#3-1
“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 much-beloved Serenity Prayer, unredacted, as originally written by Reinhold Niebuhr
“...drug companies seem intent on widening indications [for drug use] into areas of human experience that might call for social action and psychologic insight as well as the time-honored virtues of endurance, patience, and mastery.... Similarly, on a broader scale, the use of drugs may serve to vitiate the engagement and action that are currently so urgently needed to deal with our pressing social and worldly concerns.”—Robert Seidenberg, “Advertising and abuse of drugs,” editorial, New England Journal of Medicine, from 1971
“I am convinced that the happiest situation and the best laws cannot maintain a constitution despite mores, whereas the latter turn even the most unfavorable positions and the worst laws to good account.”—Alexis de Tocqueville
“Conspicuous among American beverages are food drinks claimed to control nervous breakdowns...”—Dr. Morris Fishbein, Fads and Quackery in Healing, copyright 1932, the beginning of the section headed “MALTED AND CHOCOLATE DRINKS”
“I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.”—Helen Keller
“Nothing is more powerful than the truth.”—the beginning of a Chevrolet commercial
he main presupposition is that “personal responsibility” means response-ability for one’s own welfare, plain and simple.
After all, 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. After all, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, so if someone has a right to do something with destructive consequences, someone would have to have the responsibility for fixing them. And has to means has to, including the social sanctions and self-criticism that those who don’t live up to these norms, would get. This sort of self-responsibility must be the measure of all. In a freedom-loving society, anyone who’s less forgiving than what the culture’s norms expect him to be, would look scaringly suppressive in his victim-power.
Realists realize that solving practical problems must be the main priority. This simply must be taken care of, and taking care of it through the victims’ self-help, would be the approach that’s the most: marketable, reliably motivated, honorably strong and self-reliant, Objectivist, manipulative-machination-proof, moralism-proof, and forgiving. As long as everyone takes response-ability for their own problems, then the winners will succeed. If you opposed that, even if you simply tried to curb the tide of it, how could you objectively prove that this involved no insidious manipulative emotionality? That sort of character defect involves mollycoddle ignominious cunning, which might be harder to defend oneself against than would be open and honest aggression, and is insidious rather than explicitly willful, so an untermensch-phobia could become popular. We can feel confident in the fact that this isn’t absolute power, that the more optimistic we are, the more that we could see how we could change what we must if we were good enough. As The Serenity Prayer says, even hardship, sinfulness, etc., ad infinitum, isn’t absolute power.
And such absolutism naturally leads to some pretty limitless problems accompanied by victim correction. The Learning About Depression webpage on the Zoloft website, says, “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.”
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. If we take the other sociological factors seriously, we could seem to be trying to manipulate like untermenschen, and/or to restrict the übermenschen.
When you’ve seen ads and other guides that say things like this, you may have thought, “So how am I supposed to fit in with all this? The next time that I experience the sort of trauma that contributes to such an unnaturally high rate of depression, will the entire discussion be about my brain chemistry, which is at least better than it being about my character? Everyone knows that what’s at fault, is inside the millions of victims. But the magnitude of this social problem, can’t just be brushed aside!”
Sure this is a social problem, but those who have the depressions have far more of an incentive to get the problem under control by getting treatment, than those who cause the traumas have to stop causing them. You’d think that a lot of people would want, even need, to ask questions about that, other than whether it consists of 34,000,000 rather severe medical conditions, or 34,000,000 rather severe character flaws. It seem that this much hopelessness, affecting this many Americans, is just one humongous bunch of illusions and delusions. Another consequence is our tendency to attribute problems ultimately to the victims. Intercultural studies have consistently found that depressed people who’ve lived in developed areas outside of the modern West have tended to feel paranoid, but modern Westerners, whether depressed or not, tend to figure that even if someone did “get you,” that would mean only that you lost the battle so you’re a loser. As long as everyone takes response-ability for their own problems, then those who don’t have untermensch character flaws would deal with their own problems in one way or another. Even if all that you did was to try to curb the tide of what causes depressive disorders to affect about 34 million American adults, one could always say that this involved emotionality, which could be called insidiously manipulative.
And, naturally, this means...
Certainly you could imagine what would happen if you responded to one of those who figured that naturally you’re simply supposed to adjust to the norms that cause our rampant depression, by saying, “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Sure, for depressive disorders to affect about 34,000,000 American adults is a very serious social problem, but in order to fit in, you’ve got to minimize the problems around your somewhat. Therefore, I’ll treat this as if it were just a moderately severe social problem.” After all, if you could care somewhat, then that would make you somewhat discouraged, maladjusted, thinking like a victim, etc.
Those who believe in any tenets, had internalized them. Therefore, if you dislike their tenets, they’d react as if you’re bigoted against them, or hold to some other evil ideology. When Western feminists protest the restrictions that Saudi women must live with, those who believe in the tenets that say that this is good, would likely tell those feminists, “Don’t tell us what’s right for us!” And if those outside of the USA were to protest what leads to such an unnaturally high rate of depression, those who are depressed would likely believe in the tenets that say that what causes the rampant depression is pro-freedom, so they’d likely say, “Don’t tell us what’s right for us!”
Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Nature and Destiny of Man includes,
Inevitably the early vision of capitalistic philosophers (Adam Smith) of a process of production and exchange which would make for automatic harmony of interests is not realized. Man controls this process just enough to disturb its harmony. The men who control and own the machines become the wielders of social power on a vaster scale and of more dynamic quality than previous history has known. They cannot resist the temptations of power any more dun the older oligarchies of history. But they differ from previous oligarchies in that their injustices are more immediately destructive of the very basis of their society than the injustices of a less dynamic age. Modern society is consequently involved in processes of friction and decay which threaten the whole world with disaster and which seem to develop by a kind of inexorable logic of their own, defying all human efforts to arrest the decay.
No, actually, there is one human effort to arrest that decay, the destruction of the very basis of their society, that’s extremely effective, and makes the kinds of problems that result from this vaster scale of elites wielding social power, seem far more innocuous than the kinds of problems that resulted from previous elites’ wielding social power. That is, for the public in general to internalize the worldview of, “God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” If everyone in the society that the above describes, dealt with all of their own problems whatever they may be, like that, then this society would have homeostasis, self-stabilizing. Preferably they wouldn’t be told that this entails, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” but if hardship, sinfulness, or anything else, ad infinitum, is the reality that they must deal with, then that’s the reality that they must deal with. No matter how high would be that society’s rates of depression, anxiety disorders, etc., each affected individual couldn’t change whatever made him helpless, but could change: his own brain chemistry through drugs, his own outlook on life, his own survival skills, etc. If each and every problem in such a society is addressed in such a self-reliant, self-motivated, self-empowering, and self-helping fashion, then this society would have homeostasis unconditionally, and the homeostasis of a society always serves the common good. The victims would be told that they should be grateful that each of them is free to solve his problems that result from this sort of wielding of social power, whereas since the problems that resulted from the former sort of wielding social power, involved the coercion of the law, each of those victims couldn’t have overcome each of them by courageously changing what each of them could.
This would mean that in that society, it would seem only natural that the problem of the millions of the members of that society having depression, would be solved through each separately being treated as if his problem is that he’s suffering from a deficiency of Vitamin P, so this problem is to be resolved through mega-medication. Sure, on a profound and philosophical level, that sort of personal response-ability would seem very wrong, but on a pragmatic and human level, it would arrest the decay, so would seem very right, even necessary.
