Glimpse Into the Soul of Victim Correction...

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  “Thought reform has a psychological momentum of its own, a self-perpetuating energy not always bound by the interests of the program’s directors.  When we inquire into the sources of this momentum, we come upon a complex set of psychological themes, which may be grouped under the general heading of ideological totalism.  By this ungainly phrase I mean to suggest the coming together of immoderate ideology with equally immoderate individual character traits—an extremist meeting ground between people and ideas.”—Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, at the beginning of the chapter “Ideological Totalism,” where he describes the brainwashing process

  “All people of broad, strong sense have an instinctive repugnance to the men of maxims; because such people early discern that the mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims, and that to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and sympathy.”—George Eliot

  “God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.  Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it; Trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will; So that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next—Amen.”—the entire, unredacted Serenity Prayer, as originally written by Reinhold Niebuhr

“The difference between a little more and a little less justice in a social system and between a little more and a little less selfishness in the individual may represent differences between sickness and health, between misery and happiness in particular situations.”—Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man.  One could only wonder what kind of “sickness and health” this was that he mentioned even before “misery and happiness.”  Certainly the victims’ health other than mental health, would be at stake in very few situations.

  “According to National Institutes of Mental Health figures, 20,000,000 people or approximately 15% of the U.S. adult population suffers from a serious depressive disorder in any given year.”—John H. Greist, MD and Thomas H. Greist, MD, Antidepressant Treatment—the Essentials

 

“I do not want the peace that passeth understanding.  I want the understanding which bringeth peace.”—Helen Keller

 

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Corinthians 13:4-7, a much-beloved elucidation of what love is, gives the real reason why love means never having to say you’re sorry, not that love means doing your best not to do anything regrettable, but that the New Testament would condemn self-pity on the part of your lover, and if there’s no self-pity, there’s no need for an apology: “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude.  Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

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 n the following webpages are some quotes from both Al-Anon, and AA.  These are very relevant to all of self-help philosophy.  Since AA founder Bill Wilson was a stockbroker, and the Big Book was written during the Great Depression, AA-style self-help is basically a stockbroker lecturing those living in the Great Depression that they should just take response-ability for their own welfare, and stop whining.  The sort of personal responsibility that it would have to take seriously, would be a response-ability for one’s own welfare.  Even the worldliest ethical responsibility, such as Situation Ethics (which fundament Christians hate) would be others-help.  The field of psychology, in general, has tended to develop an ethos that honors the übermensch, not wanting to repress him or otherwise re-engineer his human nature, and dishonors the untermensch, insisting that he get control over his weaknesses.  I have some quotes from the book ...In All our Affairs: Making Crises Work for You, a piece of Al-Anon’s Conference-Approved Literature, on Page 2 of this series.  These quotes tell of both the self-responsibility that Al-Anon preaches as one faces an alkie spouse, and also the unpragmatic self-blame that it discourages, though naturally such a self-blame would result from a self-responsibility that’s contingent only on whether or not it seems that someone could change his own problem.  A list of 92 AA slogans that insist that members simply deal with their own problems like this, is on Page 4 of this series.

I have another webpage, Emphasis on Victim Self-Blaming, which includes AA’s Big Book’s explanation of what it considers to be “a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves,” “the exact nature of our wrongs,” and “all these defects of character.”  That is, untermensch defects of character, even the most warranted feelings of resentment anger and fear.  “Resentment is the ‘number one’ offender.  It destroys more alcoholics than anything else....  If we were to live, we had to be free of anger....  [Fear] somehow touches about every aspect of our lives.  It was an evil and corroding thread; the fabric of our existence was shot through with it.”  When this chapter gives its example of what a moral inventory would look like, the table is headed, “I’m resentful at,” “The cause,” and, “Affects my,” not, “These people naturally feel resentful at me,” “How I caused this,” and, “Affects theirs.”  And of course, some of the mea culpas were about the resentment that he dared to feel because he got caught doing certain harmful things, which weren’t themselves confessed.  This reductionism seems good, since the more that such a conflict is reduced to how the person with the problem could most effectively take care of his own problem, the more that the personal responsibility for the problem would go to the person who’s the most motivated to deal with it effectively.  At that time AA didn’t preach, “God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference....  Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” but it was only a matter of time....

To say that as doctors treat the million of Americans who suffer a serious depressive disorder in any given year, they should know this rate since it would help the doctors treat each individual as if their depressions simply are their problems, completely ignores the fact that this involves an unnaturally high rate of helplessness, happening to millions of people, year in and year out.  Yet neo-Buddhism means failsafe coping skills, antidepressants mean unconditional control of this social problem, etc.

