[HN Gopher] Feeling like a victim is a perfectly disastrous way ...
___________________________________________________________________
Feeling like a victim is a perfectly disastrous way to go through
life
Author : stanrivers
Score : 102 points
Date : 2022-05-28 11:50 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newsletter.butwhatfor.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsletter.butwhatfor.com)
| tonguez wrote:
| Charlie Munger has spent his life doing nothing productive, and
| done promotional videos for "capitalism". As long as he has
| enough money to pay some prostitute to suck his dick, we "can't
| throw away the capitalist system". Thanks for your contributions
| to humanity, Charles!
| bilirubin wrote:
| It's a good sentiment, but I'll note it's probably also easier to
| not feel like a victim when your uncle owns a bank and your
| grandfather is a Federal judge... the article simultaneously says
| he "didn't have much money" and that he owned multiple rental
| income properties.
|
| Everyone has a struggle but I doubt Munger was actually ever
| truly "broke". These bootstrapping stories always have some
| hidden safety net that is de-emphasized.
| rougka wrote:
| It's actually extremely useful to go through life feeling like a
| victim. There is such an intense social pressure to succeed in
| something, you can just attribute any failure to the dice being
| loaded and reduce that pressure
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| Feeling poor doesn't help you get rich either but neither does
| such knowledge help you get rich.
| tmn wrote:
| Of course it can. If you can identify thoughts that are not
| aiding you, you can actively replace them with more
| constructive uses of your mind and will power.
| DarylZero wrote:
| To assess thoughts according to whether they "aid you," not
| whether they accurately reflect reality, strikes me as
| contemptible and weak.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Also destructive and amoral.
| daedalus_f wrote:
| The world would be a very boring place if the only value of
| thought was its accuracy of reflection of reality.
| DarylZero wrote:
| That's not an accurate recounting of what I said, but I
| guess it's one that aids you!
| incrudible wrote:
| Just because something accurately reflects reality does not
| mean you are obligated to occupy your mind with it,
| especially if there is nothing to be done about it.
| tmn wrote:
| Does it not reflect reality to recognize that time spent
| feeling sorry for yourself could be better utilized in any
| number of other pursuits? Why the hostility to this basic
| notion?
| DarylZero wrote:
| If feeling things actually took up time, you'd be making
| some sense, but as it is...
| markedle wrote:
| Two thoughts can reflect the same reality in different
| light.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| Wouldn't the constructive uses be more responsible for
| getting rich in this case? Removing a negative does not do
| the job by itself.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Wealth is pareto distributed, by definition, almost no one
| can be rich and almost nothing you do can change that.
| tbihl wrote:
| For a narrow enough definition of rich (10s of billions?
| You'd have to define "almost no one"). On a more useful
| level, reliable distributions of populations, no matter
| how reliable they tend to be, do not control individuals.
|
| There's a spot on the big fat end of the distribution for
| pareto nihilists.
| cy_hauser wrote:
| > For a narrow enough definition of rich
|
| No matter where you lop the end of the Pareto
| distribution off the remaining curve still fits the same
| distribution. I though that was a defining characteristic
| of the principle.
|
| > ... reliable distributions ... do not control
| individuals.
|
| The people who've made it always talk to the people who
| haven't as if they can, by force of will, change their
| circumstances. That may be true if an individual has an
| untapped talent but in general luck will determine your
| outcome way more often than force of will. If it were
| possible for everyone to be rich there would be examples
| of that in society all across the world and all
| throughout history.
|
| I applaud your optimism though.
| tmn wrote:
| I agree the removal is not sufficient, but it is helpful
| legacynl wrote:
| You guys are missing the obvious:
|
| Feeling like a victim is only bad if you're not actually a victim
| of anything. If you ARE a victim, then it's delusional not to
| feel as such.
|
| I know how everybody in the US loves hustle culture, but this
| story isn't applicable to everybody. The story is written and
| emphasized in such a way that this could happen nowadays to you
| and me but it can't.
|
| When this guy lost his home, he had a backup at the university
| club, presumably granted to him by powerful friends at the
| university; no worry about sleeping on the street, no police
| knocking on his car-window in the middle of the night, no worry
| about having to find a place to shower or wash your clothes. No
| getting fired for being unhygienic or sleeping on the street.
|
| > In those days, there was no health insurance, you just paid
| everything out of pocket
|
| Yes, but in the fricking 1950s. Before the absurdly inflated
| costs of current american healthcare. In those days you would pay
| an amount more closely related to the actual amount of doctor-
| hours and medical supplies you use.