If instead, this were treated as a social problem in the same way that many social movements in the 1960s treated social problems, it would seem very strange to talk about millions of Americans suffering from depression, as millions of Americans who’d better get fixed through antidepressant medication, cognitive therapy, etc.
The Mind Manipulators, by Alan W. Scheflin and Edward M. Opton, Jr., copyright 1978, tells of social problems such as high rates of violent crime, being treated as medical problems to be solved by finding some way to fix each individual. This was that generation’s attempt at biopsychiatry. At that time many were aware that violent tendencies, in particular rioting, were linked to one’s socio-economic class, but fixing the affected individual is always more pragmatic than is fixing social problems. Dr. José Delgado researched ways in which people’s brains could be wired up so that certain areas of the brain could be electronically stimulated. This book says about him,
Delgado said: “The inviolability of the brain is only a social construct, like nudity.” This remark has outraged Delgado’s many critics, because he wants to do away with the taboo. We think that Delgado is half right. The inviolability of the brain is “only” a social construct. But, almost everything that people really value, the things worth fighting and dying for, are “mere” social constructs. “Freedom,” “justice,” “loyalty,” “love” and the other fundamental values have no corporeal existence. Like nudity, they exist only as shared ideas. Some social concepts, like nudity, are mere conventions. Without others we would not be recognizably human. Several thousand years of history have provided us with considerable understanding as to which social concepts are essentials and which are merely conventional.
You could be amazed which forms of moral responsibility that might look like “essentials,” victim correction as a panacea would treat as only social constructs. This is done for a reason that probably was the same as the reason why Delgado treated the inviolability of the brain as a social construct. It seemed more pragmatic to get control over violent tendencies through wiring-up the brain, than it did caring about abstractions such as inviolability. In our day-to-day lives, to care about the understanding of thousands of years of history, would seem counterproductive if that got in the way of defining “personal responsibility” in the way that’s most pragmatic. Anything that either says or implies, “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” either says or implies that if you care about social concepts that millennia have proven to be essentials, then you’re too narcissistically .
That same book quotes Dr. Frank Ervin, who wanted to do the same sort of research to hopefully cure violent tendencies en masse, as saying, “We’re not talking about being nicer to people. I make no human argument at all. I found out 30 years ago that it didn’t sell anybody. We’re really talking about being socially cost-effective. If you can work out a way to define, diagnose, treat and even prevent a problem, you’re going to save a lot of money,” and Dr. Ernst Rodin, who also wanted to do that research, as saying, “We [most scientists] much prefer to talk in global abstractions on a sociological basis, where millions and billions of dollars can be poured into ill-conceived do-good projects which can be readily stopped by another administration, rather than get down to cold-blooded medical research dealing with individuals rather than masses.” The same could be said about treating those 34,000,000 American adults, as if their problem is that they’re suffering from deficiencies of Vitamin P.
(The Current stationery and mail-order company, which has an extremely square image, sells these T-shirts. Though you might think that this looks too trashy for a nice Midwesterner to wear, the stouthearted and perseverant “and deal with it!”, might make up for that.)
When it comes to re-engineering what could seem to be untermensch human nature, though, mainstream self-help could allocate personal responsibility in a way that certainly doesn’t look mainstream. For example, the book Robin Norwood Answers Letters from Women Who Love too Much, includes, “You state that your boyfriend, in trying to ‘settle some issues,’ behaved in a way that shocked and hurt you. You said you finally dealt with that by setting some limits regarding what you feel would be acceptable behavior for him. In other words, you told him what you would and would not put up with and now you expect him to tailor his behavior accordingly.” Norwood goes on to talk about how she had tried to hold some men morally accountable for how they treated the women who they’re supposed to love, but of course, boys will be boys, so this didn’t do any good. These included men who are, “seeing other women, or being sexually attracted to men, or using drugs, or drinking, or gambling, or using pornography, or hitting them, or criticizing them or avoiding them through work—on and on.”
Another example is the following, from the self-help book about cognitive therapy, Feeling Good, by David Burns, MD,
Now we come to a truth you may see either as a bitter pill or an enlightening revelation. There is no such thing as a universally accepted concept of fairness and justice. There is an undeniable relativity of fairness, just as Einstein showed the relativity of time and space....
Here’s proof: When a lion devours a sheep, is this unfair? From the point of view of the sheep, it is unfair, he’s being viciously and intentionally murdered with no provocation. From the point of view of the lion, it is fair. He’s hungry, and this is the daily bread he feels entitled to. Who is “right”? There is no ultimate or universal answer to this question because there’s no “absolute fairness” floating around to resolve the issue. In fact, fairness is simply a perceptual interpretation, an abstraction, a self-created concept. How about when you eat a hamburger? Is this “unfair”? To you, it’s not. From the point of view of the cow, it certainly is (or was)! Who’s “right”? There is no ultimate “true” answer.
Since this sort of thinking arose in the 1960s based on the then-popular Eastern transcendence, this could be called “Calcutta survival skills,” or neo-Buddhism.
Dr. Burns goes on to say that this doesn’t mean that he believes in anarchy, since social norms that condemn certain destructive behavior do some good. He also says that this isn’t a self-abnegating condemnation of all anger, since if someone can change his problem and his anger motivates him to do it, then it’s good. The above quote from Robin Norwood Answers Letters from Women Who Love too Much, also, doesn’t say that women whose husbands or lovers are seeing other women, or being sexually attracted to men, or using drugs, or drinking, or gambling, or using pornography, or hitting them, or criticizing them or avoiding them through work—on and on, should remain partnered with them. The only thing that seems to matter is that the women absolutely can’t change the men’s actions, absolutely can change their own reactions, and absolutely must take care of their own problems.
The March/April issue of Psychotherapy Networker includes an article, Blindsided, by J. Gibson Henderson, Jr., that begins, “My health was so good for so many years that I took it for granted.” Then, suddenly, he was found to have leukemia. Injections that he got in his spinal cord to keep the cancer from spreading to his brain, caused a bad reaction that left him paralyzed from the chest down. Yet toward this and other permanent injuries he got, he had the sort of outlook that Schopenhauer called sublime: “Despite everything I had no choice about, I did have one fundamental choice to make: my choice of a ‘stance’ toward life. Would I find joy in the options that remained, or would I succumb to grief over what I’d lost? I chose joy and, except for occasional times when grief simply overwhelms me, I’ve stuck to it doggedly.”
Sure, this might seem harmless enough, except for the fact that before the Reagan-Thatcher era it would have looked extremist, and made people distrust attempts to fix cognitive distortions, since legitimate negativity would get fixed just as readily as would the distortions. Yet if the only question that one could honorably ask about one’s own problems is “Can I change this?”, then such choices to have sublime outlooks would apply equally to situations where “lions” attack “lambs.” Schopenhauer was the main inspiration of Nietzsche Wagner and Hitler, so that’s exactly what Schopenhauer had in mind by a sublime outlook. Übermensch is both ineradicable and honorable, so the untermenschen who are hurt by it will just have to get their victimhood under control by choosing to have sublime outlooks, and if they don’t accept sinfulness like this, then those whiners would be expecting the world to be as they’d have it.
And then there’s, from Al-Anon/Alateen, who are probably the main role models for self-help for those in trouble:
If a program says that each of us courageously change what he can and serenely accept whatever he can’t, that could be called a “clinically proven drug-free treatment for depression,” since those who do this would be more likely to succeed in life than are those who don’t. Yet this does mean treating our millennia-old essential social concepts that don’t have any corporeal existence, which prohibit such things as adultery (with women or men), doping, boozing, destructive gambling and use of porn, violence, and verbal abuse, as if they don’t exist. You’re simply supposed to avoid those who do such things, just as you’d avoid those who do innocent things that you’re incompatible with. Likewise, if someone like that has already caused you a problem, you absolutely can’t change him, and absolutely can and must change your problem. If this means accepting that lions eat lambs, then that would be clinically proven to lead to greater perseverance in a society with rampant depression. Calcutta survival skills would benefit Jane.