I have two webpages that tell of how this sort of stolid ideal, has affected psychology in general.  On my Candace Newmaker’s Experience webpage, I go into how the psychologists of this little adoptee, smothered her to death because they had her do a simulated “rebirthing,” and when she screamed that the “birth canal” was smothering her to death, her therapists ignored her because it seemed that of course her screams were just a manipulative machination to get out of therapy.  In 1990 another young adoptee being treated by the same clinic killed herself because when she came home from school and said that she’d been molested, her “therapeutic foster parents” acted as if this was a manipulative machination, and when she asked what would happen if she slit her wrists or took an overdose of drugs, the responded as if this was a machination, and told her calmly that she would die.  On my Breaking Important Confidences for Your Own Good webpage, I have excerpts of a document about a lawsuit against one marriage counselor who “reveal[ed] the most confidential of information disclosed to him by each” spouse, which also tells of another marriage counselor doing the same.  Obviously these therapists didn’t benefit by doing this, so the only reason why they would have done it is that it fostered greater stolid self-determination in their clients.  In cases like this, since the therapists hurt their own self-interests, they must have been true believers in the notion that übermensch is GOOD, and untermensch is BAD.  That really is where anything that implies, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” has to lead, though only to a degree that circumstances would really require.  When it comes to battling such passivity, psychologists could really become crusaders.

Pat Buchanan, in a syndicated column in 1977, wrote, “...despite Hitler’s anti-Semitic and genocidal tendencies, he was an individual of great courage...  Hitler’s success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone.  His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path.”  The “defects of character” stressed by AA’s Big Book, resentment anger and fear in general, are the same as what Buchanan and Hitler meant by “character flaws,” i.e. not handling one’s own problems (whatever they may be) with enough stolid and self-reliant backbone.  “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” as well as, “Whatever your problem is, courageously change what you can and serenely accept what you can’t,” also define “character flaws” as supposed weakness masquerading as morality.

Agent Orange has a webpage on how shocked Reinhold Niebuhr was about the fact that Frank Buchman, the founder of the Oxford Group (now called “Moral Re-Armament”; “Oxford” must have sounded too dreadfully intellectual), the conservative Christian group that AA grew out of, had similar attitudes toward Hitler.  Niebuhr was a hell-raiser, before Stalinism made him fatalistic about human nature.  Yet if any organization preaches the Serenity Prayer at people, the final result would be the same, that self-reliant STRENGTH seems good, and weakness that tries to get persuasive strength from emotion and/or abstractions seems intolerably bad.  As the history of The AA School of Self-Help Psychology shows, Nazism, minus anti-Semitism and committing outrageous aggression, equals taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as you’d have it.

The spirituality of the Twelve-Step groups for addicts’ friends and family members, which could be called the “ladies’ auxiliaries” of Twelve-Step groups, were set up for the purpose of using the same zeitgeist, for addicts’ friends and loved-ones.  THE ORANGE PAPERS, One Man’s Analysis of Alcoholics Anonymous, An Online Book, is a good place to look if you want to make sure that you’d want to have faith in the ideas about psychology, that were inspired by this group’s ex cathedra writings.  One webpage to look at, especially, is The Funny Spirituality of Bill Wilson and A.A.

According to the Serenity Prayer school of psychology, the fact that the person who has the problem, would simply be held response-able for dealing with it by courageously changing what he could and serenely accepting what he couldn’t, would be a fait accompli.  On one hand you have the psychological advisors and other pragmatists who are very aware of how important fitting in always is, and on the other you have natural human feelings.  “God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference,” doesn’t necessarily mean, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” but is necessarily that unconditional, all-or-nothing, and

This means that when victims of addicts in the family, don’t live up to these expectations, they must be criticized, and get labeled that they’re characterologically weak and passive, even when they’d shown enough maturity that such labels should ring hollow.  The worse that your realities are, the more important it is that your coping skills are

It’s very easy to get sanctimonious when defending this sort of moral bankruptcy, since those who abide by it, stolidly deal with their own problems, without finding blame.  Those who see no evil hear no evil and speak no evil, who take as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as they’d have it, would be the most respectably resilient and perseverant.  Such people wouldn’t have “character flaws,” as the Learning About Depression webpage would define that term, “If you have depression, this sad mood along with other symptoms can last weeks, months, or even years if not treated.  Depression isn’t a sign of weakness or a character flaw.  It’s a real medical condition, but there are ways to successfully treat depression....  Depressive disorders affect about 34 million American adults.”  It’s pretty safe to say that there’s always an out, in that if the person who has the problem wants to be well-adjusted and non-passive, then she’ll see how what caused the problem is at least excusable, and how much she plays an active role.  Glibness could very easily seem to be a positive attitude.

