I liked this interpretation of events. Celebration of victimhood is surely at an all time high. Should we expect this trend to continue, or will we ("educated" "sophisticated" people in Western society) return to celebrating the powerful and the successful like most other societies before us?
This false morality is what Nietzsche calls "slave morality", which is essentially a coping mechanism for the prideful. Whereas master morality prizes strength over weakness and expresses a straightforward and natural attitude of good and evil, slave morality begins with self-deception. It recasts that which it envies as evil in a game of sour grapes, so that the envious come out on top as the good.
This has always existed, sure, but it is also true that victimhood has been elevated and celebrated as virtuous quite notably today. It has become a manipulative instrument to dishonestly extract from and exploit others through false guilt. Nobody of sound mind celebrates victimhood. A victim can take comfort in his innocence when he is victimized, he may have a moral superiority because it is not what is done to us, but what we do that defiles us. He may be pleased that his suffering has advanced some good. But a victim of sound mind doesn't love his victimhood per se, though he may pity the perpetrator for his depravity and moral weakness.
Historically, the pendulum has swung back and forth between what Nietsche labeled master and slave morality. The Roman empire is a typical example of master culture: it's good to be rich and powerful, and it is right for the strong to dominate the weak. There might have been ressentiment among the Barbarians the Romans conquered, but the dominant culture certainly didn't sympathize with them.
Then in Europe we get the rise of Christianity, a typical example of slave morality which regards strength and power as evil (the New Testament is full of messages like the meek will inherit the earth, it's easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter heaven, etc.)
Then Western civilization swings back to Master morality: the crusades as an early example, later manifest destiny, the white man's burden, the rise of fascism in Europe, etc. Then after WW2 fascism loses its luster and the pendulum swings back.
Western colonies which were previously considered mutually beneficial developments are now condemned as exploitative of the less advanced native cultures. People like Columbus who were once lionized for their discoveries and conquests are now condemned as villains.
You can view the American civil war as a midpoint of the pendulum's swing: while Negroes, who are poor and uneducated, are not (yet) considered morally superior to Whites, it is no longer morally acceptable to enslave them just because you can.
Today, the pendulum has swung fully towards slave morality. You should check your privilege, and shut up, so the oppressed may speak. Representation is important. The rich and powerful are almost by definition evil. Bill Gates and Elon Musk won't be remembered in the same way as Rockefeller or Ford. Racism is no longer racism, as it was in Martin Luther King's time, but now it's prejudice PLUS power (also everyone has racial bias, so by the very definition, the powerful are evil, while the powerless are innocent).
So while you can argue that the pendulum has swung back and forth on this topic through history, and it's hard to say if slave morality is currently at an “all-time high”, I think it's undeniably true that we are currently heavily biased towards celebrating the powerless over the rich and powerful.
Columbus wasn't generally lionised and celebrated during his lifetime, a lot of the mythology about him comes later
> As a colonial governor, Columbus was accused by some of his contemporaries of significant brutality and removed from the post.
But I think the weakness of this argument is apparent when you consider the modern examples. Gates and Elon have been lauded and praised and reviled and criticised at various levels at different times. There has always been a plurality of opinion about successful celebrities, modern and historic.
So I don't see that there is a master/slave swing. Rather perhaps the issue is that recently we've come into a situation where everyone's voice can be broadcast and opinion written. In the not so distant past the writing of the majority either didn't exist or wasn't available for consumption by society in general, and only the writing of influential people survived for us to read later. The grumbling of the masses was only apparent when it boiled over into action.
Right, but the point is he was lionized during a period where people found his conquests more important than the atrocities he committed, as is consistent with master morality of the time, even if it was not during Columbus' own time.
Similarly, Christianity only became really popular long after the death of Jesus Christ. That doesn't mean his viewpoints aren't an example of slave morality.
> There has always been a plurality of opinion about successful celebrities, modern and historic.
That's a fair point; obviously this obfuscates the situation a bit, but I don't think it disproves the general trend.
> In the not so distant past the writing of the majority either didn't exist or wasn't available for consumption by society in general, and only the writing of influential people survived for us to read later.
