Victimhood
The current cult of victimhood has two major drawbacks. One is that it blames someone else for the status quo instead of identifying possible shortcomings and failings in the self. The other is that it has people looking back in time to alleged wrongs done to them, instead of looking forward to how we might creatively deal with problems and issues that might come.
My viewpoint draws on ancient philosophy, modern psychology and some hard-headed observation about incentives.
The oldest version comes from the Stoics. Epictetus, himself a former slave, built his whole philosophy on separating what lies within our control from what does not. He did not deny that others could wrong him. He simply observed that dwelling on it gave them a second victory. What we can govern is our own response, and that is where our energy pays off.
Modern psychology broadly agrees. Julian Rotter’s work found that people who see outcomes as shaped by their own actions tend to do better in education, health and work than those who attribute everything to outside forces. People stop trying once they believe their efforts make no difference.
Cognitive behavioural therapy, among the most evidence-backed treatments for anxiety and depression, works partly by challenging habits of thought that cast the self as powerless. A culture that teaches people to locate every setback in someone else’s malice is, in effect, teaching the very patterns therapists try to undo.
There is also an incentive problem. Sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning describe a shift from a ‘dignity culture,’ where people shrug off slights and resolve disputes themselves, to a ‘victimhood culture,’ where status is gained by displaying grievance and appealing to third parties. When victimhood becomes a currency, people have reasons to mint more of it. Grievances get inflated, rivals compete for the title of most wronged, and the person who quietly gets on with improving their lot gains no moral reward.
The past cannot be changed. The future can. Resources spent rewriting history are resources not spent building something better. Societies that suffered terribly and then turned their attention to reconstruction, such as postwar Germany and Japan or South Korea after its war, achieved remarkable recoveries. Many immigrant communities that faced real discrimination prospered by focusing on education, enterprise and the next generation rather than on the injustices of the last one.
Backward-looking grievance also tends to be zero-sum. It asks who owes what to whom. Forward-looking problem-solving is positive-sum. It asks what we might create together. One divides the pie; the other bakes a bigger one.
It is not that wrongs never happen. It is that treating them as an identity, rather than as a problem to be solved, is a poor strategy for anyone hoping to flourish. Epictetus managed it in chains, which rather raises the bar for the rest of us.
Madsen Pirie