The Nature and Destiny of Man, in the chapter “The Easy Conscience of Modern Man,” includes a discussion of what Niebuhr called “physiocratic” theory, meaning how market discipline disciplines. As Justice Potter Stewart said in concurring with the Furman v. Georgia decision regarding the death penalty in 1972, “These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual,” and the same could be said for the punishments that come from market discipline, but whether one physically wins or loses is objective, and whether one is right or wrong is subjective. (Yet, of course, if the law punishes people based on happenstance, that would seem intolerable, but if the real world punishes people based on happenstance, for you not to accept that that’s the real world would seem intolerable.)
According to that, as long as someone wins a competitive adversarial contest he deserves to be treated as a winner, and as long as he loses, he deserves to be treated as a loser. Yet families that operate along the lines of “I must courageously change what I can and serenely accept whatever I can’t, and if I don’t I’m too passive and resentful,” have got to be the ultimate physiocracies. First off, the law certainly doesn’t treat any addiction as if it’s enough of a disease that addicts are not guilty by reason of insanity. But even if we assume that addicts plainly and simply are passive victims of their diseases, the fact would still remain that even if a husband’s behavior problems couldn’t possibly seem to result from a disease taking away his free will, the wife would still be absolutely incapable of changing his actions, and absolutely capable of changing her own reactions. If she succeeds at preventing this from having bad effects on her life she’d be a winner, and if she doesn’t, she’d be a whiny loser. And even if she divorces him the physiocracy would continue, since whatever realities she must courageously change in order to be a “winner,” would have been determined by what he did.
As any market disciplinarian would tell you, motivation is the only driving force that we could count on to get done what our society needs to get done, and she would be motivated to prevent these problems, while he wouldn’t be. Holding any problematic husbands morally responsible probably wouldn’t work, while holding the wives response-able for their own welfare, probably would. Addiction has got to be the ultimate example of this, in that addicts could be motivated to stop the destruction by “hitting bottom,” even if this means that the entire family goes into poverty, but couldn’t be otherwise motivated to stop, and motivation is everything. Quite literally, there’s nothing more to these family dynamics, than, “If he has the power to create the realities that she can’t change, then that’s the reality that she must deal with, and if he doesn’t, then that’s the reality that she must deal with. If she does have the power to change it then that’s what she’s to do, no matter how much courage that would take, and if she doesn’t, then she’s to serenely accept it.” As long as all of the problems in a society are confidently taken care of like this, then everyone will be confident, and all problems will be taken care of, by those who are selfishly motivated to do a good job. No one would be guilty of doing anything that could possibly be labeled as the sort of un-American weakness that Reaganomics would condemn, such as passivity, whining, controlling, etc. Victim-power can be very scary. Naturally, the victims of anything would very much want to succeed in life, deal with their own problems, feel serene and well-adjusted, etc. It seems that we must fear the untermenschen and their victim-power, and mustn’t fear the übermenschen and their freedoms.
As Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner says, “Economics is, at root, the study of incentives: how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. Economists love incentives.” In the sort of self-empowerment promoted by groups based on, “God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference,” it’s to be accepted that what each person gets is what he wins, rather than what he deserves. This gives to the people who have the problems, the incentive to deal with them as productively, stolidly and Stoically, as possible. On the other hand, the victimizers rarely ever have the sort of incentive to solve the problems they cause, that we could rely on. Freakonomics goes on to say, “The typical economist believes the world has not yet invented a problem that he cannot fix if given a free hand to design the proper incentive scheme. His solution may not always be pretty—it may involve coercion or exorbitant penalties or the violation of civil liberties—but the original problem, rest assured, will be fixed.” The victims would be far more likely to serenely accept the violations of their rights necessary for the incentives, if these violations didn’t come from a centralized authority. And if our system of incentives weren’t this results-oriented, where if you win you win and if you lose you lose, just imagine how many people (especially those who looked pathetic) would get what they wanted by manipulatively playing the victim role!
Quite literally, it can’t matter how much someone else is responsible for your problem,
since if people’s response-ability for their own welfare weren’t unconditional, then those in situations for which others are clearly responsible, wouldn’t strive to become better happier people, which they’d probably need to do to deal adequately with their own problems. However you define your own personal responsibility, if you aren’t adequate to do this, lose the battle, fail, and come up short with big consequences, you’d seem to be an irresponsible and inadequate, loser and failure with very consequential shortcomings. If you don’t adjust to this, adapt to it, function with it, fit in with it, and feel content with it, you’d seem to be a maladjusted maladaptive and dysfunctional, misfit and malcontent. How else would a pragmatist define “good enough”? This sort of personal response-ability might be easy on the consciences of those who cause the problems, but not on the consciences of the victims.
This series of comics includes Jane’s husband getting violent at home,
and giving her a black eye. After she sees their kids getting violent, she thinks, “I just can’t take anymore!” When she goes to an Al-Anon meeting, one member tells her, “Welcome. We were lonely and troubled, too. We can understand as few can,” and another tells her, “You can be happy even if your husband doesn’t stop drinking.” When she goes home, as she reads a pamphlet titled “Living with an Alcoholic,” and looks very beleaguered, she thinks, “Those women are so happy. Maybe if I do what they say, I can be like them.”
So this “better, happier person” stuff was inculcated to her, by the heroes of self-help. I’ve never heard anyone call this sort of inculcation “extremist,” and it really is literally the same as when those around us tell us that no matter what your problem is, you should courageously change what you can and serenely accept what you can’t.
And many AA slogans ridicule those who don’t have what Niebuhr (disapprovingly) called “Buddhistic” spirituality like this. (Yet I could make the following guarantee: The very same all-American types who’d be the first to condemn Buddhistic spirituality as alien, extinguishing people’s autonomy and selfhood, brainwashing, etc., would also be the first to practice what Buddhism calls “mindfulness” when they’re in situations that contribute to our rampant depression. After all, their chances of coping with them would be a lot higher if they chose to contrive a serene acceptance of whatever they’re helpless to change, than if they drew their own honest conclusions about it.)