 

The entry on Niebuhr in The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2001, says that he “defended Christianity as the world view that best explains the heights and barbarisms of human behavior,” so we’re simply supposed to accept the existence of barbarity, and change our vulnerability to barbarisms.  Reinhold Niebuhr, a biography, by Richard Wightman Fox, says that in the last half of the 1930s Niebuhr had almost a cult following among young Christians in England, giving a student conference at Swanwick. Among his fans (not his detractors) a favorite limerick was:

At Swanwick when Niebuhr had quit it
A young man exclaimed “I have hit it!
Since I cannot do right
I must find out tonight
The right sin to commit—and commit it.”

But, of course, if anyone thinks that The Serenity Prayer implies a fatalism about others’ sinfulness, that person would seem to be victim-posturing, whiny, negativist, resentful, etc.

Joseph H. Califano, Jr.’s High Society, How Substance Abuse Ravages America And What to Do About It, says, “...Americans often feel most comfortable turning to their clergy for help with a substance abuse problem in their family.”  The classic response that you’d get if you tried to hold an addict responsible, using a logic like Situation Ethics, would be, “Stop preaching at me and trying to guilt-trip me!”  Sure, ideally, clergy would be able to refer addicts’ family members to treatment that’s compatible with addicts’ tendencies, and, therefore, would be most likely to succeed with them.  Yet, in the end, if the clergyman is loyal to his principles, he’d have to start talking about what the addict should and shouldn’t do.  Yet this seems to work, at least a good deal of the time.

A book from Gamblers Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, The First Forty Years, says that in Southern California for a time, Gamblers Anonymous and Gam-Anon had “mixed” meetings.  When someone from higher up said that the meetings “should be separate and not meet together,” “The women, because GamAnon was all women at the time, were very upset at the thought that they would not be present at the Gamblers Anonymous meeting to check up on the gambler.”  This “checking up” would be along the lines of Situation Ethics, concerned with the consequences of the gambling, rather than preaching some sort of moral code.  These consequences, and risk of far greater consequences, would be pretty high for these women and their children.  Yet even this seemed too preachy and intrusive for Gamblers Anonymous, especially if this consists of women checking up on men.

On one hand, it would seem that the only question that someone in trouble could legitimately ask about his own problem, is, “Can I change this, and if so, how could I do so the most pragmatically?”  On the other hand, it really is true that, “The difference between a little more and a little less justice in a social system and between a little more and a little less selfishness in the individual may represent differences between sickness and health, between misery and happiness in particular situations.”  One can hardly draw such distinctions regarding moral responsibility, if he can’t bring up moral responsibility without seeming SELF-WILLED, blaming, whiny, resentful, etc.  But then again, it would be good to remember that Niebuhr said this in a book titled The Nature and Destiny of Man, where the nature that was to so determine our destiny, is sinfulness.  What immediately follows that sentence, is, “Theologies, such as that of Barth, which threaten to destroy all relative moral judgments by their exclusive emphasis upon the ultimate religious fact of the sinfulness of all men, are rightly suspected of imperiling relative moral achievements of history.”  If one has this very German belief in the Doctrine of Original Sin, then naturally, at times, he’d figure that if Americans in general, addressed their own problems by asking only, “Can I change this, and if so, how could I do so the most pragmatically?”, then Americans, in general, would have the greatest chances of facing “life on life’s terms,” whatever that may be for each person, the most pragmatically and honorably.

Self-protection would be all the more important in a society with rampant depression, anxiety disorders, etc.  The   homepage of the Mental Illness—What a Difference a Friend Makes website, by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, says, “An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older—about one in four adults—suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.”  As the title suggests, this website is about getting the friends of the 26.2% of the American adult population, to support these people rather than stigmatizing them.  The ways in which one friend treats another, is one of the few sociological factors of this huge social problem, that we could honorably take seriously.

 

That’s how all cultural conditioning and social pressures work, including that of all those strange foreigners who can’t think for themselves.  (BTW, those who think for themselves wouldn’t conclude that for 15% of the adult population to suffer a serious depressive disorder in any given year, is only natural.)