Also a fair point, but the observation doesn't rely on learning what the masses think (which I suspect is mostly what they're told to think). We see the same shift in attitude among the powerful elites.
For example, President Joe Biden picked a non-white woman as his vice president, and later vowed to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court, to increase representation of underrepresented minorities. If any past president made such a declaration it would have been on record too.
The same is true about a lot of other topics. Homosexuals have existed forever, but large corporations didn't find it necessary in the past to dedicate a month per year to celebrating them, and there are plenty of historical records to prove that.
And so on, and so forth. I think it's hard to deny overall that it's a sign of the times we live in that we must praise and promote the marginalized and oppressed, and criticize and penalize the powerful.
I have to wonder why this is a bad thing?
To be a bit pedantic, the use of the words "praise and promote" is a bit... loaded, isn't it? This really seems like a simplification of civil rights movements. To be a bit more pedantic, "must" is a pretty strong word. Why "must" we praise the marginalized?
Surely by "celebrating" you mean with words and gesturing? Because in actual practice, the rich and powerful are as rich and powerful as ever, if not more so.
I don’t think the parent comment was trying to say that when the mentality pendulum swung after the US civil war era in the direction of the oppressed (as they claimed it did), suddenly the liberated former slaves became the ones in power of controlling politics/economy/etc.
That aside, yeah, you are correct, in the actual practice the rich and powerful are rich and powerful. The difference that the pendulum makes is about whether they are treated by the public as Fords and Rockefellers or as Musks and Thiels, which is just about the prevailing attitudes.
Re: the Musks and Thiels of this world, it probably doesn't help their public image that the modern world makes their bizarre opinions and outright arrogance more easily communicated. If Ford was arrogant or held freakish opinions, it was a little harder for the common man to find out. Now Musk can call a scuba diver a pedophile or spout conspiracy theories and this reaches tons of people almost immediately.
That makes quite a lot of things about the current time more difficult to comprehend using historical precedence. Because a lot of the fundamental things about living in our present time are exactly the same, yet unprecedented in significant ways. I guess the same could be said about almost any time period in history though.
I find this to be a bizarre false dichotomy. Why not, for example, celebrate the virtuous instead? A society that valued kindness, bravery, temperance or whatever would seem a lot better than either of your options. I'm sure other people could think of plenty of other options as well.
Because it's hard to celebrate the intangibles, that is why virtue signaling gets the spotlight instead. But action and achievement are tangible and can be celebrated (if they're good for society).
This is not a "bizarre false dichotomy". This is a perfect example of dichotomy: do you celebrate actions or intent?
Depends. Which actions and which intent do you mean?
Is it a surprise that it's so popular today and everyone is jumping on the bandwagon of every cause imaginable.
What examples come to mind that make this a clear message?
It is visceral, effective, compelling, and utterly destructive to civil society. But that's the point: To construct an us-and-them narrative to excuse any evils done to "them" in the name of righteousness. Radicalization operates on the same pattern that gave us the Crusades, that gives us jihad, and that still drives people to full-throated defense of political purges.
Defense of the individual, divorced from group dynamics, was the clear, shining achievement of classical liberalism. Personal rights, privileges, and equal treatment under the law regardless of which group you belonged to, or what your status in society is. Our school systems are vigorously working to pull that apart.
Which is the opposite of the old american dream, focused on acting.
Historians will have a blast about this.
While not the only current in American history by any means, it's profoundly American, and you can draw a straight line of intellectual heritage from that core Puritan/Calivinst theology on through to Rauschenbach's Social Gospel theology and onto the modern secular Social Justice movement, spanning hundreds of years of American history.
The core tenet of postmodernism is that there is no objective truth, everything we see in the world is a societal/human construct. It's a pants-on-head extremist outloook that allows absolute insanity to parade as intelligence. It's reasonable to assume that there is at least some semblance of objective truth and argue about the degrees.
The big question is how low the upcoming trough needs to be for us to get the next peak we expect.
False dichotomy.
We could celebrate people who exhibit some tenet of higher principles, people we find inspiring. That's often not the same as victimhood or success.
I wonder if overuse of false dichotomies is a subset of the passive aggression surge.