|
| I really don't get people in these comments, it's as if they've
| never met poor people before; it's perfectly possible to make all
| the right choices that life offers you, but still end up in a bad
| state.
|
| I'm sure there are some situations where aspiring entrepreneurs
| need a kick in their butt, but in other situations putting the
| blame on the person's 'mentality' only distracts from dealing
| with the real issues.
| timoth3y wrote:
| > If you ARE a victim, then it's delusional not to feel as
| such.
|
| Even if you _are_ a victim, by adopting a "victimhood mindset"
| you inflict further harm upon yourself.
|
| Probably the best book written on this is Viktor Frankl's
| "Man's Search for Meaning" in which he writes about his
| experience as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > If you ARE a victim, then it's delusional not to feel as
| such.
|
| Spot on. Additionally, modern neurology has proven that people
| experiencing stress and anxiety for years risk loss of
| cognitive abilities and long-term emotional harm. This is not
| something that you can just shake away with some "positive
| affirmations" and walk in a park.
|
| This kind of narrative blames people who are facing learned
| helplessness.
|
| Even if you are not a victim - but you are unhappy for any
| other reason it's crucial to recognize and address it.
| Recognizing it is step one in order to overcome it.
|
| Unfortunately some cultures tolerated decades of hustle culture
| / rugged individualism to the point of becoming unable to admit
| difficulties.
|
| This is psychology 101 and it's really telling that HN
| downvotes you and me instead.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The main problem is when people who are legitimately a victim
| in one situation or one aspect of their life loose
| perspective and let this dominate their self identity and
| world view. The only solution to irrational learned
| helplessness is to reframe your mental model.
|
| It can be difficult to get back to a healthy mental state,
| and some people need help.
|
| That said, feeling a helpless victim is a terrible way to go
| through life, and usually far worse than the original harm.
| sneak wrote:
| In the modern USA, everyone is being victimized perpetually by
| several different groups simultaneously.
| DarylZero wrote:
| The best way not to feel like a victim, is not to be a victim.
| amelius wrote:
| > The best way not to feel like a victim, is not to be a
| victim.
|
| I'm a victim of the Android/iOS duopoly. How do you suggest I
| change that? Throw away my smartphone? Build my own?
| throwaway_pp234 wrote:
| Serious answer: buy a PinePhone and contribute to Mobian.
| dijit wrote:
| We are all victims to something.
|
| even the most wealthy, most successful and privileged have
| something in their lives that victimises them.
|
| It is exceedingly tempting to succumb to it.
| DarylZero wrote:
| Yeah if you slap a billionaire in the face, he may succumb to
| the temptation to feel like he was slapped in the face.
|
| I still say, the best way to avoid that feeling is not to be
| slapped in the face. Just my personal preference.
| christkv wrote:
| They might have an abusive partner, a sick child or any
| other thing that is not related to money.
| Taywee wrote:
| The most common way that we are all victims is the
| inevitable deaths of us and everybody and everything that
| we care about, and no billionaire is yet immune to that.
|
| Maybe one day we can simply not die, but until then, we are
| all victims of our own mortality, and plenty of people of
| all sorts feel plenty bad about that.
| DarylZero wrote:
| The death of a loved one is another instance when one may
| be tempted to feel bereft.
| DarylZero wrote:
| ...and even the richest people will deny the reality of
| that through their religion.
| incrudible wrote:
| Are you always on guard about being slapped in the face?
| Surely there must be something you can be made victim of
| that is not on your mind at all times? Do you always check
| your shoes at the off-chance that someone hid a razorblade
| in there?
| DarylZero wrote:
| I'm not getting your point with these questions. Someone
| who is a victim of an assault may be "on guard" or
| "hyper-vigilant" for some time afterward. I can remember
| such an instance in my own life after I was robbed at
| gunpoint in a foreign country.
|
| Someone who is a victim of repeated assaults during
| childhood is very likely to tend toward hyper-vigilance
| their entire lifetime (see:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_post-
| traumatic_stress_...) but that's not me.
| amelius wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Shortly after the divorce, Charlie learned that his son,
| Teddy, had leukemia.
|
| What exactly is your solution?
| DarylZero wrote:
| Just pretend that Teddy doesn't have leukemia. Tell the
| doctor you don't believe in western medicine. Buy a
| homeopathic healing crystal (it's just a grain of sand).
| Deny the reality, deny the feelings. Problem solved.
