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Why People Feel Like Victims

nautil.us

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Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#341

Post by majani »

frankiesardo wrote: post #286
livinginfear wrote: post #243

I always considered the current culture of cultivated-victimhood to be rooted in the manner Western people fundamentally define themselves by their triumphs against adversity. In the absence of real adversity, people seek and create surrogate adversity for themselves to triumph over. From this process they can rationalise themselves as having the inner-strength to overcome such barriers.

This is a clever comment and I'm surprised to see no further discussion. In the West, everyone needs to be the hero of their own story. Everyone needs to be an Achilles or a King Arthur, therefore everyone needs a dragon to fight. The bigger the enemy, the more morally entitled your actions feel.

In discussion forums, the best answers are usually those with many upvotes and no replies

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#342

Post by antattack »

erulabs wrote: post #113
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 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…

"I don't think more than a small handful of adults and certainly no kids ever held my status against me."

Seeing how kids diss kids with old iPhones or even shoes, I have a hard time to believe that.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#343

Post by mockingbirdy »

livinginfear wrote: post #243

I always considered the current culture of cultivated-victimhood to be rooted in the manner Western people fundamentally define themselves by their triumphs against adversity. In the absence of real adversity, people seek and create surrogate adversity for themselves to triumph over. From this process they can rationalise themselves as having the inner-strength to overcome such barriers.

I don't think that people experiencing racism have "surrogate adversity", but I can certainly relate to the general notion. I've "struggled" with this because I too had no "real" adversity in life and people like some greek philosophers and Nietzsche put adversity into their centre of attention. I'm convinced that sometimes, people just get hurt by adversity without any advantages later on. It’s also perverse to think that the pain serves a kind of purpose, it justifies an extremely toxic and abusive mindset. If it happens and you can grow from it - that's wonderful. But it should never be used as an excuse to do harm or to endure abusive situations, especially if the abusers are using this kind of narrative.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#344

Post by majani »

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.

To me, the rich people bigging up high tax policies and heavy regulations feels like they're intentionally pulling up the ladder from behind them.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#345

Post by lawtalkinghuman »

armenarmen wrote: post #76
arp242 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that didn't happen.

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?

Some corporations put up a mixture of Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays signage/messaging etc.

Christian persecution complex hustlers—and Fox News etc. seeking outraged eyeballs—took the existence of people saying "Happy Holidays" as an attack on them because "Jesus is the reason for the season" and then unreasonably inferred that somehow people were banned from saying "Merry Christmas".

This led to some very entitled people shouting "It's 'Merry Christmas' actually!" at some underpaid cashier in Walmart because they'd been led to believing that saying Happy Holidays was a form of religious persecution and an attack on their faith.

For a British example, recall the story of "Winterval", where an attempt by a city council to come up with a brand name to cover a series of events including Diwali, Christmas, New Years and so on that was used in addition to "Christmas" led to a full out culture war where the press misrepresented the whole thing as somehow replacing Christmas due to "political correctness". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winterval

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#346

Post by Cloudef »

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 you completely to the extend that I feel like world has grown little bit weird recently. "White supremacy" is especially ironic, considering there's countries where white people were oppressed and sold as slaves and had to fight for their own freedom, these people don't owe anything for anyone.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#347

Post by [deleted] »

wsc981 wrote: post #288
dr_dshiv wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think about Affirmative Action? Is it systemic racism or systemic antiracism?

> What do you think about Affirmative Action? Is it systemic racism or systemic antiracism? Racism of course. Since it’s selecting people based on race. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[deleted]

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#348

Post by fallingknife »

vinay427 wrote: post #305
wsc981 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you think about Affirmative Action? Is it systemic racism or systemic antiracism? Racism of course. Since it’s selecting people based on race. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

> Since it’s selecting people based on race. This can also apply to antiracism, which as I understand it [1] is policy that attempts to undo structural racism, not policy that is absent of race-conscious treatment. I think this question would also be more interesting to answer because everyone already agrees that affirmative action literally does factor in race. The more controversial part is whether it serves to rei…

Racism. But we'll call it anti-racism!

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#350

Post by 4gotunameagain »

Klinky wrote: post #317
4gotunameagain wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the history of humanity , not only of the west.

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…

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.

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