme” views; she is a mainstream Democrat with mainstream center-left policy positions.

Omar gets “amplified” predominantly because Fox News inter al. keep dumping on her all the time, and shrieking about what an “extremist” she is (generally without any reference to specific actions – as I said it’s a pure identity politics thing for them). If you have come to think that Omar is an extremist, ask yourself who keeps telling you that.

It seems like you are upset that progressives don’t put a lot of effort into boosting the political influence of Trump supporters. But why ever would they? It’s not progressives’ fault that GOP-aligned media made Muslims the bogeyman du jour after 2001 and amped racist people up into believing that Muslim = terrorist, to the point that conservative Muslims can’t get anywhere in GOP politics.

As for CNN: CNN is a center-right pro-establishment pro-corporate media outlet that does some good journalism but like all cable news also fills hours every day with bloviating pundits and sensationalized nonsense. People should stop watching cable news so much.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#420

Post by gherkinnn »

bradlys wrote: post #417
gherkinnn wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember seeing one of these very outspoken tech people at a conference. He tweeted a photo of a Mexican woman holding a presentation and saying what a great topic it was. Then he preceded to sit in a corner, ignore the talk, and work on his laptop. Or people who pull in >300k, go on about communism, but buy fast cars. Full of shit, the lot.

I don’t think having a preference towards communism or socialism in some form over our current form of capitalism means that you cannot partake in being good at capitalism. It’s like saying to someone - jeez, if you hate your job so much then why are you so good at it? Stop complaining about the job sucking when you do so well! People can be good at things they don’t enjoy or find fulfilling. For instance, I’m very p…

Of course you can. It’s just that sooner or later you’ll look silly.

Tweeting “fuck the system” from an iPhone? Fine. Everybody needs a phone, iPhones last a long time, and the SE models are cheap.

Preaching about the perils of consumerism and demonising anybody along the way whilst working at Amazon and always buying the latest tech? Solid hypocrite.

Post reply on HN