| zackmorris wrote:
| Since life is suffering (and other things), I don't really
| internalize quips like these anymore. We lose everyone and
| everything around us before we die. That realization is perhaps
| the foundation of becoming an adult. Which is why I avoid
| becoming one whenever possible.
|
| There's liberation in realizing that this is all a game. The
| shared reality we take as fact, rooted in science, is not
| actually how any of this works. We're all dreaming this in the
| perpetual now. Time is an illusion. The past is a wake behind a
| boat we're riding in, not the cause of our present reality. The
| future is a sea of endless possibility we manifest through
| conscious intuition, not something we build manually.
|
| Once I learned to meditate and tune in to the vibration of the
| reality I want to exist in, and tune out the rest, things got
| better. Also stepping back from 3D to 4D/5D helped me see the
| suffering in others and their projection of that onto me. As
| above, so below.
|
| As my reality shifts, the universe goes to great lengths to
| adjust the context, trading one presence for another, and that
| chaos magic process can be exhilarating but also frightening.
| Since science may never be able to explain source consciousness
| or how its force constructs reality, we're all divine by
| definition. I think that's what they mean by stepping into our
| power and changing the world around us. With great power comes
| great responsibility. Which again, is why I avoid using it now
| whenever possible.
|
| Certain things seem to nurture spiritual growth: negative
| reinforcement, loss, surrender, service, faith, hope and love.
| And many more. Anyone can rise above at any time, but we're
| usually too busy saying "nah, maybe some other time."
|
| https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/the-4-types-of-intuit...
|
| https://greatmystery.org/perspectives-four-fold-way/
| fsociety wrote:
| It is okay to feel like a victim in circumstances, just so long
| as you do not let it rule your life or prevent you from doing
| things.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| _No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the
| mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal
| mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me
| jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And
| at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches
| one's sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old
| established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or
| Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous
| to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it
| as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe
| of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a
| schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of
| Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even
| this wears off in time.
|
| What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a
| broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount
| to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you
| think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me,
| because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that
| particular instance? Who ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then,
| however the old sea-captains may order me about--however they may
| thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that
| it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served
| in much the same way--either in a physical or metaphysical point
| of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and
| all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be
| content._
|
| Moby Dick, "Loomings" (1851)
| olddustytrail wrote:
| danaris wrote:
| The identification of the quote is appreciated.
|
| The condescending dismissal of a) (almost) all of American
| writing as being unworthy, and b) all Americans as being
| clueless drones parroting the same few works is deeply
| unappreciated.
|
| Yes, there are Americans who would look down their noses at
| you for not instantly recognizing a quote from _Moby Dick_ ,
| or, say, _The Grapes of Wrath_. They are representative of a
| particular category of literature snobs, _not_ Americans in
| general, thank you very much.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| You're absolutely right of course. I was having a mild dig
| at the snobs: don't take it too seriously. My apologies for
| any offense.
|
| If it's any consolation, I've found better literary
| recommendations on random HN threads than in any mainstream
| reviews. I know Iain Banks had similar views.
| Taywee wrote:
| Or perhaps the passage itself was more relevant than the
| source.
|
| I strongly disagree that Americans have a dearth of decent
| writings. Dozens of the greatest authors of the past few
| centuries were American. I know it's fashionable to treat
| America as a punching bag for all sorts of perceived slights
| and shortcomings, but that's absolutely uncalled for here.
| UmbertoNoEco wrote:
| You of course can disagree, but my experience matches OP
| too. I understand every country likes to hype up its
| writers, but at least outside America this is more or less
| the assessment of its writers:
|
| - Great, incredible writers, worthy of every accolade: Poe,
| Melville, Faulkner and probably Whitman.
|
| - Good, solid writers, a tier below: Hemingway, Hawthorne,
| Steinbeck, Pynchon, Dos Passos, Gaddiss and many
| others...that sort of caliber, nobody will complain if one
| of them is included among the great writers but nobody will
| miss them either
|
| - Literary mediocrities, overhyped by a culture with a
| serious lack of good literature: Frazen, DFW, etc
|
| - All the pulpy and trashy authors.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar.
| That's among the dumbest and most hellish kind of writing we
| end up with here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| JJMcJ wrote:
| The great psychologist Eric Berne distinguished between a victim,
| someone who has a misfortune befall them, and a Victim, someone
| who's life position is to feel like a victim.
|
| Unfortunately if one is a victim too often, too many bad things
| happen, it's natural to become a Victim and live your life that
| way.