Nothing that an Al-Anon or Alateen member could possibly say, could possibly counter expectations that are based on what the real world objectively requires.  This moral bankruptcy requires you to toe the line, even when the choices that caused the problems have nothing to do with addiction.  No matter what any problem parent might do that could traumatize his kid, he absolutely could change himself, and absolutely can’t change anyone else including the parent, which is all that the zeitgeist of The Serenity Prayer cares about.  A priori, that’s all that you could care about.  You mustn’t really care about “the elephant in the living room” if you can’t change the elephant.  If you think that that’s revolting, then that would be very unserene, discouraging, etc.  Obviously, that, like Bontsha the Silent, is far from a natural way to think, though it could be called “cognitive therapy” (“Behavior Therapists and Cognitive Behavior Therapists... concentrate on a person’s views and perceptions about their life, rather than personality traits.”), which has been called, “a natural alternative to anti-depressant medication.”  The above is the fully-approved outlook, since it’s very effective in preventing depression.  All that you’d need to give self help advice, would be a tape recording that says, “It would really do you a lot of good if you changed what you can and accepted what you can’t!  That’s just the way the real world works!”, and you’d play that over and over as the person describes his own trauma.  Any reasonable alternatives to victim correction as a panacea, could seem too unrealistic, fallible, subjective, passive, defeatist, untermensch, etc., for the realities that one must deal with.  Pragmatism leads to happiness.  Victim-correctors, therefore, are the ones who really care about victims.

If one were to apply what On Speculation and Manipulation in Therapy says, “When it works, justice is always very particular.  It proceeds on a case-by-case basis with a careful weighing of the facts and an equally careful examination of the underlying logic of key arguments,” certainly the specifics of what addicts’ kids must deal with, would argue for someone else being to blame.  Yet blaming others wouldn’t accomplish anything, and would divert attention from solving one’s own problems.  It’s your problem, so what are you going to do about it?  You’d better just serenely surrender to the inevitable.  If we showed an understanding acceptance toward everyone, including the people who have the problems and aren’t dealing with them adequately, nobody would solve them, and the victims would be weakened in the long run.  For these people to get on track in taking care of themselves, is the only thing that really matters.  If everything must be pragmatic, nothing can be sacred.  “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!”, is inculcated humility, expedient and well-adjusted, without coercion or authoritarian obeisance so this is pro-freedom.   Even if the reason for the “negative thoughts” that the victim is washing his own brain of, is that he was unfairly overpowered, that wouldn’t be an authoritarian brainwashing, so his sincere opinion could still seem to be dirt that’s to be washed away and replaced with what he’s supposed to believe.  The October, 2007 issue of Counselor, the Magazine for Addiction Professionals includes an article that says, “rigid fidelity may produce an adverse effect,” but for those who must deal with realities like this, rigid fidelity is as necessary as are adequate resiliency and coping skills.  Naïveté doesn’t work.  Victim-blaming optimistically and determinedly looks for very necessary self-motivated solutions, so, in the words of the Downing Street memo, “the intelligence and the facts” must be “fixed around the policy.”

Reductionism is key.  The central message of any self-help approach for people in trouble is that to help yourself: No matter what caused your problem, you absolutely must focus your attention on correcting yourself, since you absolutely can change yourself, absolutely can’t change anyone else, and absolutely must make your life productive (whatever that requires).  The only choice that you have is either you do whatever it takes to deal with your problem, or it doesn’t get dealt with.  The only legit question is, “Can I change this?”, so no injustices could seem profound.  Addicts’ friends and loved ones are the ones who are motivated to correct themselves, and they need more motivation to: change, empower themselves, accommodate to reality, be well-adjusted and productive.  That’s only natural.  Everyone, not just fundamentalists, must take this sort of spirituality literally.  Only the person who has the problem, is reliably motivated to deal with it as well as possible.  We could live without moral responsibility (which we can’t count on), abstract principles like morality, etc., but can’t live without victims taking response-ability for their own welfare.  Some things are luxuries; some are necessities.  Addicts’ kids shouldn’t feel bad about themselves, guilty, etc., but when dealing with what their alcoholic parents do the kids should look at themselves rather than blaming others, so as they do this they should choose not to feel self-blame, and, of course, simply looking at themselves means simply looking at what they should have done better.  Their self-help mentors would simply check to see how well they’re doing in following these instructions.  (It’s no wonder that Should Statements are one of the single-mindedly self-responsible cognitive distortions of modern Western depression!)  If one rationale for victim correction doesn’t work, it’s replaced by another.  To paraphrase British prime minister David Lloyd George, such teens cannot conquer the chasms in their own lives by gingerly taking one step at a time.

