Unraveling the Mindset of Victimhood
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
I have seen this so many times in technical discussions that is not even funny. "I am right and everybody else are idiots" is a disease in many software companies.
Many technical solutions are trade offs. But creating absolute categories "solution A is perfect" and "solution B is bad" many engineers protect their egos and their own technical preferences. And that stalls growth, their own and the growth of the team.
> Those with a greater tendency for interpersonal victimhood also had a greater negative memory bias, recalling more words representing offensive behaviors and feelings of hurt
In technical environments, I have seen it related to bugs. The victimhood mindset tends to blame others for any production problems. And any try to bring an open and candid discussion is seen as an aggression. No technical review is possible as criticism of code or design is seen as just personal criticism and violently disregarded.
In the best companies I have worked for, teams are doers open to discuss designs without taking offense. All proposed solutions are understood as a trade-off between different options and that personal preferences may create bias on looking into problems. There is a growth mindset and are great companies were to learn and grow yourself. There is no evils or saints, but colleagues trying their best to solve a problem.
How is "cancel culture" a lack of charity to other people's souls? How is it that largely powerless individuals who choose to embargo, sanction or ignore the powerful is cast as a "lack of charity" or a paucity of mercy? It is a backlash against the largely impersonal powers that hold sway over us; the bland and ubiquitous media, corrupt political powers, and empty-headed celebrity culture that fails to live up to the standards it expects in everyone else.
Merely because Fox News has given it a catchy title, does not mean it is new, unwelcome or a degradation in standards - it just means that the rich and powerful are afraid of it.
As for the “rich and powerful”, do you mean high school kids making inappropriate jokes that become national news stories, blue collar guys being fired for not being up-to-speed on 2020 cosmopolitan sensibilities, or anyone who says a single negative thing about BLM riots?
By linking the public disapprobation of people who make statements (such as that scooter-driving gentleman in Florida who yelled "White Power" or the angry young schoolboy who decided to stare down a native American who would dare to try to defuse his incipient argument with some agitators) with companies who are being boycotted for actively funding anti-LGBTQ lobbying groups (for instance) is an attempt by politicians, companies and media groups to apply a chilling effect to speech. People should be able to boycott those companies who attempt to impact their lives; celebrities are not owed our respect, nor politicians the money they steal from public coffers.
That is not cancel culture. That is something else. Cancel culture, by definition, requires something that can be cancelled. Equivocating the two issues is an attempt to make public figures, organisations, etc less accountable.
I've found that using this type of language can often side step the issue of personal feelings because it's not YOU who wrote something that could be made better but it's WE who wrote it and WE should work together to make it as good as it can be.
edit:
Also FTA:
"the researchers found that an anxious attachment style was a particularly strong antecedent of the tendency for interpersonal victimhood."
And from another comment I posted below:
"When a child feels safe, seen, and soothed by their parent in a consistent way, they are able to form a secure attachment to that parent. However, when a parent is available and attuned at times and insensitive or intrusive at others, the child is more likely to experience an anxious ambivalent attachment pattern"[1]
This is a valid and important area of inquiry and I wish the article did a better job on this front.
[1]https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/compassion-matters/2...
>But there’s the thing: If socialization processes can instill in individuals a victimhood mindset, then surely the very same processes can instill in people a personal growth mindset. What if we all learned at a young age that our traumas don’t have to define us? That it’s possible to have experienced a trauma and for victimhood to not form the core of our identity? That it’s even possible to grow from trauma, to become a better person, to use the experiences we’ve had in our lives toward working to instill hope and possibility to others who were in a similar situation? What if we all learned that it’s possible to have healthy pride for an in-group without having out-group hate?
Basically, focus on your strong sides rather than weaknesses. Find people that make you happy and spend time with them doing things that make all of you happy, instead of focusing your attention on those who offend you. Pretty sound advice, IMO.
Kidding aside, I have been guilty of at least one of these more than once in life, and it's really a question of whether it's a defining characteristic, and to whom. Treat it like any other cognitive bias, and recognize that noticing it in others doesn't protect us from it.
> The revolt of the slaves in morals begins in the very principle of resentment becoming creative and giving birth to values—a resentment experienced by creatures who, deprived as they are of the proper outlet of action, are forced to find their compensation in an imaginary revenge. While every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says "no" from the very outset to what is "outside itself," "different from itself," and "not itself": and this "no" is its creative deed. This volte-face of the valuing standpoint—this inevitable gravitation to the objective instead of back to the subjective—is typical of "resentment": the slave-morality requires as the condition of its existence an external and objective world, to employ physiological terminology, it requires objective stimuli to be capable of action at all—its action is fundamentally a reaction.
—Nietzsche in The Genealogy of Morals (source: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52319/52319-h/52319-h.htm)
Here is a video comparing Nietzsche's "Ressentiment" and Dostoevsky "Underground Man": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgmgI08iIAg
In the war of ideas, I think it helps to classify them simply as 'antagonist' and 'normative' instead of anything else.
When people are young and they don't have power, they may feel aggrieved (possibly legitimately so, or internalise the grievances of other groups), or even simply want to 'rage against the machine' (i.e. what they perceive to be 'a machine'). This aggression may be creative, but I think often it's a visceral intellectualism. It's a 'challenge to power' through a vector of ideas and ideals. But the vector is actually not as important as the motivating impetus ... which is the 'challenge' not the 'ideal'. But this mentality does not at all lend well to the ugly, grinding, material reality of power and real management of systems.
Castro had some legit things to say about Cuba pre-revolution. But what happened when he actually took charge? A few nice things, but then it went pretty quickly into despotism.
