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Why People Feel Like Victims

nautil.us

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Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#31

Post by zxzax »

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!

Walter, please don't say these things. I get what you're trying to communicate but there is such thing as a victim. You can be doing everything right and still have harm brought to you and your loved ones by circumstances beyond your control. People who lost their families in 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina didn't end up that way because they didn't have a plan or weren't busy.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#32

Post by rasputnik6502 »

it took me many many years to finally see that the loudest victims i have dealt with were (and are) actually the worst abusers. They are just giving themself the excuse to treat everyone like shit and manipulate people, and there's no need to apologize or take any responsibility for such behavior -after all, they're the victims.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#33

Post by mhoad »

WalterBright wrote: post #15
kevingadd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly hope you're joking

Nope. Not remotely.

It’s truly hard to overstate what a ridiculous position you have staked out here with this argument.

You’ve picked some arbitrary definition of what it means to be a victim based on god only knows what philosophy or life experience and then tried to state it as some kind of objective fact or enlightened wisdom.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#34

Post by whydoibother »

WalterBright wrote: post #22
whydoibother wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about people who suffer trauma, childhood or otherwise, due to the decisions of others? Saying people's lives are strictly in their control is just not true.

Help is available for mental issues from psychological trauma. Even self-help, there is endless material freely available. For mental issues from physical trauma, like a brain injury, I qualified my statement with being of "sound mind". I feel immense empathy for such people.

I'm bringing this up because you said people's lives are the sum of their actions.

I think we both agree psychological trauma can affect people immensely. However, your statement saying they can just go get help is really hand-wavy and oversimplifies the situation.

People who suffer trauma during childhood can have impaired brain development, stunted emotional development, poor executive decision making, and are way more likely to enter situations that retraumatize them -- causing more damage.

Simply saying "I will not be a victim" isn't really a thing. You adapt to the trauma by learning coping skills that are not healthy. When this happens in childhood, it is baked into your personality and then later in life you are left wondering which parts of you are really "you" and which are just maladaptive coping. Thus, the sum of you isn't due to just your decisions.

I speak from personal experience on this. I've never had a victim mentality. But now, at 35, going to therapy for cPTSD, I look at the young child I was and can truly see I was a victim. Does this mean I go around now saying I am a victim? No. But, realizing that I was in the past allows me to show more understanding and sympathy for myself.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#35

Post by mhoad »

throwawayboise wrote: post #29
WalterBright wrote: post #2

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.

Agreed. When I was young, victimhood was mostly scorned. "Don't be a crybaby." "Shake it off." "Toughen up." "Words can't hurt you." These were the messages I got from parents and teachers when I was feeling sorry for myself.

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

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#36

Post by arp242 »

mhoad wrote: post #28
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’ve not read the book but the first thing that came to mind was how does this explain the boomers? If I am understanding the premise correctly it’s implying there’s some meaningful distinction across generational lines about mental resilience? The last five years have made that abundantly clear that premise would have some real flaws in it.

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.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#37

Post by 1experience »

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!

"I’ve had it so good in this world, you know. The odds were fifty-to-one against me being born in the United States in 1930. I won the lottery the day I emerged from the womb by being in the United States instead of in some other country where my chances would have been way different.

Imagine there are two identical twins in the womb, both equally bright and energetic. And the genie says to them, “One of you is going to be born in the United States, and one of you is going to be born in Bangladesh. And if you wind up in Bangladesh, you will pay no taxes. What percentage of your income would you bid to be the one that is born in the United States?” It says something about the fact that society has something to do with your fate and not just your innate qualities. The people who say, “I did it all myself,” and think of themselves as Horatio Alger – believe me, they’d bid more to be in the United States than in Bangladesh. That’s the Ovarian Lottery." ― Warren Buffett

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#38

Post by tdeck »

WalterBright wrote: post #18
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!

The trouble with being a victim is there's nothing to be done about it. Deciding to not being a victim is empowering, as it means you can do something about it.

How does being a victim imply that nothing can be done? It seems to me that the opposite could be the case.

For example: If I'm the victim of a crime, the first step to reporting the crime is acknowledging that fact. Certain categories of criminals (con artists and sexual abusers) rely on the fact that victims are often reluctant to acknowledge their victimhood, even to themselves. This allows those individuals' behavior to go unreported so they can prey on more people.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#39

Post by rednerrus »

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…

Same thing but I have girls. I don't want them growing up with the locus of control outside of themselves. The studies are convincing that that is the worst thing you can for a child.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#40

Post by the_only_law »

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.

> 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.

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