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Why People Feel Like Victims

nautil.us

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Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#61

Post by WalterBright »

mhoad wrote: post #33
WalterBright wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ridiculous position

I'm well aware of how other people perceive it. It's completely contrary to the barrage of what I call "cult of the victim" that spews forth from nearly all media.

I don't expect to change your mind. But give it a chance. For example,

A man falls down the stairs and breaks his leg.

Victim: "I'm so unlucky, my leg broke. Oh, life is so unfair."

Non-Victim: "Phew, I'm so lucky! I could have broken my neck! My broken leg will heal and I'll be fine. Next time I won't leave my toys laying on the steps."

Walter: "I put carpet on the stairs so I wouldn't slip on them. I go jogging to (in part) increase bone density so they are less likely to break."

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#62

Post by armenarmen »

arp242 wrote: post #36
mhoad wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can totally take it the other way too. A group of people felt they were being victimized by having Christian seasonal greetings directed at them and went on a campaign to make that behavior be seen as uncouth.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#63

Post by revscat »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #49
mhoad wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

Contra: words spoken to children can and do have powerful effects, especially from parents and other family, and especially if it accompanied by physical abuse. “I am going to rape you,” followed up by that very action, will lead to damage that is difficult if not impossible to overcome.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#64

Post by WalterBright »

pseudalopex wrote: post #56
anonfornoreason wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most businesses fail. Why do you think that is?

80% of businesses fail in 5 years. There are many reasons, but the usual ones revolve around things like not understanding accounting, not putting in the effort, etc.

It's also true that many very successful people failed at business time after time before figuring it out. Fortunately, American culture doesn't look askance at people that fail at business and try again.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#65

Post by WalterBright »

whydoibother wrote: post #34
WalterBright wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm glad you could overcome these problems.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#66

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

revscat wrote: post #63
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…

Contra: words spoken to children can and do have powerful effects, especially from parents and other family, and especially if it accompanied by physical abuse. “I am going to rape you,” followed up by that very action, will lead to damage that is difficult if not impossible to overcome.

> “I am going to rape you,” followed up by that very action, will lead to damage that is difficult if not impossible to overcome.

I'm not sure the words are the problem there.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#67

Post by mhoad »

WalterBright wrote: post #61
mhoad wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ridiculous position I'm well aware of how other people perceive it. It's completely contrary to the barrage of what I call "cult of the victim" that spews forth from nearly all media. I don't expect to change your mind. But give it a chance. For example, A man falls down the stairs and breaks his leg. Victim: "I'm so unlucky, my leg broke. Oh, life is so unfair." Non-Victim: "Phew, I'm so lucky! I could have broken…

Listen I’m glad this approach seems to work to you and I hope it might even get you through some dark times one day, but there is a reason you are using contrived child like examples here, it’s because it doesn’t hold up to anything remotely dark.

What life lessons do you want for the parent of a child who was sexually abused for example? Are they allowed to feel like a victim? What about the child?

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#68

Post by didibus »

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…

It's learned by going through trauma or PTSD enduring experiences. That's what the empirical data showed. It is not learned by simple teaching and seeing others attitudes, that bit was a non proven hypothesis that the interviewee said they think cultural differences might have an effect, but their experimentation were only done in Israel.

So when you hear "learned behavior" don't think as in this is what my parents told me or taught me. It means this was learned by being mistreated as a child, not given consistent care and attention, and such.

> You don’t need to have been victimized, physically abused, for example, in order to exhibit TIV. But the people who score very high on TIV are generally those who have experienced some kind of trauma, like PTSD

> when a child is very young, and care is uncertain, perhaps the caregiver, or the male figures in the child’s life, don’t act consistently, sometimes they may act very aggressively without warning, or they don’t notice that the child needs care. That’s when the anxious attachment style or ambivalent attachment style is created

> This is just my hypothesis, but there are certain societies, particularly those with long histories of prolonged conflict, where the central narrative of the society is a victim-oriented narrative, which is the Jewish narrative

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#69

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

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…

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 framework of systemic racism/white privilege, you should hire the white CEO.

Moral persuasion, and aiming for an ideal world, will only be effective so far, and then people will turn to what gives them an advantage.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#70

Post by golemiprague »

gelert wrote: post #13

An interesting article, though note the easy conflation of Jewishness with Israelis. Being Jewish ≠ being Israeli and for many people they are quite distinct identities. Indeed, Israeli identity can be quite anti victimhood. While I would hesitate to call the conflation anti-semitic it is at minimum quite misleading - and also a gross overgeneralisation of Jewish identity.

I don't see any conflation of Isreli and Jewishness in the article. Israel itself has its own groups and "victims", maybe not as crazy as the US but like any other country it is not without internal grievances and issues.
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