| screeconc wrote:
| This is all really complicated, and telling the difference
| between those things is the hard part, even when you think you
| might know the answer.
|
| This has been on my mind a lot because of some circumstances I
| found myself in that ended up being disastrous. When I
| complained to a good friend, he would often characterize me as
| just being too negative or something. For years what I would do
| is the stoic thing, sort of tell myself I was just making too
| big of a deal about it, and so forth and so on.
|
| At some point though I realized my problem was the opposite,
| that I wasn't making a _big enough_ deal about it, I wasn 't
| taking enough action, and by the time I understood what was
| going on, it was basically too late.
|
| In my case, I think the problem was that I didn't know how bad
| things really were, because I didn't have any frame of
| reference for anything else. I didn't know how it should be, so
| I didn't understand how far things were off. And my friends
| projected, assumed that where I was, things were like where
| they were at, that if I complained about Serious Problem X, I
| really meant Less Serious Problem Y, even though I actually
| meant Serious Problem X.
|
| When this goes on long enough, and no one really knows what's
| going on -- you can't help yourself because you don't recognize
| what's happening, and no one around you is helping for whatever
| reason -- it can _look_ like you 're wallowing in victimhood
| when it's really just that no one is really identifying the
| actual source of the problem. There might not be any real
| victims involved, or maybe everyone is a victim. It doesn't
| matter.
|
| At the risk of sounding pedantic, this is the essence of
| classical Western tragedy: no one is really a victim, they're
| just screwed in ways no one forsees.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Well made points. Expanding on one part, there is a social
| contingent who gatekeeps victimhood itself. In their eyes
| they see too much victimhood and decide that the solution is
| that less people should be calling themselves victims. Would
| some victims do well to shift the locus of control inward,
| sure, but that's probably best left to the victim to decide
| rather than being decided for them.
|
| Part of this behavior denies victimhood as a form of social
| control. It's a malignant form of denying victim hood and
| it's most dangerous form
| em-bee wrote:
| this is indeed a challenge. when you have no friends who take
| you really seriously, when you have no-one who can give you a
| frame of reference to your situation, when the issue is
| sensitive that you can't really talk about all the details
| with everyone, and you have no-one who you can trust with
| those details...
|
| it's almost impossible to get out of that. you really need
| that friend that can validate your feelings and can help you
| confirm that you are taking the right steps to get out of
| that problem, especially when those steps are counter your
| intuition, or counter to what you think everyone else around
| expects from you.
| stanrivers wrote:
| I like that distinction - some people are victimized, but
| others are oriented towards life as if they were forever a
| victim - the latter is what is dangerous
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Berne was a really innovative and perceptive thinker, who
| made an effort to keep his writing accessible to non-
| specialists.
|
| Both _Games People Play_ and _What Do You Say After You Say
| Hello_ , where the idea of life scripts is explained.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due
| to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you
| have the power to revoke at any moment.
|
| -- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
| bowsamic wrote:
| I prefer the Buddha's simile of two arrows: the first arrow of
| the actual pain is not avoidable, but the second arrow is
| something we inflict upon ourselves in response to the pain.
| Marcus here makes it sound like we can totally avoid pain, but
| actually we can't, that first arrow will always hit and we
| shouldn't pretend like there isn't pain. The second arrow is
| what we have control over: our own personal response to the
| pain, seeing it as bad or good, wanting it to be gone.
| danaris wrote:
| Maybe by "external", Marcus was being quite literal: that
| first arrow is _inside_ your body when it causes you pain.
| Until it physically contacts you, it doesn 't hurt you.
|
| (I'm _mostly_ being facetious.)
| thunkshift1 wrote:
| Thats right, advice from a goddamn emperor on how the
| downtrodden should not feel downtrodden
| kodah wrote:
| Kind of a weird take. Marcus Aurelius' life, although that of
| an emperor, was filled with a lot of strife that he used
| philosophy to deal with. His stoic philosophies come from his
| early life, which saw the death of his father, and adoption
| by a series of people he didn't know, all the way to the
| death of both of his sons.
|
| Marcus did achieve the title of emperor, but dismissing him
| because of his accomplishments, especially when stoicism was
| a key and integral part of his life along the way, is odd.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Say, there are two types of people:
|
| (1) a person who _mostly_ experiences challenges at or just
| above their ability to solve them
|
| (2) a person who _mostly_ experiences challenges way above
| their ability to solve them (even plausibly so)
|
| Stoicism, political conservatism, rugged individualists,
| etc. are just those in camp-1 unaware there's a camp-2.
|
| (Likewise, social radicals are in camp-2, saying of 1,
| they're privileged _as if that isnt desirable!_. So both
| sides are superstitious about the other).