Ironically, Niebuhr wrote, in The Nature and Destiny of Man, in the subchapter, “The Sin of Pride,” wrote, “Descartes, Hegel, Kant, and Comte, to mention only a few moderns, were so certain of the finality of their thought that they have become fair sport for any wayfaring cynic.” The ultimate fair sport for any wayfaring cynic, moral relativist, etc., has got to be our culture’s victim-blaming conception of “personal responsibility,” that so loves the expectation that no matter how much your problem involves hardship, others’ sinfulness, etc., of course you’ll take care of yourself, deal with your own problem, etc., by courageously changing what you can and serenely accepting what you can’t. If you don’t, you’d seem to be having a “pity party,” playing ignominiously cunning manipulative tricks,
etc.
he Tragedy of Victim Correction as a Panacea~
Whether or not you live with an addict, etc., whatever you must do to take care of yourself, is whatever you must do to take care of yourself. That’s why self-help in general tends to admire Al-Anon, The Serenity Prayer, etc. The only thing that really matters is what you do and don’t have the power to change. Since Bill Wilson, co-founder of AA who wrote much of their Big Book, was a stockbroker around the time of the Great Depression, one could call this The Great Depression Stockbroker’s Approach to Self-Responsibility. Literally and inevitably, whatever anyone’s life is (including during the Great Depression), is “life on life’s terms,” “reality,” “life’s challenges,” etc., for him. That’s how people in trouble must take care of themselves self-reliantly, so intercultural studies have consistently found that self-blame as a symptom of depression, anxiety, etc., is unique to Western and Westernized people. Depressed people who’ve lived outside of the modern West have tended to feel paranoid, but modern Westerners, whether depressed or not, tend to figure that even if someone did “get you,” that would mean only that you lost the battle so you’re a loser; you must “look at yourself” so you could independently resiliently and resourcefully find a solution to your problem. Self-help means that if it’s your problem then you provide the help, which is why self-help for people in trouble in general has really taken to the AA-Al-Anon approach, so “Archie” is more than just emblematic of self-reliant self-empowerment for people in trouble in a society with rampant depression. What personal problems don’t have to be taken care of this unconditionally, where the only thing that really matters is what oneself can or can’t change? If your back is against the wall, you must serenely accept this fact. Self-reliance is The Great Liberator. The moral bankruptcy is a tragedy in the ancient Greek dramatic sense, meaning that if all that victims could care about is whether or not they can change things, moral bankruptcy and immunity from accountability would inevitably result. As can be seen in Nietzsche, the weak could easily seem to be the dangerously ones, since everyone’s beliefs regarding what they deserve are shaped by their own , and the weak can exercise their supposed only in ways that would seem mollycoddle, “dishonest” and “ignominious,” whereas red-blooded strength is “honest,” proud, and at least forgivable. (We must appreciate all the hidden dangers of unchecked “victim-power.”) “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” could happen to anyone.
Victim-blaming doesn’t require a belief in a just world, and is most important when someone must self-motivatedly take response-ability for injustices. Whatever matters in the real world, matters in the real world. Whatever is reality, is reality. The basic idea is that the weak should become more self-responsible and the strong should be forgiven, and then, realistically speaking, things would keep functioning efficiently. As Dr. Thomas A. Harris wrote in the preface of his I’m OK—You’re OK, “To many people [psychiatry] is like a blind man in dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there,” but Al-Anon-style psychology-psychiatry, neo-Buddhism (which self-disciplines the yin but not the yang, “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it”), is productive, does produce contrived serenity courage and self-responsibility, whereas telling addicts’ family members, “You’re OK, even if his addiction really bothers you,” wouldn’t: mindless formula, mindful victims. Resistance could be labeled as ignominious untermensch . This treatment is all-natural. Your feeling bad about anything would hurt only yourself. Everyone must adjust. Blinders bring serenity. For everyone, functioning productively and resiliently is all-important. Any fear could be dangerously problematic.
All problems must be resolved. Attention must be systematically focused on how any victims (who are the most motivated to do this successfully), could most effectively take response-ability for their own welfare, since thoughts about right and wrong would be unpragmatic manipulative and judgmental opinion. Alateen isn’t extremist. Treating victims as victims seems so old-school, mollycoddling. The way that the Iraq war resulted so automatically from the whiny claims that Americans were victims of WMD, shows the great danger of manipulative victim-power. Moral relativism (“Your morality is culturally biased!”) becomes amoral absolutism (“Your morality is biased toward believing that you deserve better! Shame on you!”). Blame the victim, and you’ll get well-motivated self-reliant and anti-judgmental results, solutions. That’s the only thing that really matters (especially for those with big problems). In the real world, some things work and some things don’t, and whenever those who are morally responsible won’t take physical responsibility, cult-like neo-Buddhism would work much better than would moral responsibility. Don’t be pessimistic! In all situations, this is what it takes to win, so everything except “Can I change this?”, should be ignored. The ignominious banalities of life, aren’t issues. This might not look sociopolitical or socioeconomic, but this is just cultural norms and expectations, along with social pressures, determining who is personally responsible for what in certain interactions, and those of the society at large tend to find the same unconditionally self-correcting platitudes inspiring. Very little of what could counter our rampant depression, anxiety disorders, etc., would sound or feel gutsy, so very little of it could sell. (Endurability wouldn’t make good Populism.) Frank Buchman, leader of the Oxford Groups, the club on which AA and then Al-Anon was based and which is now called “Moral Re-Armament,” said, “D’you know Heinrich Himmler?... Say, you ought to know Heinrich. He’s a great lad.... [Hitler] lets us have house-parties whenever we like.” Anyone who’d love the Nazis, couldn’t help but love victim-blaming, targeting weaknesses (as in whiny) of character, etc.
For an exemplary alkie’s kid who looks like Archie, to preach, “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!”, should seem like wryly Kafkaesque theater of the absurd, but instead that seems very pragmatic and honorable. His group’s leaders are just trying to help him take care of himself better, which he really needs, and this would also help anyone else in trouble. No self-responsibility for victims sounds nice, but all victim-blaming that isn’t illogical could help the victims by improving their chances of success in the future. For everyone, not just a-holes’ families, realism means accepting that others won’t do what they’re not motivated to do. The only difference between those who Al-Anon corrects and everyone else, is the situation they’re in, and “self-responsibility” and “self-help” would mean the same things in any other situation where, to the same degree, you can’t change others’ actions but can change your own reactions. No matter what any Al-Anon or Alateen members, or those in equally desperate situations, may whine about, self-help psychology could respond, “But to look at yourself instead of blaming others would benefit you, by changing what you can and accepting what you can’t!” (Being in denial about the unconditionality, could make you more serene and courageous.) That’s reality, not victim-blaming. This doesn’t intend to blame or criticize you or be morally bankrupt, just make you more well-adjusted and spiritual. After all, the more that anyone judging such situations tried to be fair, the more unfair he’d be, since no one would solve the problems. Certain things simply have to get done, by those who are the most motivated to do them. Sometimes in life, the pragmatists must stand up to the weak. As Al-Anon shows, unconditional acceptance and adjustment could always lead to peace and confidence—serenity and courage. (That’s a strong character.)
Those who most believe in this sort of unconditional self-responsibility are good, hard-working people. Unconditional and resilient, “can-do” self-responsibility like “Archie’s,” is what made America great. (Self-blame is the can-do attitude for people in trouble, “If only I can... better, I can succeed!”) If it weren’t unconditional, it would allow cowardice, inadequacy, excuses, faking problems, un entitlement, maladjustment, dysfunctionality, etc., and we mustn’t be naïve about this. In a society with rampant depression, everyone could have an excuse for failure, and such cowardice saps productivity. Self-responsibility along the lines of the law of the jungle works (and worked very productively in the nineteenth century), if you make it work. Losers lose and winners win. The weak can be so unfair. Like any other reductionism, if you listened to many victim correctors’ insistent solutions to peoples’ problems, these solutions would all say basically the same things: change the specifics of one solution to the specifics of any other, and the one could sound just like the other. When reality requires that these expectations go to the point of a reductio ad absurdum (as in “Archie’s” case), then that’s what reality (and self-motivated self-reliance) require. Even if this requires more Stoicism than some Stoic saints had, if that’s what reality requires, then that’s what it requires. (These saints’ self-control shows that it’s possible, and Al-Anon-style self-control isn’t moralistic.) Such unconditional Stoicism can eliminate all misery, the worst of which could have caused big problems. Some ideas sell, some don’t, and this one sells. Which would you rather be, right, or happy? To the uninitiated, victim-blaming would seem bad rather than pragmatic, for 15% of the American adult population to suffer a serious depressive disorder in any given year wouldn’t seem to be among the diseases that are parts of the natural order, etc. This is the same sort of logic that led to Phil Gramm calling America a “nation of whiners,” etc., that has the same unconditionally red-blooded, resilient, exhilarating, hard-working and character-building appeal to it!
