The authors of Every Shot Must Have a Purpose offer a great and actionable acronym that captures the erosion of responsibility that allows people to fall into a wormhole of weakness. They write, “VERBs is a self-pitying state where you see yourself as the VICTIM who is ENTITLED to better and instead of working wants to be RESCUED from a fate that you BLAME on conditions outside yourself.” Sadly, viewing oneself as a victim is intoxicating to many. It offers an excuse. You’re not responsible for your problem(s). Not only is it not your fault, you now have a claim, someone or something to blame. With blame, you have a claim. You’re entitled to be rescued from the ill created by the blameworthy party. What I don’t have isn’t my fault, it’s someone else’s. Victims gravitate to grievance.
When we view ourselves as a victim, we’re essentially ceding control and abandoning agency. Valuing victimhood allows us to cry for compassion and help. Helpless becomes hopeless. It’s the reverse of responsibility. Crenshaw offers in Fortitude, “To be helpless to change your circumstances is to be totally disempowered, and to be disempowered is to be resentful, depressed, and unable to succeed. It’s akin to being a bystander in your own life…” It’s the opposite of MAMA: My Actions Matter Always. It’s fleeing the idea of “There’s Always a Way” or the Law of TAAW. It’s wanting anything other than the ball.
BB article links:
MAMA – My Actions Matter Always – Broker Builder
The Law of TAAW – Broker Builder
Winners Want the Ball – Broker Builder
To be a victim is to give up your voice and cling instead to others. Where we’re worried, we can grasp for guidance from others. “We have a tendency to turn outward for everything,” writes Dave Rubin in Don’t Burn This Country. In Golf’s Holy War, Brett Cyrgalis quotes sport psychologist Bob Rotella, “Unfortunately, major branches of psychology and psychiatry during [the twentieth] century have helped promote the notion that we are all in some sense victims—victims of insensitive parents, victims of poverty, victims of abuse, victims of implacable genes.”
This perspective excuses people from personal responsibility for their circumstances and feelings. The late Christopher Lasch wrote that “therapy simultaneously pronounces the patient unfit to manage his own life and delivers him into the hands of a specialist.” It’s the opposite of agency. If you need an “expert” to tell you how to behave/live, then you are less of a person. It’s asserting victimhood. You’re so incapable that you need someone else to tell you how to manage. Experts disempower. Rubin continues, “We ask ‘experts’ for advice. We expect the government to solve all our problems. We use drugs when we’re in pain. We expect our partners to make us happy. Worst of all, we’re shocked to the point of self-destruction when those things fail us. We get more depressed, we get more dependent, and we experience more pain.” Happiness, satisfaction, indeed, our very life exists outside us and rests in the hands of others.
This view encourages people to seek help from experts. Academics love to take on the role of being in a position to boldly offer direction. Xi Van Fleet observes in Mao’s America, “The goal of Mao and the CCP was to program us into believing that they were indeed our parents—our caregivers and providers.” Those in authority like to see society as dependent on them. They want citizens to welcome the intrusion from above. We, the kind, compassionate, knowable authorities will provide safety and security to you scared, feeble people.
The hubris of helpers can be anything but caring. Instead, it reflects they know best and encourages interference under the gentle guise of assisting. The victim is too stupid to know what to do. Guidance, input, and direction is needed by the kind, compassionate helper. Caustic compassion is about complete condescension and a clamoring for control.
In The Vision of the Anointed, Thomas Sowell considers the anointed as those that think they should be in charge and tell others how to live. The anointed believe that the world would be a better place if others just did what they told them to do. Sowell wrote, “As part of that vision, explanations which exempt the individual from personal responsibility for unhappy circumstances in his life are consistently favored over explanations in which the individual’s own actions are a major ingredient in unfortunate outcomes.” Where people are seen less responsible for their lot in life, the argument for government intervention to solve problems grows. It can’t be me. I can’t fix things. I need the government’s guidance to change my circumstances.
Giving voice to victimhood eviscerates independence and deepens dependence. It’s good for no one other than those in charge.
Unfortunately, anti-agency or anyone but me instead of responsibility is more of what we see. We’re pursuing the posture and path of passivity and abandoning agency. “More and more, we are putting a preference on victimhood, glorifying weakness instead of strength, and outright shaming anyone with more traditional characteristics,” writes Dan Crenshaw in Fortitude. We’re being wired to see weakness as strength. Crenshaw continues, “The problem with our current cultural trend is that we are far more likely to be cheered on if we embrace victimhood.” The only thing we seem prepared to compete at nowadays is being a baby. Whose struggle is hardest? Not how hard can I work to overcome, but who can I blame? Power comes from protest not from performance.