And, of course, when they look at themselves to see if they have the “defects of character” that AA’s Big Book really goes into, i.e. resentment anger and/or fear, then alkies’ kids would probably find that they feel plenty of untermensch feelings, but Al-Anon doesn’t consider correcting them to be self-blame.  As British author Douglas Adams wrote, “When you blame others, you give up the power to change yourself.”  As Susan Faludi wrote in Backlash about writings on codependency, “Norwood’s self-help plan, modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous’s twelve-step program [through Al-Anon], advises women seeking the source of their pain to refrain from looking beyond themselves, a habit she calls ‘blaming.’”  Self-responsibility is necessary for victims.  Backlash mentions “puerile serenity,” though contrived serenity is what’s pertinent!   As Bush said in May, 2005, “In my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

Though this conviction and ideology expects people to accept a laissez faire self-responsibility that’s as extremist as the self-responsibility that Enron propounded when it seemed so red-blooded, not only would Al-Anon not seem to be extremist wing-nuts, but if you firmly disagreed you could seem to be an extremist wing-nut.  As Enlightenment-era economic philosophers wrote, being productive must override everything else.  Most victim-blaming (a.k.a. self-responsibility) can’t seem bad.  Those who deviate from these expectations are those who’d seem to be the authoritarians, the judgmental controllers.  One can’t say “no” to realism, including, “Like Archie, you should stop blaming others and look at yourself, to improve yourself and your chances!”  As Libertarian Ron Paul explained Social Security,“ ...we have taught them to be dependent,” and a single-minded blaming and correction of any victims would have the same unconditional, gutsy and pro-freedom appeal.  No doubt this thrilling philosophy also regards the Americans with Disabilities Act as tyrannical, so either handicapped people get jobs without the ADA, or they’ve been taught to be dependent.  Realists can see the dangers that the weak pose unless they make great efforts to be self-reliant anyway, and succeed.  We mustn’t reward failure, or victimhood.  This isn’t absolute power; “Archie” and those who are just as helpless can change some significant things.  Helplessness isn’t tyranny.

 

That Alateen zeitgeist, laissez faire Social Darwinist ideology, and self-help in a society with rampant depression, are based on the same ideas.  All of these supposed forms of individualism, must indoctrinate their followers into believing in counterintuitive absolutisms such as the above.  Things simply have to keep functioning.  We must think realistically, so whatever shapes our realities shapes how we must think.  Whatever is necessary for one to deal with his own realities self-reliantly becomes absolutely necessary, so otherwise he’d be inadequate, dysfunctional, etc.  That’s objective, and questions of, “What’s unacceptably wrong?”, aren’t.  (You’re expected to have realistic coping skills, so simply proving that what happened was wrong, isn’t enough.)  Acting pathetic is the old (pre-Reagan) way of doing things.  You don’t deserve more than what you won.  This is the self-reliant freedom, can-do courage, and failsafe well-adjusted forgiveness, that we’ve gotten to know and love.  Faith in anything would make one happier, including faith in this.  No matter what happens to you, if you didn’t have faith in your opportunities to succeed, you’d seem unpatriotic.  Optimism that you’d succeed if only you were good enough, seems mandatory.  Self-responsibility along the lines of the law of the jungle, works: eventually, if you try hard enough (which is along the same self-motivated lines as, “Greed is good.  Greed works.”)  As Gordon Gekko said, this must be The American Way, since anything else would rely too much on altruism and/or opinion-based restriction, coddle the whiny losers too much, etc.  If your nephew died young because his priest had molested him, you might even put The Serenity Prayer on the homepage of his memorial website, since that prayer tells you how to cope with literally anything.   Endurability might seem very basic to life, but in some situations, expecting endurability would be unrealistic.  Victim-blaming develops a life of its own, since that simply is how things must be taken care of, with plenty of reliable self-motivation.  The real world will make its demands!  Sure, Helen Keller wrote, “I do not want the peace that passeth understanding.  I want the understanding which bringeth peace,” but when we’re in trouble, what we do and don’t want is a bunch of BS.  Whatever applies to addicts’ kids, also applies to oppressed minorities, etc., since inadequate adjustment and adaptation to one’s own realities, would cause the same sorts of problems for anyone.  The more that you’d care about your own helplessness, the more helpless you’d become.  Such realism is tautological, begging the question: “Your dad’s addiction is reality, so if you don’t adjust to it and function with it you’re maladjusted and dysfunctional, since that’s reality.”  Everyone must get on with life.