The alkies aren’t controlling Al-Anon members in the authoritarian, paternalistic, anti-freedom sense; that’s just the way that life sometimes goes. We all must adjust to our realities. That’s inherent to life. To end the description of each and every traumatic experience with, “So now I’m supposed to just shut up and deal with this reality, since doing so would benefit me,” might sound like the punch line of a sick joke, but the bottom line must always be pragmatic and well-adjusted. That’s how victim correctors are supposed to operate, since correction is good, and a lack of it is self-defeating. This is the language of letting go. AA slogans such as “Anger is one letter short of danger,” would apply, but “Easy does it,” wouldn’t. Unless what happened was so extreme that this would sound untenable, trying to correct the person who caused the problem, even assertively, could very easily seem or suggest: unrealistic, unreliable, others-helping, naïve, stupid, conditional, optional, half-hearted, limited, judgmental, troublemaking, “on principle,” moralistic, unattractive, sophistry-rewarding, altruistic, controlling, whiny, mollycoddling, intellectualist, philosophical, pathetic, resentful, maladjusted, negative, blaming, subjective, unproven, emotionalistic, manipulative, passive, etc. Trying to correct the person who has the problem in ways that would help him “take care of himself” better, could very easily seem or suggest: realistic, reliable, self-helping, natural, wise, necessary, vital, steadfast, limitless, forgiving, peace-making, pragmatic, trendy, marketable, achievement-oriented, “getting on with life,” self-empowering, gutsy, achievement-oriented, down-to-earth, material, proud, competitive, well-adjusted, hopeful, solving, objective, self-justifying, practical, self-reliant, active, etc. And if what happened was extreme, then the worse was what he did, the more that expecting him to take moral responsibility for that much could seem draconian, naïve, etc.
Victim-blaming can’t make traumas worse, since victims can’t be counterproductive, dysfunctional, maladjusted, defeatist, negative, whiny, unaccepting, demanding, etc. Those who are trying to defend themselves from this (Defend yourself from personal response-ability for your own welfare? Horrors!), could feel uncomfortable bringing up, talking about, and taking seriously, such banalities, but the end result of the banalities is rampant depression, anxiety disorders, etc. Whatever happens that contributes to these gargantuan social problems, “Oh, well, that’s life, and the victims probably could have stopped the damage,” so even conspiracy theorists could feel very safe with this massive devastation. Al-Anon would probably say that the reason why it would expect members to accept whatever alkies do is that their disease of addiction makes them not guilty by reason of insanity (Addiction, a disease of people’s motivations, might as well be as involuntary as Alzheimer’s, and disease might as well equal total helplessness.), but if a non-addict caused a member a big problem, the only things that would really matter would be the victim’s serenity and courage. “That’s just the way that human nature is,” “That’s just the way that this sinful world is,” “Boys will be boys,” “That’s just the way that he is,” etc., imply the same level of fatalism and serene acceptance as does, “That’s just the way that addicts are.” This unconditionality would apply to the self-help and self-responsibility in handling any problem whatsoever, since whatever the real world requires, the real world requires. Coping with reality requires that the realities be interchangeable. What could possibly keep victim correction in check, limiting self-responsibility to what’s reasonable? Just think of all the resentment, self-righteousness, wimpiness, etc., that moral clarity would lead to. As one could see in how domestic violence was once minimized, destruction within the family, especially if from the husband, is considered especially banal, personal, excusable, understandable, natural, inevitable, etc., and these minimizing labels come from the usual “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” social norms. If only the weak took care of themselves better... All that you’d have to do is not care, and primitivism could happen so easily.
(Cartoon generated by “Build Your Own Meat”)
“Archie” was taught to have great confidence in the self-reliance and self-determination of the individual. Instinctively, Americans would tend to be a lot less offended by Al-Anon-style victim correction, than by the whining and the victim-power that it corrects. That self-help formula feels right, helpful, beneficial, self-empowering, resilient, self-efficacious. Victims’ counselors care about them. This empathy requires correcting them, saving them from their own negativity and passivity. After all, “Oh, you poor thing!”, treats people as things. Victim correctors only want addicts’ kids, etc., to be more self-efficacious, serene, etc. The nescient majority has no problem with this level of victim correction, with just expecting people to “get on with life” despite realities this lurid, which seem to be just acceptable losses. The lower middle class approach is about solving problems self-reliantly and realistically, so we should teach the same self-responsible ideas that it does, instead of the petty bourgeois approach, which is palliative. Coping with reality means overlooking some realities, and such pragmatic and red-blooded cultural norms have to be very powerful. As White House press secretary Ari Fleischer unabashedly said after Bush admitted that the Iraq-Niger-uranium documents are fake, “Yes, the president has moved on. And, I think, frankly, much of the country has moved on, as well,” a top-notch professional attempt to get the public to conform to letting go regarding Bush’s Machiavellianism. (Fleischer is rebelling from his petty bourgeois family, who obviously can afford not to adequately appreciate why, in the real world, sometimes when others cause you problems it’s necessary to move on rather than whine and intellectualize.) Caring about social problems is so passé, so 1960s, even caring about our rampant depression. During the Vietnam War, defending it by telling opponents to move on, would have seemed morally bankrupt, rather than unconditionally resilient. As Al-Anon shows, it’s possible for pragmatists to expect someone to move on from, let go of, etc., literally anything that he can’t change.
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.) Depression is the only dread disease of which many of the causes seem sacrosanct.
Nothing that anyone in trouble could possibly say, could possibly counter expectations that are based on what the real world objectively requires. No matter what an alkie or any other 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. That mustn’t seem repulsive. 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. Whenever no pertinent abstractions can matter, reductionism has to. As any self-help counselor would tell you, abstractions are immaterial, and judgmental abstractions are self-serving. Ambrose Bierce defined platitude as, “A moral without the fable,” and the self-reliant, self-responsible, morals of victim correction sound a lot better without the fables, which would have told of what the people had to deal with self-reliantly. 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 real world requires certain things. Everyone must play their part. 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. As long as they happened in the past, they’re past history. Unendurability happens. 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. Focus on self-responsibility. 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. There’s nothing paternalistic here, so you could feel free.
Even addicts’ families, etc., are sustainable like this, since naturally everyone is motivated to be well-adjusted and functional—serene and courageous. 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, or that depressed self-blamers have no gauge of how good is good enough other than, “Am I adequate to deal with my [devastating] realities?”!) If one rationale for victim correction doesn’t work, it’s replaced by another. As “Mary Smith” wrote in her suicide note, “All [my psychologist] could do is nitpick about how I need to feel small + helpless,” though Mary obviously had a gutsy personality, which is typical of the self-empowering “thinking” of victim correction: plenty of all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, mental filter, and disqualifying the positive. To paraphrase British prime minister David Lloyd George, such alkies’ kids cannot conquer the chasms in their own lives by gingerly taking one step at a time. (As you could see in “Archie” and in all the other self-blame you might encounter, that isn’t just a fear of a slippery slope, of what might happen to you if this goes too far. Naturally, the realities that you’re response-able for dealing with, will go however far they’ll go, and with realism, there’s no such thing as going too far.) Samia Labidi’s chapter of Ibn Warraq’s Leaving Islam, Apostates Speak Out says, “The shackling of women had to be pursued without any letup, otherwise men risked losing control of the situation,” and with victim correction as a panacea, the shackling of untermenschen has to be pursued without any letup, otherwise übermenschen risk losing control of the situation through: untermenschen believing that they’re ENTITLED to better so they’ll stop “looking at themselves,” others pitying them, and these feelings getting more and more compelling since fear, including legitimate fear, is the strongest motivator.