Some years ago, I was returning to drop our eldest son back at university after enjoying a lunch together. As we stopped at an intersection in front of the campus, a young lady pushed her wheelchair across a snowy road while holding her therapy dog on a leash. She had no visible disability of any kind. She reminded me of the old joke, “I see said the blind man to his deaf wife when his crippled child stood up.” What was I watching? I was confused. I looked to my son who observed, yup, nothing wrong with her, yet I have several people like this in each of my classes. I couldn’t make sense that someone without a real disability would want to present themselves as weakened in multiple ways.
The volume of victims has only mushroomed since then. Especially on academic campuses. Recent studies of students at ivy league universities in the US show a startling increase in attendees having some sort of disability. The percentage of students claiming to have a disability has grown from under 10% to upwards of 40% in just the last couple of decades. Victimhood has not just social cache but other benefits. Students with a disability are afforded more time to deliver assignments, more time taking exams, additional teaching supports, and even access to better housing options on campus.
Rob Henderson writes about this rot in a recent article. Victimhood has become a virtue that people are incented to chase. It’s a game grifters gravitate towards. What may have begun as genuine compassion aimed at offering concessions to “level the playing field” for those with limitations has become an ever-expanding chase for benefits from those with nothing but advantages. The contrast between levels of disability between Ivy league schools and community colleges is stark. Stanford, for example, had 40% of its students listed as having a disability whereas most community colleges show a disabled population under 4%. Henderson writes, “Today victimhood can function as a strategy. It can open doors, unlock resources and confer moral authority.” Henderson concludes his article observing, “Institutions meant to cultivate excellence are training students to find advantage in fragility. And the habits and values learnt on the college campus rarely stay there. Eventually our culture will adopt these values, as we increasingly turn into a society of grift.”
We’re likely to drift down the path Roy Baumeister writes about in Willpower, “’Self-regulation failure is the major social pathology of our time,’ they concluded, pointing to the accumulating evidence of its contribution to high divorce rates, domestic violence, crime, and a host of other problems.” Crenshaw agrees with Baumeister observing, “The pinnacle of failure is the refusal to take responsibility for mistakes and transgressions, and instead blame external factors. It has a societal impact, because an increasing number of unaccountable individuals make up an increasingly unaccountable society. Our culture begins to popularize the narrative that we are always victims of circumstance, rather than victims of personal shortcomings. Outrage culture is built around this sense of victimhood in the face of failure.” We used to reward those that relish responsibility. This is the prime objective of maturity. We’ve abandoned responsibility as a source of pride and accomplishment and traded it for victimhood which is a source for anger and discontent.
This is a bad trade for everyone. This drags us down and breeds conflict and contempt. It’s the opposite of instilling initiative. Incentives in the form of social media status and government programs may be propelling this slippery spiral. Caustic compassion breeds a class of complainers that inspires nothing but envy as reflected in a Substack note by Liam DeBoer. When we run from responsibility and see ourselves as powerless victims, we aren’t willing to dig in and do the work to improve. Moreover, when we see others that are successful, we can’t help but resent them because they seem to have something which they didn’t earn. If we’re not responsible for where we find ourselves, they can’t be responsible for having earned their place. Therefore, what they have must be taken to make it fair for all. It’s an awful message that weaponizes weakness against the ambitious.
In The Vision of the Anointed, Thomas Sowell wrote, “The community as a whole is better off or worse off according to whether or not the next generation is raised under circumstances that are more likely to produce productive citizens rather than parasites and criminals.” This is, fundamentally, the bottom line. We’re either decreasing dependence and inspiring independence or we’re crushing independence and developing dependence. The former is sustainable and results in happiness for the most whereas the latter results in civilizational collapse.
This applies to individuals, families, businesses, and society. The things that make us succeed or fail are consistent. Personal responsibility serves us all. Believing that your actions matter and that you are responsible to try to improve your circumstances in life is the only path to progress. Blaming others while doing nothing ensures, at best, entropy, a slow, inevitable erosion. Giving your inner victim a voice breeds only beggars arguing for support and intervention from those with authority. Rewarding resentment while reducing responsibility is a rotten approach that we should each do our part to reverse. Decide to make your daily dictum to be anything other than a victim.
Related articles:
Reach for Responsibility – Broker Builder
U – It’s Up to yoU – Broker Builder (letters R and Y as well …?)
The OPRAH Method – Broker Builder
Trade an H for an N to Turn Whining into Winning – Broker Builder
High Grades for Type A’s – Broker Builder
A Man’s First Duty
Punchcards
Root of Our Rot is a Retreat from Responsibility
MAMA – My Actions Matter Always – Broker Builder