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This isn't my experience at all.
|
| I think the main difference is disagreement on what
| constitutes a solvable problem and the value of trying.
| exolymph wrote:
| Absurdly ignorant statement. One of the most potent
| inspirations for stoicism is mortality itself, which no
| one escapes.
| DarylZero wrote:
| That's not remotely true. Political conservatism and
| social radicalism demonstrably don't correlate with
| personal experience in that way: children adopt the
| beliefs of their parents (and/or peers).
|
| Hence "champagne socialists" and "temporarily embarrassed
| millionaires."
| gruez wrote:
| >Hence "champagne socialists" and "temporarily
| embarrassed millionaires."
|
| Can we put some numbers on this? A few offhand examples
| of "champagne socialists" and "temporarily embarrassed
| millionaires" doesn't really support your claim.
| DarylZero wrote:
| You can easily put numbers on it, lots of polling data.
| But from your memory just look at how there are "red
| states" and "blue states" -- they clearly don't
| correspond to personal life trajectory in the way stated.
| Political attitudes very clearly reproduce as culture,
| like language.
|
| I'm not giving examples just citing these popular phrases
| which exist to note the phenomenon.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Just because one is an emperor does not mean they can
| suddenly solve any problem. This is precisely what
| Aurelius' writings [1] focus almost exclusively on. In
| spite of being the most powerful man in the world he
| found himself to be quite helpless in terms of actually
| improving the state of mankind which was his genuine
| motivation. As a peer comment mentioned, these writings
| were never meant to even be seen by anybody other than
| himself. They're effectively his diary.
|
| He found himself not only largely unable to help better
| mankind, but could not even better his own son. Aurelius
| is generally regarded as one of the greatest leaders of
| humanity to have lived; his son (Commodus) - one of the
| worst. Father deified, son assassinated (to great
| celebration) and struck from all official record.
|
| And it wasn't simply failure to achieve, but also failure
| of circumstance. He was surrounded by death which
| climaxed with a many years long plague that by some
| estimates killed more than 30% of the entire empire's
| population, including some of Aurelius' own immediate
| family.
|
| [1] - http://files.libertyfund.org/files/2133/Aurelius_14
| 64_LFeBk.... # That book has a lengthy, and necessary,
| intro (well multiple actually) explaining stoicism and
| providing various historical context. Aurelius' writings
| themselves only begin on page 25 of the book, 59 of the
| PDF.
| kodah wrote:
| For much of Marcus' life he _wasn 't_ able to solve
| things though. In fact, that's what much of his
| philosophy talks about, and his (fairly open) history.
| Much of stoicism is focused around dealing with things
| you can't change, which also makes this take very odd.
| UmbertoNoEco wrote:
| So just like every other human being but without the power,
| money, social standing or connections. I love MA writings
| (Seneca too) but I dont take their personal lives as any
| example of fight against adversity. They are like boxing
| coaches who rarely if ever boxed, let alone being knocked
| down by a rival. Same with Mr Munger (his very real
| tragedies notwithstanding).
| DigiDigiorno wrote:
| You made the incorrect assumption either that having the
| "power to revoke" means the necessity to exercise that power,
| and/or that revoking feelings means inaction on all events
| leading to them.
|
| The advice says nothing about how the downtrodden should act
| about their situation of downtroddeness.
|
| Focusing and making assumptions on the unfairness of the
| statement is a bit of victim mentality. In fact, your
| statement reminds me of an article I read somewhere. I think
| it was titled "Feeling like a victim is a perfectly
| disastrous way to go through life"
| meowkit wrote:
| If you mischaracterize this as "advice for the downtrodden"
| then sure your snark makes sense.
|
| Except it isn't that. Its the internal monologue of a roman
| emperor dealing with the extreme stresses of his life and his
| role in the world.
| Delk wrote:
| People kind of throw it around as if it were applicable
| advice for others, too.
|
| It's a good remark that it's effectively the emperor's
| diary instead, though. I didn't know that.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| That's not a problem. Others find The Meditations
| applicable to their own lives because they contain honest
| self-advice. Some observe others finding the writing
| self-applicable, so they recommend it to people who
| haven't read it yet.
| daedalus_f wrote:
| Marcus Aurelius writings that are collected together in the
| Meditations were never intended to be published, they were
| his thoughts and advice for himself.
