From My Work-in-Progress Basket

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Poor You… You Were Dealt a Bad Hand

 Part II: The Reality of Playing the Victim 

 Why do so many smart, educated people buy into the ideology of identity theory, a clearly illogical and demonstrably destructive way of thinking? Why has the Culture of Victimization spread so rapidly around the Western world?

One answer comes from a recognized fact and standard practice in marketing: Telling someone who is in pain or troubled that he’s not responsible for his plight is a prerequisite for selling him a cure. “It’s not your fault” is a phrase that is music to the conscience and a sedative for the troubled mind.

It’s bad enough that we have to live with our failures and shortcomings. But to have to live with the thought that it is up to us, and only us, to move on to better things… that’s an additional burden we may not want to bear. Hearing, on the contrary, that we are neither at fault nor responsible for getting better – and that there is a magical solution out there that will solve our problems painlessly – that puts us in the mood to buy!

In the diet industry, for example, you’d be hard-pressed to find an ad that doesn’t tell the prospect that his weight problem is not his fault. On the contrary, virtually every successful diet product is sold on the basis of correcting something other than “You eat too much.”

Saying, “It’s not your fault” gives absolution to the prospect, which lightens his mood and opens his mind to reading on. But if you can add to the promise of showing him the person or thing that is responsible for his weight… then you have not just a potential customer, but a potential proselytizer for your brand.

So, it’s not your fault if you are unemployed. Or neglect your children. Or beat your spouse. You’re not to blame if you are drug-addicted. Or if you shoplift or burgle or kill someone in a road rage incident. Your actions are the result of the disadvantages and bad treatment that society has dished out to you. You don’t need to be self-correcting. Society does.

But it’s not enough to stop at excusing your bad behavior. As a victim of social injustices in the past, you are entitled to special treatment now and in the future. You are entitled to anything and everything that other people, the privileged people that weren’t victimized like you, have.

This is an age-old con. Yet it’s never lost its luster. It is as appealing today as it has ever been.

But here’s the problem that I alluded to in Part I of this essay: Putting on the victim badge doesn’t solve your problem. It may give you temporary relief from any guilt you may feel. And it may get you sympathy from those that share your view of the world. But in the long run, it won’t help you move forward. Because nobody – not even your sympathizers – will do much to help you. And what they might do – by giving you handouts – will only make you weaker and less able to overcome your troubles long-term.

What’s worse is that every minute and every ounce of energy you spend on feeling victimized and blaming others for your problems will have added up to zero. You will wake up one day and realize that you wasted the best time of your life treading water. The world has passed you by.

In short, playing the victim won’t make you stronger or smarter or more skillful or more sympathetic or more likeable or more successful in any way.

No. Being upset about and blaming others for what you didn’t choose and cannot change will not reduce, but will increase, the obstacles you face.

It will not soothe your anger or self-hatred. It may cause hurt in others, and you may derive some short-term pleasure from that. But in the long run, it will hurt you much more.

And it will never move you one inch closer to a better or a happier existence.

What You Can Do About It 

The solution is simple. Every time you want to curse your fate and lash out at god or society or whatever demon caused you to be the victim you feel you are, look at yourself in the mirror and repeat this:

I didn’t choose it. I cannot change it. But I can change what I will do about it. I’m not going to feel sorry for myself. I’m not going to bitch. I’m not going to play the blame game. Because I am the one and only person that can save me. If I truly care about myself, and want a better future, I must pick myself up and get moving. One step forward at a time.

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News & Views

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A Growing Health Concern 

Nearly 30% of adolescents in the US have prediabetes. Click here.

Clinton DNC Scandal 

Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC agreed to pay a combined $113,000 to the FEC, according to documents made public on March 30, after the commission found probable cause that the campaign broke FEC rules about how donations can be used. Said Kash Patel, lead investigator of the 2018 probe into alleged Trump-Russia collusion, “What we knew when we ran the Russiagate investigation, Chairman Nunes and I, we exposed that the Hillary Clinton campaign paid for the Steele dossier, an opposition research hit job. We had proven that some years ago.”

California’s Vanished Dream 

Is the state facing an “existential crisis”? Click here.

Oregon’s Peculiar New Law 

Striving for “menstrual equity,” Oregon is now putting tampons in men’s bathrooms at public schools. Click here. 
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Recommended Places

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Qianmen Street – Beijing, China

Qianmen is one of the oldest pedestrian streets in the world. I took a nice long walk on it the last time I was in Beijing. It has a lively balance of the old and the new, with plenty of interesting shops to browse, businesses to patronize, historic landmarks, and quaint and fashionable places to eat. The newness is thanks to an upgrade that took place first in the 1960s and then again in preparation for the 2008 Olympics.

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A Word to the Wise

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To proselytize (PRAH-suh-lih-tize) – from the Greek for “convert” – is to try to persuade someone to change their religious or political beliefs or way of life to your own. As I used it today: “If you can add to the promise of showing [your prospect] the person or thing that is responsible for his weight… then you have not just a potential customer [for your diet product], but a potential proselytizer for your brand.”

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Postscript

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Comedian James Veitch responding to spam email…

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Friday, May 27, 2022, Los Angeles, California


Notes From My Journal

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I Can’t Take It Anymore!

Like just about everyone else on the planet, The Godfather is on my top-ten best-movies-of-all-time list. So, when PP recommended The Offer, a docudrama series about the making of Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece, I checked it out.

By the end of episode one, I was hooked. I binge-watched another four the following night, staying up till the wee hours. So far, so good. I’ve learned something new with every episode. The intellectual and emotional return on the 4.5 hours I’ve invested in this series has been positive. But I am getting anxious. The producers need to finish it up in another two or three episodes. If they drag it out, I’ll be disappointed. And they probably will. It’s scheduled for another five.