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. It should be that either you’re careful about blaming the victim or you’d be treated as not being careful enough about the accusations you make unswervingly, but that would leave too many problems unsolved. 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! And we’d better not have a backlash against this knee-jerk, unconditional absolutist one-dimensional uncompromising and unquestionable (but very self-helping and self-motivated) victim correction! 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. Social Darwinism protects us from all parasitism, which could only hurt the parasites. 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 would pose, unless they make great efforts to be self-reliant anyway and succeed. We mustn’t reward failure, victimhood, etc., or the weak could get what they wanted without earning it and the strong might not be motivated to achieve, so we must assume that the weak wanted to fail. This isn’t absolute power; “Archie” and those who are just as helpless can change some significant things. Such “imperfections” don’t seem nearly as scary as do comparable problems from the guv’mint. Helplessness isn’t tyranny.
The Al-Anon formula for self-help, laissez faire Social Darwinist ideology, and what “self-help” must mean in a society with rampant depression, are based on the same ideas, and come with the same frame of reference. You simply must accept whatever you get, that you’re powerless to change. As long as you can’t change what you’re afraid of, the more fear you’d feel, the more self-control you’d need in order to cope with reality. Naturally, we reward success and punish failure. We have to. We seem to be in a constant conflict between untermensch human nature, which tries to get what it wants (including masochistic emotional satisfaction) through mollycoddle cunning weakness, and übermensch human nature, which tries to get what it wants through red-blooded “honest” strength, and the übermenschen must win. Naturally, we must sometimes deal with things going wrong; safety could go against freedom. Victimhood shouldn’t entitle anyone to anything. The weak must be more motivated to play their parts. While “Archie’s” situation is certainly atypical, a society that has rampant depression yet stresses response-ability for one’s own welfare would have to make that personal response-ability, that unconditional (though each situation gives opportunities for rationales for this personal response-ability, that victim correctors could focus on). All of the advantages of “the invisible hand,” apply to the lives of “Archie” and everyone else in trouble. (If you weren’t aware of our rampant depression with self-blame, you might think that things just take care of themselves.) No matter how individualistic one is, he’d still have to admit that every society must keep itself stable and functioning, and must enforce its expectations regarding who’s to do this. All of these supposed forms of individualism must indoctrinate their followers into believing in counterintuitive absolutisms such as the above, the ideal being complying with the Al-Anon “Serenely accept and courageously change” formula applied to any realities. That’s living in the real world. You do what you can. Beat the hardcore blues. No self-care could seem onerous. Whatever happens is, therefore, “life on life’s terms,” “reality,” etc. Maturity means accepting reality. Of course, we live in a competitive and self-responsible society, nothing’s guaranteed, and human imperfections are whatever they are. Those who have Nietzsche’s values would be both most likely to succeed, and most likely to seem to have good, well-adjusted backbone. Self-responsibility serves the greater good, is a moral obligation that we can’t afford to forgive. Where would our economy be if people weren’t truly motivated to take response-ability for their own welfare? Emotionalism such as whining, victimology, and victimhood, wouldn’t be fair play in the contest for success. Fighting for what is good could actually turn out to be bad, since people: are naturally motivated to do what they want and to take response-ability for their own problems, aren’t reliably motivated to take moral responsibility, must be motivated to get what they want by winning and earning it, and mustn’t be motivated to get it by acting like victims or their allies. If everyone were to get what they deserved, where would it come from? “I’ve stopped blaming others and I’m looking at myself!”, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” etc., are, in the end, Social Darwinism that resolutely ignores its own consequences. You get whatever you get. Self-responsibly striving for success, is what it all comes down to. That’s the sort of values that our economy rewards; “Archie” and those who’d insist that we cope like him, would prove very strong resilient and productive. Cognitive therapists could probably prove that those who choose to think that serenely and courageously are the least likely to suffer depression, anxiety, etc.
Things simply have to keep functioning. If you don’t successfully deal with your own problems, who will? We must think realistically, so whatever shapes our realities shapes how we must think. If you don’t go along with the victim correction as a panacea, then that would seem to be your untermensch pathologies, character defects. Pathetic resentment is the ultimate enemy. Whatever is necessary for one to deal with his own realities self-reliantly becomes absolutely necessary, so otherwise he’d be inadequate, dysfunctional, etc. Even if he does plenty, if it’s inadequate to deal with his realities, he’d seem to be inadequate. The weak can be such a drain. Victim-blaming has advantages, such as: conventionality, pragmatism, realism, objectivity, exalting red-blooded strength, avoiding moralism, preventing manipulative and vainglorious machinations, faith that we get what we deserve, and confidence that the person who’s the most motivated to solve a problem is the one who’s in control. All that we’d have to do is treat the weak as a bunch of selfish manipulators, and we could have a de facto law of the jungle without having an official law of the jungle. Everyone must conquer their own doubts, their own “negativity,” for their own good, focusing on correcting themselves. Correcting women, poor people, etc., as if they fit the stereotypes of choosing to be weak for “fun” and/or profit, is intended to benefit them, strengthen them. Normal give-and-take, opinions about rampant depression, etc., seem too prone to manipulation, cowardice, etc. Simple wins.® Success and failure are 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.) That’s the real world; sometimes things work out, and sometimes they don’t. It’s astounding what one can get away with, if what we really care about is the supposed whiners, manipulators, etc. Acting pathetic is the old (pre-Reagan) way of doing things. Weakness isn’t competitive, or fun. Victims could seem to be manipulatively insidiously and perfidiously exploiting victimizers’ (moral) vulnerabilities, in order to get what the victims want. (Paranoia about duplicitous untermenschen could seem healthy—gutsy and realistic.) If those judging you keep hearing from your society, that supposed victims are really untermensch manipulators, attention-seekers, whiners, etc., then that would be how those judges would be likely to judge you. (Prejudice acquires a new meaning, like Ron Paul’s: “Sometimes you have to pre-judge, since you can’t prove cunning untermensch machinations, and you should be optimistic that they could have succeeded if they really wanted to.”) Coping with reality must mean overlooking some realities. Even “Archie” doesn’t have to live in fear. You don’t deserve more than what you won. Your attention would be on what you should be doing better, better, not on the magnitude of the social problem. Some negativity seems pro-freedom,
but some seems dangerously anti-freedom.
Self-help programs like this, even those that apply to situations of unambiguous victimization, are top sellers. The alkies aren’t controlling Al-Anon members in the authoritarian, paternalistic, anti-freedom sense; that’s just the way that life sometimes goes. We all must adjust to our realities. That’s inherent to life. This is the exciting self-reliant freedom, can-do courage, and failsafe well-adjusted forgiveness, that we’ve gotten to know and love. If it feels good, believe it. (Fighting and/or caring for the underdog might feel good, though, but we must understand how this would mollycoddle them.) Addictive personalities would feel right at home. Hans Johst said, “When I hear the word culture, I release the safety catch on my revolver,” and intellectualism could cause similar feelings, even when the supposed intellectualism is a concern about the sociology of what leads to our rampant depression. We must all be motivated to deal with our own problems independently resiliently and resourcefully. We’ll get more chances to succeed. That simply is the unconditionally self-responsible role that we must play, to keep our society functioning with plenty of self-motivation, unconditionally. If people could get what they wanted by manipulatively playing the victim role, then that’s what they’d naturally do. Simply being morally right, has never earned or achieved anything. If you’ve “really failed,” you could become a projection screen for others’ beliefs about failures. Conformists firmly believe that certain things are good, so are blinded by ideology. (“Sure, approximately 15% of the U.S. adult population suffers from a serious depressive disorder in any given year, but if you act like what’s causing your problem is what contributes to our rampant depression, that’s just your manipulative ploy!!!”)