| Majestic121 wrote:
| It could be quote from Epictetus, who had a similar
| philosophy and lived his life as a slave, made lame by his
| master breaking his leg, before becoming a philosophy
| teacher.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| These dudes also had a (to most contemporary people) deeply
| weird metaphysics that brought them to these understandings
| and allowed them to share them despite extreme differences
| in their lives.
|
| Unless you also believe that the entire universe including
| yourself is a single sentient being and every event is
| perfectly predetermined, you're gonna find some
| contradictions here.
|
| It's not really a unified coherent practical philosophy
| when separated from that cosmology. Individual parts of it
| can still be individually valuable of course, but other
| parts truly are just an emperor telling people to deal with
| it.
|
| A more western-digestible analogy would be believing in the
| resurrection of christ without believing in his divinity.
| You could still get useful advice from the sermons but it
| stops being a coherent foundation of belief for your role
| in the world.
| goodpoint wrote:
| It irks me how stoic philosophy quotes are constantly taken out
| of context and bent into rugged individualism: "soldier on, be
| tough".
| ethnologica wrote:
| This is an oversimplification of a complex topic: People can be
| victims of situations since certain life events are disturbing
| and at the same time genes determine to a certain degree how you
| take life. Nonsense article about ,,positive" thinking.
| matrix12 wrote:
| Or worse, those that go around prescribing victimhood on others.
| CPLX wrote:
| "Feeling like prey is a terrible way to go through life and you
| shouldn't do it"
|
| - Charlie the shark, addressing a school of fish
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| This is really good advice - for externalizers. For internalizers
| however, it is perfectly terrible. Before deciding to go all in
| on advice like this, it's crucial to know where you fall along
| that spectrum[1].
|
| Externalizers tend to place the locus of control outside of
| themselves which symbolically castrates them to fantasize about
| the objet petit a[2]. When it negatively impacts your life, you
| become the friend who likes to complain about everything but does
| nothing. Or worse, you're a person against the world who owes no
| one and impotently rages against everything.
|
| Internalizers do the opposite. They will place immense burdens
| upon themselves to unrealistically adapt and change when most
| people would confront the challenge directly. An example is the
| Missing Stair[3] metaphor. An internalizer works around
| everything, always pushing the problem inward and never forcing
| the world to change. Internalizers can be harder to identify as
| they silently suffer in an absence of self-kindness.
|
| What the article glosses over is knowing yourself[4] well enough
| to understand which tendencies you have. Maybe you tend to be an
| externalizer with your career and an internalizer with social
| relations or vice-versa or some other mixture entirely. It can be
| hard to be honest with yourself and ask, "Is this truly working
| for me?" But, those questions are hard precisely because they are
| the first step towards personal growth.
|
| 1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-theater-the-
| brai...
|
| 2. http://cahiers.kingston.ac.uk/concepts/castration.html
|
| 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair
|
| 4. gnothi seauton - which everyone should practice before blindly
| taking advice
| em-bee wrote:
| could you clarify the difference between externalizing and
| internalizing please?
|
| isn't feeling like a victim the very definition of
| externalizing?
|
| wouldn't internalizing mean to blame yourself instead?
|
| doesn't _accept personal responsibility_ translate (crudely)
| to: _don 't blame others, it's your own fault_. (i realize that
| this is not the intent, i actually understand the article to
| mean that i should take responsibility for changing the
| situation, not just for getting into the situation in the first
| place. so this is just exaggerated to draw out the point)
|
| so yes, i agree this is for externalizers, but that's because
| internalizers would never see themselves as victims. (well
| maybe one can see oneself as a victim of ones past self)
|
| sorry, if i sound confused, i am trying to work this out as i
| write.
|
| so basically, the advice to not feel as a victim is a no-op for
| internalizers because they don't do that already. but what
| follows still applies: _take responsibility to get yourself out
| of that situation_
|
| likewise internalizers are also not immune to self-pity.
|
| externalizers feel they can't do anything because everyone else
| prevents them. internalizers feel they can't do anything
| because they themselves are lacking the necessary capacity.
|
| but the article says that neither is true. you can take
| responsibility and make your situation better. i think that
| applies equally to both.
|
| an externalizer can say: yes, that happened to me, but i can
| fix it, even though it's not my fault. and the internalizer can
| say, yes, i got myself into that situation, but i can also get
| myself out of it.