Welcome to the world of crack TV – where you can while away the rest of your life in the mire of episodic programming. It’s a grim world where denizens huddle, droopy-eyed, in front of the screen, hoping to feel once again the rush they got from that first bit of tense and brilliant storytelling, only to be lulled into a never-ending stream of brain-wrenching plot twists, mandatory cliff hangers, and inevitable shark jumping.

Example: The Man in the High Castle, a 2015 four-season, 40-episode drama depicting “what the world would be like if the Japanese and Germans had won WWII.”

The Man in the High Castle is based on a book of the same title by Philip K. Dick. A big fan of Blade Runner (based on Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), I gave the series a look.

The first episode was great. The next several almost as good. And then each one that followed was weaker than the one before.

And yet, against my better judgment, I watched 32 episodes before I quit. That was a total investment of about 27.2 hours (at 51 minutes per episode.)

Instead, I could have written 15 blog posts, two chapters of a book, or critiqued a half-dozen marketing campaigns. What a waste of precious time!

This TV format – attenuated episodic dramas – is a problem. And it’s not just with dramas. It’s with documentaries, as well. (I don’t want to think about the time I’ve wasted watching never-ending docudramas about serial killers. I’ve learned only one thing from them: They all act like “perfectly normal people” when they are not murdering, dissecting, and eating their victims.)

The billion-dollar streaming services that produce these omnipresent series know what they are doing. Their revenues correlate to consumption. The more hours of eyeballing (however glassy) they get, the more money they make. So, they use every trick they have to make these series addictive. Begin with a bit of tasty bait. Set the hook deeply. Then keep tugging on the line as long as it holds.

Here’s the problem: I’m a busy person. I don’t want to spend a vast percentage of the hours I’ve got left in this mira mundi on this kind of ever-less-stimulating stuff. So, I’ve made a promise to myself to desist from watching these attenuated, episodic shows. I’m going to watch movies instead.

 

Example: I watched Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln last week. At 2.5 hours, it’s a longish movie. And not a great one. But it recounts a very interesting period of the Civil War, chock-full of fascinating facts. It features superb performances by the likes of Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field. I am, therefore, quite happy with the 150 minutes I invested in watching it. Overall, a positive ROI on my time.

So, that’s why, starting today, I’m going to be restricting my TV time to movies and some very limited (eight episodes or less, I’m thinking) series. That’s the plan.

Note and Disclaimer: I don’t feel this way about situation comedies, such as Curb Your Enthusiasm or Friends. (See the Feb. 18 issue.) They are a different kettle of fish. They are not made to be addictive. They aren’t episodic. Each show, like a movie, is an entity unto itself. You can watch them in the order they were made, or just drop in and out when you have the itch. When I need a lift, I can rely on them to deliver – 30 to 60 minutes at a time.

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Worth Reading

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The Revolution of Hope 

By Erich Fromm

162 pages

First edition published Jan. 1, 1968 by Harper Row

I first heard about Erich Fromm when I was in college, in the late 1960s. Fromm’s most popular book, The Art of Loving, was on the reading list for Sociology 101.

I remember being impressed by it. Or wanting to be impressed by it. My sociology professor, whom I admired, praised it. That was good enough for me.

A few weeks ago, I found, in a box in my garage, an old copy of another of Fromm’s books: The Revolution of Hope. I gave it a read, wanting to see how 50 years of life experience might have altered my youthful adulation.

I can see how Fromm’s work was so attractive to my professor back then. And what an effect it had on intellectuals of my generation.

As was true of every social philosopher at the time, Fromm was influenced by Freud and Marx. In The Revolution off Hope, he shows himself to be both an admirer of them and an independent thinker. He shares their generally gloomy outlook on humankind. But he rejects their commonly held view that the human condition is determined by exterior factors. For Freud, those factors were the unconscious and biological drives. For Marx, they were systemic social and economic forces.

Fromm offers a more humanistic view. He argues that man has the ability, through force of will, to cut his own, self-determined path in life.

It is from that perspective that he writes about hope:

“Hope is paradoxical. It is neither passive waiting nor is it unrealistic forcing of circumstances that cannot occur…. To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime. There is no sense in hoping for that which already exists or for that which cannot be. Those whose hope is weak settle down for comfort or for violence; those whose hope is strong see and cherish all signs of new life and are ready every moment to help the birth of that which is ready to be born.”

There were many times in reading The Revolution of Hope that I was reminded of Sartre, whom I read a great deal of in graduate school. Fromm seems to see existence, as Sartre did, as a battle between being and nothingness. What distinguishes us from the other animals is free will. And that condemns us to spend our lives resisting the social, economic, and biological forces that, unopposed, would render us passive instruments of authoritarian culture and fascist politics.

There is much in The Revolution of Hope that I was not persuaded by, including Fromm’s limited (and I’d say naïve) understanding of capitalism. In his efforts to bowdlerize Marx, he could be said to be the father of contemporary liberal thinking.

But when Fromm writes about human agency, about not just the potential but the obligation of the individual to think his own thoughts and take his own actions, I find myself, once again, an admirer.

About Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm (1900-1980) was a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory. His best-known work, Escape from Freedom (1941), focuses on the human urge to seek a source of authority and control. Fromm’s critique of the modern political order and capitalist system led him to seek insights from medieval feudalism. His many works (in English) include Psychoanalysis and Religion (1950), The Art of Loving (1956), and On Being Human (1997). (Source: Wikipedia)

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