Just imagine how this conception of self-responsibility would look, if people could see how much depression, anxiety disorders, etc., our normalcy creates, including some helplessness that “everyone knows” is just life’s inevitable imperfections that normal people will adjust and adapt to! Much of this is actually beyond the threshold of human endurance, unfit for human consumption!
“We all have our jobs.”—Nixon’s press secretary Ron Ziegler, as quoted by Woodward and Bernstein’s All the President’s Men, responding to Woodward phoning him to thank him for his much-emulated “We would all have to say that mistakes were made in terms of comments. I was over enthusiastic in my comments...,” apology. Anyone who starts out with presuppositions such as the above is bound to enthusiastically make plenty of victim-blaming mistakes, in the name of correcting the victims. Yet those who do this could figure that it’s their jobs, both as mental health professionals, and as optimistic proponents of self-reliant freedom.
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.
As George Bernard Shaw wrote, “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find tem, make them.” In other words, if you don’t try, you won’t succeed. Yet one can hardly hold that if you do try, you will succeed. And as with any panacea, victim correction as a panacea tends to hold that one or more people “always,” “never,” etc., do something. Since intercultural studies have consistently found that depressed people who’ve lived outside of the modern West have tended to feel paranoid but modern Westerners whether depressed or not tend to figure that even if someone did “get you” that would mean only that you lost the battle so you’re a loser, Westerners tend to blame themselves for exactly the reason that Shaw spelled out above, that self-blame is pragmatic. The people who get on in this world are the people who stop blaming others and look at themselves, since they can change themselves and can’t change anyone else.
Ethical Standard 1.09 of The Code of Ethics of the American Psychological Association, Respecting Others, had said, “In their work-related activities, psychologists respect the rights of others to hold values, attitudes, and opinions that differ from their own.” Quite likely, the reason why there is no more Ethical Standard 1.09, is that there really is no way to draw a line between what that prohibited, and an open-ended moral relativism. Yet chances are that most of the conflicts about values, attitudes, and opinions, between therapists and clients, would involve situations where they legitimately treated others as morally responsible for problems that they caused, while the psychologists figured that the clients should instead have an attitude of self-help. This would mean that people help themselves by stolidly dealing with their own problems, that any behavior that could be labeled as attempts to “control” or “manipulate” others would be treated as ignominious cunning, etc. Though applying an open-ended moral relativism to one’s own behavior would lead to the “anarchy” that Dr. Burns condemned, one must apply an open-ended moral relativism to whatever behavior might make him angry due to its unfairness, that he can’t change.
In a society with rampant depression, such a personal response-ability for dealing with one’s own problems really wouldn’t be that atypical. This is the very same society that has taken to “God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference,” as a model for resilient and perseverant personal responsibility, though this is obviously so unlimited that it really isn’t surprising that the part that’s usually left out includes, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it.” For alkies’ family members, whether juvenile or adult, the following would be therapeutic, and, therefore, could be called a “clinically-proven drug-free treatment for depression”: “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” that they must accept that men who are “seeing other women, or being sexually attracted to men, or using drugs, or drinking, or gambling, or using pornography, or hitting [their wives], or criticizing them or avoiding them through work—on and on,” simply are that way, and, “Now we come to a truth you may see either as a bitter pill or an enlightening revelation. There is no such thing as a universally accepted concept of fairness and justice.... Here’s proof: When a lion devours a sheep, is this unfair?”
With all cognitive therapy, the more impressionable that one is, the more that he could learn to think pragmatically. Al-Anon’s approach was based on AA’s approach, in which the more impressionable a recovering alkie is, the more that he could get rid of his pathological thoughts. Sure, this is as morally bankrupt as is seeing value in all life experience, including those caused by an addict who you live with. That would lead to all the insensitive and offensive aspects of blaming the victim. The untermenschen would seem to be the ones who are trying to get away with something, even when the übermenschen are the ones who actually are. Yet since the victims are the ones with the greatest incentive to solve the problems as well as possible, the pragmatism of holding them responsible would maximize the well-being of more people. Yet something very vital is missing here.
You’re supposed to at least accept that The Serenity Prayer outlines a good strategy for coping. We’re to practice the spirituality of, “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,” since this self-discipline would give us more confident outlooks.
That same series of comics from Al-Anon Alateen includes one in which the boy who looks like Archie tells a high-school assembly, “Alateen showed me how to let go of my father’s drinking problem and still care about him!”, followed by one in which the girl who looks like Veronica tells that assembly, “I learned that alcoholism is a disease and that I could be happy in spite of my mother’s drinking!”, to which a disheveled hippy son of an alkie in the audience, Randy, replies, “What a bunch of bull!” Later, after his dad temporarily sobered-up, Randy is shown wearing a square-looking sweater with a herringbone design,
and with his hair neatly combed.
Obviously he enthusiastically “let go” of any resentment he may have felt about past drinking, but he wouldn’t seem good enough unless he also “let go” of his feelings about present and future drinking. The alkie father didn’t have any addictive cravings compelling him to relapse, but all are simply to accept that his disease made him do it. This series of comic ends with his hitchhiking to escape the alcoholism, with a large caption, “WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO RANDY? WILL HE FIND Alateen?”
This certainly goes against the sort of moral responsibility that could be called “essential,” without which we would not be recognizably human. If the law treated addicts who’ve committed crimes due to their addictions, as not guilty by reason of insanity since their diseases simply made them do it, this would seem to be going against such essential social concepts. Yet if you told addicts’ family members what’s wrong with assuming that if they don’t accept hardship as a pathway to peace and take as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as they would have it, they’d be inadequately taking response-ability for their own lives, they’d probably tell you, “But with all that I’ve got to worry about in the material world, how could you possibly expect me to care about such social constructs as sinfulness?!”
The Tshiluba of the Congo have a word, ilunga, which means, “someone who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time.” The Meaning of Tingo, a book of words in languages other than English that have their own distinctive meanings, by Adam Jacot de Boinod, includes the word ilunga under the heading “Tolerant,” the section beginning, “When it comes to personality, some people seem to have been put on the planet to make life easier for everyone else.” If Randy acted toward his dad as an ilunga would, rather than seeming tolerant, as if he were put on the planet to make life easier for everyone else, he’d be treated as if he didn’t “let go” enough. Of course, if the law were as tolerant toward an addict breaking the law due to his addiction, as an ilunga would be, such groups as MADD would be outraged at the tolerance.
The webpage THANKFULLY CODEPENDENT, by Brenda Ehrler, actually begins,
My unofficial definition of the term codependent is an individual who is affected by the actions of others. How do I know if I’m participating in codependent behavior? I start by examining my discomfort. Where does it come from? Is my discomfort caused by the action of another? When I can put my finger on the source of my discomfort, I possess a valuable tool. Once I am aware of the source, I have an opportunity to make an internal change. This life changing awareness is not available to non-codependent individuals. After all, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Therefore, I can say, I am thankfully codependent.