|
| so i don't really see much of a difference there, and why the
| advice would be terrible for internalizers.
| Delk wrote:
| I think GP's point might be that, if you tell an internalizer
| who is miserable -- and thus seeing the fault in themselves
| -- that it's bad to feel victimhood or a fault in others or
| in their circumstances, you might push them further into
| self-blame even if their misery was brought by bad luck, or
| if they're disproportionately seeing a failure in themselves
| already.
|
| What you say makes sense from a solutions point of view that
| assumes people presently have the mental capacity to improve
| their lives and circumstances. Sometimes it works, and it's
| always attractive to think of and offer solutions, but it can
| be a two-edged sword. If you say that to someone who's burned
| out (for lack of a better expression; doesn't have to be
| burnout), out of capacity and miserable _and_
| disproportionately blaming themselves for that, you might
| just increase their self-blame rather than positively
| encouraging them towards solutions even if your intention is
| the latter.
| em-bee wrote:
| i believe recommending solutions to someone is not really a
| good idea. rather i'd encourage the person to look for for
| their own solutions and then help them validate whether
| those are a good.
| Delk wrote:
| AFAIK, in therapy, the therapist's focus on giving advice
| correlates negatively with success. I imagine the
| relationship between the two might depend on the problem,
| interpersonal chemistry and various things I can't think
| of, but especially if the problem isn't something
| absolutely concrete, advice probably isn't something that
| helps. Most people aren't stupid, and if a psychological
| or emotional problem were just a simple solution away,
| they'd probably have thought of it already.
|
| Friendship or other "normal" relationships and
| interaction aren't therapy, of course, but the negative
| correlation might be an insightful observation
| nevertheless.
| em-bee wrote:
| yes, exactly, because it is not advice that people need,
| but validation of their feelings and ideas. good friends
| validate and support. therapy of course goes beyond that
| by for example pointing to new ways to think about your
| situation, and recognizing problems that friends may not
| be able to see.
| lazide wrote:
| Not necessarily. Validation of bad state is harmful.
|
| A therapist shouldn't, for instance, tell someone it's ok
| to feel uncontrollable rage because the mail was 5
| minutes later than normal yesterday.
|
| Noting it is happening is of course important. But
| challenging the client is also important.
|
| Is that helping them? Do they know why they felt that
| way? Are there tools we can use to discover why, if not?
| Are there actions that can be taken to put them in a
| place where they can feel something that IS helping them,
| for instance.
|
| Friends who always encourage or validate are toxic, just
| like those that never do. It's contextual.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > This is really good advice - for externalizers. For
| internalizers however, it is perfectly terrible
|
| I wish I could upvote you 10 times.
|
| The "don't feel like a victim" advice is a very dangerous when
| a person really is a victim and needs to get away from an
| aggressor.
|
| Besides, advice that works very well for 50% (or even 90%) of
| the population and harm the others is terrible advice. We need
| nuance.
| grammarnazzzi wrote:
| > The "don't feel like a victim" advice is a very dangerous
| when a person really is a victim and needs to get away from
| an aggressor.
|
| Did you even read the article?
|
| By not feeling like a victim, you own your problem, and this
| enables you to solve it. In this case, by getting away from
| the aggressor.
| em-bee wrote:
| feeling like a victim and being a victim are different
| concepts. the latter is reality, the former is a feeling, and
| how you deal with it. to me feeling like a victim implies
| that i can't change my situation. which exactly means that i
| feel that i can't get away from the aggressor. in order to
| get away from that i need to not feel like a victim, but take
| responsibility to better my situation by getting away.
|
| at least that is how i read the article.
| grammarnazzzi wrote:
| Your distinction is irrelevant.
|
| Owning your problem will always result in a better outcome than
| focusing on victimhood and blame. Blame places control and
| solutions outside yourself.
| amelius wrote:
| What does modern science say about these theories? E.g. wasn't
| most of Freud's psychosexual work debunked?
