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Why People Feel Like Victims

nautil.us

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Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#191

Post by WalterBright »

XorNot wrote: post #90
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.

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?

> official certifications which employers check

Yet I wangled a job writing software despite a mechanical engineering job achieved without CS courses. I also know several people at Microsoft in programming jobs who had no college experience. There are tens of thousands of employers, all different. You can even start your own business doing programming, EE design, whatever.

> apparently worthless

Not at all. It's maybe a harder road, sure, but it's navigable for those who want to do it for free.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#192

Post by juve935 »

WalterBright wrote: post #166
harimau777 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that something in the past couldn't have been prevented doesn't mean that there's nothing to be done in the present. There's also the fact that often you couldn't have prevented it.

Being a victim is what reaction a person takes to events. If they believe that nothing could have been done, then they believe they are powerless.

This doesn't make sense - often times we are powerless. No amount of "not being a victim" is going to bring back your husband who died in a car accident, or a soldier who died in war, nor is being a victim either.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#193

Post by rayiner »

listless wrote: post #188
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.

That treatment by the way, is extremely problematic. White people are empowered to amplify people like Ilhan Omar, who are extremely unrepresentative of their group, but are discouraged from amplifying people like my dad, a Biden voting Bangladeshi immigrant who hates being called a “hyphenated American” and wants to live in a “colorblind” society.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#194

Post by refulgentis »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #140
erulabs wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I have a symmetrical background and experience (ty OP for sharing, I never talk about it, it's hard!), and...right or wrong...I just tell myself they went through a shorter road than I did, so I have a learned bias to being 'anxious' and nailing down every detail

I had to win a ton of coin flips to get here, and thinking and planning and caring about perception was something I did to maximize my chances, and they didn't/didn't have to.

I try to manage the resultant base day-to-day anxiety by noting they don't care as much as I do, they're more secure, and also noting it's a bit of a 'superpower' - I tend to be better at disappearing into esoteric subjects and reappearing in a couple months with a pristine, novel, solution to a big problem, because I obsess and master every detail.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#195

Post by [deleted] »

rejectedandsad wrote: post #93
WalterBright wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do you define wealthy Walter? I’m 25 and “unremarkable” and my net worth is only a quarter million. I make about $200k at a company you’d probably consider unimpressive. Not everyone can be remarkable enough to go to CalTech.

[deleted]

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#197

Post by [deleted] »

neolog wrote: post #102
WalterBright wrote: post #5

I'll be more brazen. I don't know about other countries, but if you live in the US and am an adult of sound mind and body, you're not a victim. If your life isn't working for you, reassess your situation, develop a plan, and get busy!

What does living in the US have to do with it? Different people do well or badly in every country.

[deleted]

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#198

Post by artificialLimbs »

throwaway_kufu wrote: post #165

As someone who was abducted and kidnapped at gun point, PTSD and trauma are experienced differently by different people. PTSD/trauma may be the result of being victimized, but it is not “learned” any more than a bone might “learn” to break under stress. What happens under extreme trauma is an onslaught of electric signals and chemical reactions in the brain, essentially adrenaline (fight or flight) and cortisol (stre…

> but it is involuntary

No and yes.

PTSD/trauma is the result of resistance to being. A person resists having their awareness in their body and being there with their emotions during crisis, and instead they are 'in shock' for the duration. This allows confusion or the kind of mental blocks where there is no recollection to happen. Once confusion or mental blocks manifest, it can be quite the challenge to regain clarity.

It has been proven time and again to be very helpful to consciously relive traumatic situations over and over in one's mind in order to relieve the tension and begin to integrate the experience into one's being in a healing manner, rather than letting that stress continue to arise again and again in one's life. This should likely be done under the guidance of someone with experience in such matters, or at least with trusted friends in a good environment.

Avoidance is so common here because that is the route taken during the crisis. The person avoids being, in the most fundamental sense, in exchange for becoming hypnotized by their senses and environment. Were the person able to be present and aware of their body and emotions during the crisis, no such PTSD would be able to be formed. So, a person may not be able to be present and avoid this psychological resistance, but they can learn to do so. Are they willing to undergo such learning is another matter.

Psychological literature is littered with examples of these techniques, but I'm not exactly sure where I have stumbled across them. As an extreme example of letting go of resistance, I offer the link below to the story of Thích Quảng Đức. I wish I had something that was not of Buddhist nature, but it is terribly easy to pick on them. =D

I do not mean to trivialize your experience or say that you were wrong, btw. I myself have been under extreme duress and have had a number of such traumatic instances and I wish you well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%9...

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#199

Post by Blikkentrekker »

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 learned we should treat everyone like we'd want to be treated ourselves.

Words said by the man who has no conception of individual variance.

The sexually addicted compulsive rapist would do well to ignore this advice, for instance.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#200

Post by JamesBarney »

breakyerself wrote: post #146
ne0flex wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue there's a lot more nuances to system racism than the general narrative that is currently being perpettuated. Looking into those nuances would be frowned upon because certain groups differ from other groups for reasons that are not truly understood but would cause us to ask questions we're not comfortable with. Though anecdotal, I know several adults who have fallen into the "it's because systemic racism tha…

I mean really. Do you really think that if someone who's unsuccessful because of laziness that if only they hadn't heard about systemic racism they would have a better work ethic? The laziness comes first. The excuse is crafted after the fact. If it wasnt that they'd claim to have some other disadvantage or problem.

A lot of psychotherapy is convincing individuals that they are in control of their actions and can decide how they react to and influence their environment.

A lot of what we're teaching now is the opposite. It's like anti-CBT. Teach everyone they are helpless against the nefarious powers that be.

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