As Fleischer, Al-Anon, the beginning of Lee Greenwood’s Reagan-Revolutionary patriotic praise song God Bless the USA, etc., take for granted, victims who don’t do their best to “move on” would seem to be going against basic American expectations for resilient: self-reliance, self-responsibility, maturity, realism, etc.  Some things seem to matter, some things don’t, and it soon becomes very obvious that the pragmatic ones do.  As you’d live your life, you’d naturally focus on how you could correct your ineffective reactions, efforts, etc.  In the entire world, few could afford not to deal adequately with their own realities, and become losers; problems happen.  All three forms of “individualism” would predictably hold that in reality, the ultimate reason for our unnaturally high rates of depression, anxiety disorders, etc., is a whiny and negativist victim culture, and or something else that’s simply mollycoddle.  (Anything could be ultimately blamed on the victim not stopping preventing or dealing with it well enough.)  This offers the hope of unconditional solutions, and in the real world, we can’t afford conditions.  This is optimistic that the person who really wants to solve the problem, has self-determination.  Satisfying winners’ SELF-WILLS is productive; satisfying losers’ runs the risk of parasitism, controlling, etc.  People must be motivated to win, not whine.  If the government didn’t cause it, then it’s a part of freedom.  This self-responsibility, and figuring that winner equals worthy, are always objective, but other conceptions of personal responsibility and worthiness, aren’t.  That’s the role that good victims will play.  As is typical for dogma, the more that you’d disagree, the more that you’d seem to be one of the dreaded, omni-responsible, whiny negativists and mollycoddles.  Wanting to be productive, optimistic, etc., is very important.  The Fundamental Attribution Error, automatically attributing problems to the victims’ supposed faults, is the same whether the poor are blamed for their own poverty, or Al-Anon members are blamed for their own resentment.  “There are no victims, just volunteers.”  Each of us must do whatever he must do, yet that’s life, not slavery.  Nothing that disagrees can really matter.  If the only alternatives that a society had were either rampant depression, or its people not being adequately motivated to try to earn and achieve, then the rampant depression would be the realistic alternative.  Victim blaming is always pro-freedom and pro-self-responsibility.  Defying this, isn’t [all-American] defiance.  All this is very predictable, even when it sizes up addicts’ families.  Self-reliant realism, no matter what one’s own realities are, is non-partisan, objective, Objectivist.  This is for the individual, even when the individual ends up devastated.  No matter how high the rate of depression gets, this wouldn’t seem to be a social experiment, attempt to re-engineer human nature, etc.  In the words of William Ryan’s Blaming the Victim, “All of this happens so smoothly that it seems downright rational.”

A study funded by the US government, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, found that conservatism is rooted in such neuroses as, “fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity,” and that Hitler, Mussolini, Reagan, and Rush Limbaugh all “preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality.”  Yet the self-help Newthink would have to say that all of these neuroses are good, even necessary.  After all:  Working with fear and aggression is realistic when that’s reality.  Nazism seemed exciting in its day.  Might makes right, since helplessness means that you must serenely accept.  “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!”, shows how easy it is for weakness-makes-wrong to come naturally and seem obligatory.  All this must be done dogmatically and absolutistically, since half-measures will avail us nothing, and no abstractions (self-justifying opinions) could seem as important as realism.  This personal responsibility must be as out-of-control as are the realities that one must deal with.  “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it.”  Someone absolutely has to take responsibility for each and every problem, no matter how many reasons he may give for why this is morally wrong, since every problem must get solved.  Realism gets first priority, and this isn’t just somewhat.  No one has a right to defend themselves from personal response-ability for their own welfare.  Only strength is material.  As Reagan said on April 7th, 1970 about that era’s protesters and activists, “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with,” and a non-violent version of this would apply to the victimologists and other losers.  We must return to a self-responsibility like the pioneers’, old-fashioned übermensch pride and shame (old-fashioned yet exciting enough to attract a staunch, aggressively energized, and anti-“repression,” audience and following).  “Archie” believes what he’s supposed to, which is self-empowering.  Inequality is realistic and pro-freedom, and loves winners (without caring why they won).  A big fear is of the supposed cunning “victim-power” of the untermenschen.  They could have so much victim-power, that it’s scary!  If you object to sinfulness, that’s really your will-to-power.  Strength looks honorable, or at least forgivable.  Tough, is good.  Populism sounds very folksy and spontaneous.  Moral re-armament sounds exciting.  A lot of problems could ultimately be blamed on the weak, who should therefore try to empower themselves (which is good).  Gutsiness seems exciting and mentally healthy.  It sounds sexy; caring about our rampant depression doesn’t.  Confidence feels good.  Sturm und drang speakers sound exciting, whether from a podium like Hitler, or on the radio.  If you object to the irrationality and tunnel vision, you could seem to be looking down on the lower-middle-class (which was the Nazis’ main base of support), and outrage about that doesn’t seem to be appealing to pity or playing the victim role.  Lower-middle-class people in any country, including Germany, are up against certain (whiny) sorts of people and could seem to be up against others, and must be stolid realists.  As cognitive therapists would tell you, having the “wrong” opinions (not just aberrant ones) washed from your brain, could let you fit in much better.  Reagan’s “We begin bombing in five minutes,” joke, and his statement of 1965, “We should declare war on North Vietnam...   We could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it, and still be home by Christmas,” showed that he had plenty of spark, which is what made him so popular!  Attack politics works, in pressuring people into taking response-ability for their own welfare.  Only the (dreaded) intellectual elite could afford to care.  Gutter tactics are catchy.  Banalities really have to matter.  “Utilize, don’t analyze.”  (As Hitler said, “How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.”)  Without that self-empowerment, you might not succeed in taking care of yourself.  Defying this, is parasitical (one of Nazism’s favorite words).  One could be on a single-minded mission to correct victims, whether this be to fight the ignominious and parasitical untermenschen, or to maximize their very necessary self-help, self-reliance, and well-adjusted emotional strength.  Weakness is bad, and that’s not judgmental in the Christian sense, or repressive in the Freudian sense.  Conventional beliefs mean fitting in productively.  “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” is Wagnerian realism, and Wagnerian judgmentalism.  (We can’t have one without the other, since someone has to deal with each reality.)  Such aggression looks very unexciting to those on the receiving end of it, and they don’t have a choice.