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| > wasn't most of Freud's psychosexual work debunked?
|
| No, it wasn't.
| UmbertoNoEco wrote:
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I framed it psychoanalytically, but locus of control was
| coined by Rotter so its probably grounded more in behaviorism
| and social learning traditions.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Is it possible for an internalizer to snap and become an
| externalizer? In which case would the advice apply?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It's my personal belief that people have the capacity for
| change and it is largely dependent on desire and willingness.
| Having the words to conceptualize one's self can catalyze the
| process of self transformation and that's why it's important
| to talk about it. No one can snap change nor is a willing
| person's mind immutable. Maybe they find it possible to
| change one aspect of their life more than others. There's
| also therapy.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Perhaps I wasn't clear enough before, but what I'm trying
| to ask is whether or not being an internalizer that
| acknowledges oneself as a victim (through burnout or a
| shocking epiphany) could lead to becoming a pessimistic
| externalizer. That because this ex-internalizer has
| recognized he has been victimized, he will try to study how
| he's been wronged and come to the conclusion that he had
| little control over his life. Or perhaps that staying quiet
| was what made one a victim in the first place, so that one
| should do the opposite.
|
| At that point, would "don't be a victim" be useful advice
| or an empty platitude?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| That's certainly possible. Someone who has tried every
| possible way to direct their agency inward without
| results can simply burn out and feel helpless to affect
| change. By process of elimination, they've shifted their
| locus of control outward.
|
| This isn't a given though. I know plenty of people who
| overinternalize to the point of burnout and don't become
| cynical externalizes[1].
|
| In my experience "dont be a victim" means "please stop
| complaining" more than anything else. A friend who truly
| does wish to help might start with getting curious about
| why the externalizing victim feels like they cannot
| affect change, but this is tricky. Often people don't
| want to be offered unsolicited advice or be made to feel
| like they have to prove that they have exhausted their
| options before being offered sympathy. It's a fine line.
|
| 1. Before someone else chimes in with it being a useless
| model because it does not make predictions - that's not
| the point. It's a mode of interpretation/critical lens,
| not a predictive model.
| swayvil wrote:
| That's what's known as a "halfternalizer". They've got their
| own special way of doing things. Totally different
| nomenclature.
| 0x20cowboy wrote:
| > Internalizers do the opposite. They will place immense
| burdens upon themselves to unrealistically adapt and change
| when most people would confront the challenge directly. [...]
| An internalizer works around everything, always pushing the
| problem inward and never forcing the world to change.
| Internalizers can be harder to identify as they silently suffer
| in an absence of self-kindness.
|
| This blew my mind. Thank you for that.
| nradov wrote:
| Nah. That's just nonsense pop psychology with no real
| scientific basis. Avoiding seeing yourself as a victim is good
| advice for everyone, regardless of their perceived locus of
| control.
| CJefferson wrote:
| Sometimes your problem is someone else's fault, and in such cases
| it is often useful to complain.
|
| Quietly feeling like a victim may indeed not be useful, but
| complaining effectively can get you a lot.
|
| Also, I unsurprisingly see no evidence in this article that the
| ideas described will actually lead to success.
| daenz wrote:
| If we're talking about in a local community (household,
| workplace, neighborhood), my opinion is that complaining
| signals to people that you are expecting someone else to solve
| it. It's a bad signal in a local community, because in a local
| community, everyone must be committed to solving most of the
| problems that occur, unless you have some kind of known reason
| for being unable to help (disabled, grieving, etc). Nobody
| likes complainers.
|
| Instead of complaining, state the problem, why you believe it
| is a problem, and what you're going to do about it unless
| people stop you with a better idea. This way, everyone knows
| what to expect your actions to be. They also have an
| opportunity to oppose your plan if they feel strongly enough to
| overcome inaction. And you're not complaining, because you've
| made it clear that you intend to solve it.
|
| Complaining can be an answer in a local community when the
| community is severely dysfunctional. For example, in the
| workplace, an overbearing manager who requires all decisions to
| go through them and doesn't allow any autonomy. In that case,
| complaining, leaving, or try to manipulate the manager are the
| dysfunctional alternatives.
| civilized wrote:
| I don't think this is true in general. If a rape victim feels
| like a victim, it's because they are and society should validate
| that. But if your kid dies and it's no one's fault in particular,
| the advice given here might help you (or might not).
| crmd wrote:
| Victimhood is a crucial but temporary step in the healing
| process, where you acknowledge your pain and recognize that the
| trauma was not your fault. But if you get stuck there, you stop
| growing and healing. The next step is recognizing yourself as a
| survivor - that you did the work, you overcame adversity, and
| the trauma ultimately made you more mentally tough and
| resilient and better equipped for future life challenges. It's
| only in this final step where a victim actually takes the power
| back.
|
| Source: me, after 15 years of difficult work with an
| exceptional therapist.
| spoonjim wrote:
| I can tell you couldn't overcome "victim mentality" to achieve in
| spite of the blows that life dealt him: Teddy Munger. This one-
| size-fits-all prescription is nonsense.
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