When I champiom the voices of victims I do so because their voices are already quietened. The voices of champions are still by far the loudest even if we do go out of our ways more than ever to include others.
If you want to know why people have a problem with this consider that both a genocide survivor and micro-aggression survivor will claim victim status. The latter doing so with a straight face and often more fervor.
Forcing anyone who has been subjected to anything to do so only if their suffering was as bad, relatively, as another arbitrary example, means the word "victim" has no real use, beyond some imaginary situation of absolute suffering. Anyone could challenge anyone's claim to victimhood just by pointing out a potentially worse situation for someone else.
My dad is pushing 80.
So he has at times some pretty old school knee jerk reactions about social progress.
About once a decade he asks, somewhat grouchily, "Why are we suddenly talking so much about group X??" And the best answer I came up with, after years of conversations, to foster mutual understanding was: "because it's their turn! We made some progress with group Y, then we tackled group Z, and now we are trying to bring equality to group X. It doesn't detract from groups Y or Z we tackled in the past, the groups A & B that pretty much have power, or groups P & Q we should tackle in the future".
In this grossly oversimplifed view of progress, we worked on / fought to give women right to vote and maybe even some rights, then we worked to give all races vote and maybe even some rights, then we turned to give gays and lesbians maybe some recognition and equality, now we are working on trans, etc. It does not take away from me as a tall white male! And giving african american voting rights did not take away from women having voting rights :). It's GOOD to keep going after all inequalities, rather than saying "Group A inequality is worse, so fuck off and shut up". That's not how we progress.
Where I'm going with this - it's OK for both genocide survivor, and micro-aggression survivor, to claim victim status! We don't all have to have the same degree, and it's OK to help more and more people and fight for better and better equality :).
Another analogy, if you will - when I moved to USA after years of civil war in the old country, my host family tried to use me as a scarecrow to their kids. "Eat your dinner, think of all the people in $COUNTRY who don't have food".
That stopped when I indicated, politely & lovingly, that kids in $COUNTRY could not care less whether 9 year old Tommy in Minnesota ate his veggies or not.
So as a survivor of civil war (and attempted or successful genocide depending on which side / country / historian you listen to, they're still figuring this out:), let me assure you I am not offended by micro-aggression survivors claiming victim status :)
I think it's actually a pretty good sign of progress that if a society is worried about micro-aggressions it means that they are not worried about larger problems, like genocide.
I'm not sure what you mean by sharing victimhood with fervor. What emotions do the perpetrators of micro-aggressions exhibit when they commit? I would ask that we question the position of perpetrators as much, if not more, than victims.
Often the real disagreements are the assumptions that are driving the superficial behaviors.
Assume the person you're replying to has, indeed, stopped to ask this question.
What do you think are the negative consequences of prioritizing the voices of those who have been suppressed, and de-emphasizing the voices of people who more easily get to be heard? And what do you think would be the consequences of not doing so?
See? Everyone can play this game. It's best to assume the other person has considered the consequences of doing/not doing this, and decided one is better than the other.
It's better to explain why you think that line of thinking is wrong (if that is what you think) instead of doubting the thought processes of the person you're debating with.
Yes, I have.
> How do you evaluate who is a victim?
I use my moral compass. YMMV
> Maybe the positive consequences are obvious, but what are the negative consequences of doing this?
I'm not sure, can you see some?
In other words "I may get it wrong, therefore I won't do anything" is unacceptable to me.
I trust that if I listen with an open heart and come from a peace of good intention then I will do the right thing.
It's certainly better than any alternative I could imagine for myself.
I'm not advocating for the "celebration" of victims, but rather to minimize victimization in society. I also would not advocate for celebrating the "powerful" (as that is essentially useless as evaluating whether someone is worthy of adulation).
I would celebrate the people who have the most benefit for society: those who are kind, compassionate, and make the people around them even more so.
This feels like a false dychotomy. There are various possibilities, not just two. I'm not in favor of celebrating the powerful and successful as many of them turned out to be sociopaths. I prefer to celebrate people of science, who through their talent and hard work advance our civilization, including victims, the powerful, and all the rest of us.