The cognitive distortions of modern Western depression, basically consist of absolutist self-responsible and “I’ll change what I can: myself,” victim-self-blaming.  One could really see this Wagnerian level of self-responsibility, in discussions of codependency.  Self-help means self-reliance.  Victim-blaming leads to self-motivated solutions.  You’d rather count on greed, response-ability for one’s own welfare, etc., to motivate what needs to be done, than count on moral responsibility, which could also seem manipulative, unchecked in its victim-power, etc.   As Reagan said, “Unemployment insurance is a prepaid vacation plan for freeloaders.”  “Realism” would require ignoring untermensch realities, which would dishearten, give excuses, divert efforts, manipulate, etc.  No matter what hardship, sinfulness, etc., impacts each person’s life, he must deal with it productively; we mustn’t be unrealistic.   Realists accept war, and this.   A lack of this realism is what would seem neurotic: unrealistic, counterproductive, self-defeating, immature, passive-aggressive, passive, resentful, manipulative, mollycoddle, etc.  No matter what are your realities (including extreme ones, hardship, sinfulness), if you have an outlook of, “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!”, you’d be most likely to succeed in life.

This realism is along the lines of economics, which is called “the dismal science”; despite all the accusations of counterproductive attitudes, people tend to want to be more productive than they have the opportunities to be.  That isn’t the sort of inefficiency, inadequate reward for effort, irresponsibility, parasitism, self-denial, etc., that economics cares about, since people are always motivated to: solve their own problems, optimistically believe that they’ll get what they deserve, take response-ability for their own welfare, serenely accept whatever they’re helpless to change, deny their own maladjusted desires, etc.—and motivation is everything.  That’s also the (morally bankrupt) main idea of therapy for codependents: You’re motivated to solve your problems, and that behavior problem isn’t.  Cost-shifting is only natural, if it means personal response-ability for one’s own welfare.  Ignoring this realism constitutes a big danger.  Learned helplessness leads to great inefficiencies, and we do try to stop these.  No matter how natural learned helplessness is, in an adversarial society we must overcome it, since just because you’ve been helpless doesn’t mean that you’ll always be helpless, and you’ll have more of a fighting chance if you’re confident.  If we didn’t have these everyday norms, people could get what they wanted through untermensch cunning (which would only weaken themselves in the long run), rather than through earning achieving and winning it.  “We are all victims of victims.”  Those who are preaching these “shoulds” and “musts” aren’t official authority, but disagreeing would seem heretical.  All three of these self-empowering worldviews would insist that no one is entitled to endurability.  If your life is with an addict, or is anything else, that’s life on life’s terms!  Sure, this only holds the victims responsible, but no one is only a victim.  Reality is reality, even when it’s reprehensible.  You get whatever you get.  Idealism, on the other hand, doesn’t work.  This helplessness doesn’t come from the guv’mint.  We must take into account the threshold of human endurance.  As William Sloan Coffin said, “One of the attributes of power is that it gives those who have it the ability to define reality and the power to make others believe in their definition,” and that would include, “I’ve stopped blaming others, and I’m looking at myself!”, if those power dynamics had made this self-responsibility pragmatic.  We might as well be telling the millions suffering from depression, “You’d better just fix your own choices, since if you try to fix others’ choices, the following is wrong with you....”  Facts are stubborn things.