If your identity is caught up in antagonism and you live and breathe lofty, impractical slogans that never actually have to be tested because they're never going to be actually tested, what happens when you do get power, and then have to deal with the bureaucracy, unions, police, very legitimate violent threats (internal and external), geopolitical shenanigans, poverty, yada yada? Any ideologue who actually tried to do a good, responsible job, would be considered a total sellout by his own vanguard.
It's odd because often real change does come from some of the more legitimately aggrieved voices ... at the same time, I'm not sure if waves of revolutionary leaders are able to handle 'the 99% of the rest of the job'.
Someone with a personal growth mindset very likely spend most of their time minding their own business, whatever that would be.
A person with a victim mentality could be an order of magnitude more socially active. They feel that they are fighting for justice and changing the world to the better, so they would spend countless hours trying to argue their point. And in the world where the views and clicks translate into advertisement dollars, this creates a very unhealthy incentive. Literally, a permanently unhappy person obsessed with pouring their unhappiness on others generates more advertising revenue than a happier person spending their evening cooking or playing video games with their friends.
Society at large must do systemic and holistic analysis (on multiple scales, e.g. neighborhoods, cities, states, and countries), which is where various forms of oppression can be most clearly identified and addressed. Of course, grassroots efforts can and often do lead the way.
Dealing with confrontations is a skill that can be learned, like most of the life skills out there.
The conclusion gives some good ideas how to fix interpersonal victimhood
> What if we all learned at a young age that our traumas don’t have to define us? That it’s possible to have experienced a trauma and for victimhood to not form the core of our identity? That it’s even possible to grow from trauma, to become a better person, to use the experiences we’ve had in our lives toward working to instill hope and possibility to others who were in a similar situation? What if we all learned that it’s possible to have healthy pride for an in-group without having out-group hate? That if you expect kindness from others, it pays to be kind yourself? That no one is entitled to anything, but we all are worthy of being treated as human?
However, that doesn't mean operation from unbiased justice and fairness, or that we should focus on solutions rather than chart the problems to be solved first!
There is a lot of injustice in our society and there is nothing wrong in standing up and demanding justice. And don't let anyone tell you that demanding justice or seeking fairness is some kind of a personality disorder.
But while most of the article is pure bs, there is a kernel of truth in one of the details. And that is that often when you are wronged and you are angry you tend to ignore other people's feelings. Generally when you are angry you tend to stop thinking. And often you tend to lash out at everyone and think everyone is against you when you may have many potential allies. When I try to remember when I was bullied when I was younger, this is my regret. I would get angry and think everyone is against me and lash out at people, even when they leaned on my side. The bullies of course being psychopaths would never get angry, they would be calm and always kept their psycho charming personalities up, and would eventually gain allies and become socially acceptable even after the bad things they did.
So it is ok to be angry. But you have to always keep thinking and consider the feelings of others.
If you typically aren't facing injustice often then you aren't going to think you are a victim.
It is a privileged position to assume everyone should "score" the same if they aren't marginalized.
The research that the article talks about was careful to separate the _mindset_ of victimhood from the actual experience of being a victim of someone else's antisocial or even violent behavior. The two are not the same. One can experience prejudice, social bias, and outright physical violence without developing a permanent self-image as a victim. But we all know that one crazy friend or family member who thinks (and says) the world is against them yet never had a truly traumatic experience in their whole life.
I have a personal experience with this. I suffered an injury that caused a permanent disability, but because I was also knocked out, I don't know what caused it. Maybe I was assaulted or maybe I had an accident. Should I feel wronged just in case it turns out to be an assault? No! I'm kind of lucky not knowing whether to blame someone else or myself! Maybe if I knew, that emotion of being wronged would motivate me to fight for justice and the perpetrator could get convicted but I'm comfortable assuming it was an accident. That's a lot better than fighting and losing.
In the situation you described, you don't know what happened. So a good guess of your feelings would be confusion, I see no reason to force "feeling lucky" or "blaming yourself" or "feeling wronged" or any other emotion you don't actually feel.
I don't understand this prescribing what people should feel and I think it does more harm then good. People do feel, they also think and the two interacts. It is much more important to understand what your feelings actually are and how they are influencing you, rather then analyse what theoretical person should feel or try to force yourself to feel the things you dont.
At least that way someone would care but baby, no one does, not even you
Baby, someone is crazy and it's you"
Man that rubs me the wrong way. You've been in their shoes for every experience they've ever had and used your psychological authority to assess that none of those experiences were "truly traumatic?"
Maybe some of their mindset stems from constant dismissal.
A journalist came up with this concept at the World Economic Forum, I think it was fractal poverty??, and it was this observation that from the poorest people in the world to the absolute richest there was this sense that they were excluded from and oppressed by someone more powerful. Absolutely anyone can feel this way.
Some people will come out of it relatively unscathed, while others will be haunted by it for the rest of their lives.
No doubt their past experiences shaped their mindset and how they made sense of the negative experience.
Privileged people facing no injustice howl the loudest that they are the most oppressed. In fact, facing no justice either, getting away with every crime under the sun.
We simply bring different levels of privilege to it.
Certainly many privileged people are blind to that.
If I'm thinking about this in terms of my workplace, I would probably score fairly high due to the typical corporate injustices that many workers endure. But if I think about this on a personal life basis or overall basis, then I would score pretty low.
Victim ideology writ large (group level - ingroups and outgroups) is still victim ideology. It doesn't become more right at the group level, it stems from the same biases and thought patterns.