You could always count on victim correction.  We can re-engineer untermensch human nature, since victims want to react more serenely and courageously.  Blithe means well-adjusted.  No matter what caused your problems, if we tolerated and/or mollycoddled your passivity, weakness, failures, pessimism, victimhood, etc., that would only hurt you in the long run.  “I don’t have a problem unless I think I do.”  Fairness, or even endurability, isn’t going to happen by magic.  This anti-intellectualism, like the anti-intellectualism that led to the Iraq war, is common sense.  (As Robert Novak said, “Weapons of mass destruction or uranium from Niger are little elitist issues that don’t bother most of the people.”  Elitist means unrealistic.)  Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison’s book Exuberance says, “The result of a Pew Carter poll conducted in 2002 of 38,000 people in forty-four countries found that more Americans [65 percent] than respondents from other countries disagreed with the statement ‘Success in life is pretty much determined by forces outside our control.’”

Sure, during that interview of Ron Paul, he was told, “...there are a lot of people that describe you as a flake.  And that’s a quote,” and coaching addicts’ kids to believe, “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!” might sound just as flaky, but if one has to succeed in a society with rampant depression, that sort of unconditional self-response-ability is necessary.  Either handicapped people, etc., do whatever it takes to deal with their own problems, or they’re too parasitical to deal with reality.  Ex-Nazi Hermann Rauschning wrote in 1939 about the Nazis’ anti-Semitism, “All these elements, so primitive and threadbare in their psychology, are nevertheless thoroughly effective in practice,” and the same goes for treating other wide swaths of people as manipulative and parasitical untermenschen, even if the intent is to pressure them into acting more übermensch.

As Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind says, “At very best, self-determination is indeterminate.”  Yet motivation is EVERYTHING, and we all know who’s most motivated to solve any problem.  Some nihilistic acceptance is bad; some is realistic. Since few on social security, etc., are cynically parasitical, “We taught them to be dependent,” would require only that we taught them not to solve their own problems well enough that they’d succeed, as “Archie” succeeded.  And of course, to care that “I’ve stopped blaming others, and I’m looking at myself!” could teach these others to evade moral responsibility, would weaken those red-blooded self-reliant efforts to succeed.  Victim correction gives us objectivity.

Even the most caring person could teach this “independence,” so you could always count on getting victim correction.  (It would really do you a lot of good, of course. ♥♥♥♥♥)  Especially if one is in trouble, his having a productive attitude toward his taking care of his own problems, isn’t a dispensable luxury, while any fairness, is one.  We mustn’t coddle maladjustment.  Realists accept reality.  Reaganomics doesn’t allow for excuses.  In the Reagan era, James Watt seemed sane, too.

 

James Watt’s official Department of the Interior photo

 

This was also the same Reagan Administration that arranged for many varieties of deadly germs, as well as other military help, to be exported to Saddam, our ally against Iran.  Once, Reagan’s ideas seemed extremist, but now they seem as realistic and necessary as, “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!”, which, after all, would make anyone more likely to succeed.

As Aldous Huxley wrote, “The ends cannot justify the means for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.”  The ends of, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” might seem good, even necessary when the person must pragmatically deal with hardship and/or others’ sinfulness ad infinitum.  Yet the means, the requirements that one unquestioningly adjust to hardship and/or sinfulness, are this excessive and pitiless.  As Huxley also wrote, “[The psychological revolution] will really be a revolution.  When it is over, the human race will give no further trouble.”  If everyone serenely accepted whatever they’re helpless to change, no more trouble.

As Emily Dickinson wrote, “Opinion is a flitting thing But Truth outlasts the Sun.”  Or, as Homer wrote, “Once the harm is done, even a fool understands it.”  Trust your natural instincts (without focusing on your übermensch instincts), that don’t accept what causes rampant depression!

 

“The National Socialist Party will prevent in the future, by force if necessary, all meetings and lectures which are likely to exercise a depressing influence”—Hitler (Of course, if force isn’t necessary to prevent any and every depressing influence in meetings, that would be all the more effective.)

 

We’re to have the same faith in this failsafe sort of self-responsibility, that we’d have in any other cultural norms, as if it’s a universal truth that will work forever.