She’s not saying that being an overly-giving caretaker is something to be thankful for, only that you should feel good if you could blame your own problem on yourself, since that way you could change the person who seems to be to blame. This opportunity to change what one needs to, by making an internal change, isn’t available to individuals whose problems are the responsibility of anything outside of themselves. Situations that could be called “codependent” involve one person victimizing another, in ways that would constitute a social problem, but if you blame any problem on yourself, that should give you hope that you could change it. While “cherchez la femme,” look for the woman, had meant to suspect her since she’s the one who traditional moralism would morally condemn, now “look for the woman” would mean that since she’s the powerless one, for her to solve her own problems by correcting herself would mean: self-help, self-efficacy, self-empowerment, self-reliance, self-responsibility, self-motivation, anti-moralism, etc. If you were a therapist, you called a destructive client “self-obsessed,” and he responds by not having anything more to do with you, you’d probably be called unrealistic, moralistic, whiny, controlling and demanding. If you called someone in trouble “self-obsessed” since her hurt feelings mean that she thinks that she deserves better, and she responds by not having anything more to do with you, she’d probably be called unrealistic, moralistic, whiny, controlling and demanding.
Definitions of the personal responsibility that a culture does take seriously, makes a big difference in both how much moral responsibility would try to minimize helplessness, and how much the victims are simply held response-able for their own welfare. Though your culture might have told you that most of the traumatic experiences that contribute to our unnaturally high rate of depression, are among life’s inherent imperfections, your natural common sense should tell you that natural problems and human nature don’t lead to such unnatural rates of depression.
When the market discipline rewards and punishes along these lines, it seems that of course we must accept these criteria of what’s right and wrong. As Pinkney Walker, who’d been Ken Lay’s economics professor, said about him, “He took every course I taught. He understood that an unregulated market with free choice, where market forces can work, will create greater incentives and maximize the well-being of many.” Therefore, praising and rewarding the übermenschen, and admonishing and punishing the untermenschen, would seem to serve the common good.
Probably in most cases, the untermenschen could give reasons why their losing their battles, wasn’t their own fault. Sometimes, they could show that they lost because of others’ culpable choices and behaviors, but in the end, the magnitude of moral wrongness is always subjective. A webpage about Hitler, A Born Soldier, says, “Hitler’s favorite writer during the war was the early 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.... Hitler, like Thomas Mann, was greatly impressed by Schopenhauer’s book: The World as Will and Idea. Hitler read the book over and over again during the war and was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer’s teaching.” The Stanford webpage on Nietzsche says, “Wagner and Nietzsche shared an enthusiasm for Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche—who had been composing piano, choral and orchestral music since he was a teenager—admired Wagner for his musical genius and magnetic personality. Wagner was exactly the age Nietzsche’s father would have been, and Wagner had also attended the University of Leipzig many years before. The Nietzsche-Wagner relationship was quasi-familial, sometimes-stormy, and it affected Nietzsche deeply: twenty years later, he would still be assessing Wagner’s cultural significance.”
Schopenhauer wrote in that same book, “Wrong through violence is not so ignominious for the perpetrator as wrong through cunning, because the former is evidence of physical strength, which in all circumstances powerfully impresses the human race. The latter, on the other hand, by using the crooked way, betrays weakness, and at the same time degrades the perpetrator as a physical and moral being,” and, “The concept of good is divided into two subspecies, that of the directly present satisfaction of the will in each case, and that of its merely indirect satisfaction concerning the future, in other words, the agreeable and the useful. The concept of the opposite, so long as we are speaking of beings without knowledge, is expressed by the word bad, more rarely and abstractly by the word evil, which therefore denotes everything that is not agreeable to the striving of the will in each case.”
In practical terms, we’d have to come to basically the same conclusion. In practical terms: Moral responsibility is subjective, while response-ability for one’s own welfare, one’s own problems, is objective. In an imperfect world sometimes all of us must deal with problems that others caused. If the person with the problem demands that others take moral responsibility for it rather than dealing with it himself, he’d be motivated by his own self-interest, which could be called the striving of his , and his wanting the world to be as he’d have it. He’d be making some significant expectations of others, which might seem profoundly wrong: anti-freedom, exploitive, controlling, restrictive, repressive, priest-ridden, manipulative, self-righteous, etc. That THANKFULLY CODEPENDENT webpage reflects the modern version of the ignominiously cunning untermensch, “A codependent can be a very powerful individual by using manipulation in a covert way,” and, of course, one needn’t have any desire to play a caretaking role, in order to be labeled “codependent.” On the other hand, “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” doesn’t treat the destructive sinfulness as profoundly wrong. If you’re strong then naturally you’d courageously change reality, and if you’re weak then naturally you’d serenely accept reality. One could call this global, all-inclusive, approach to problem-solving, “a panacea, which applies to each case in which it would be tenable, that consists of acceptance of the aggressive , and rejection of weakness, ineffectiveness, and unhappy representations of the material world.” That same webpage says, “If I can let go of control by seeing value in all life experience, I start to detach,” not that she should look at each situation separately to decide what responses would be proportional to it.
The more powerless one is, the more that he’s got to do in order to get through life adequately, and, therefore, the more that he must do in order to seem adequate. If we set limits to victim correction, even limits that would treat expectations that one abide by, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” as seriously offensive, then who is to decide what these limits are, and how would we enforce them? The untermenschen have far more incentive to deal with their own problems, including choosing to have a serene outlook toward any bad or evil, than the übermenschen have to take moral responsibility. If strength rather than violence is what impresses us, then we’d be very likely to honor winners, and dishonor manipulators, the “ignominiously cunning.” Therefore, one could say that defining the “personal responsibility” that we take seriously, as response-ability for one’s own welfare, would maximize the well-being of more people than would defining that “personal responsibility,” as the sinners hopefully deciding to take moral responsibility for what they caused. No problem could seem to be a social problem if it seems to result from the ineradicably aggressive of those who cause it, and/or the (possibly masochistic) ignominiously cunning of those who have it.
And this is very much a matter of our society’s mores. If you don’t live up to the expectations of The Serenity Prayer, you’ll likely get the social condemnations that would go to someone who has a weak character, is trying to evade his personal responsibilities, is imposing on others, etc. And one must be dogmatic about this, since all problems must be handled as pragmatically as possible, and if you made distinctions in terms of the specifics of situations, then you’d allow manipulative sophistry. Everybody needs a moral compass, and this is ours.
Sure, the part of The Serenity Prayer that’s usually kept hidden says, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” which is quite an admission that what The Serenity Prayer demands of its followers, is moral bankruptcy regarding whatever happens to them. Yet your seeing either the surreal distortion that serene acceptance of this would require, or the impending danger that this much-beloved moral bankruptcy makes likely, would seem unpragmatic dishonorable and unspiritual. Others have described Kafka’s style as “alienated,” but it would be unpragmatic to feel alienated by those around you using as a model for being well-adjusted, a prayer which implies “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it.” One could call this logic “The Niebuhr Sin-drome,” since like a syndrome it involves different aspects that always seem to come together, and moral responsibility matters absolutely nothing.
Another Enron-related example of this is that just after Ken Lay died, an AP article that ran on the Houston Chronicle website, “Enron lessons lost on some investors,” began, “If you spent part of last week thinking about Ken Lay, Enron Corp.’s founder and a convicted felon who died Wednesday at 64, turn your thoughts to something more constructive: your own portfolio.” This article then went on to tell of how investors could improve their own survival skills by learning how to recognize the danger signals that a corporation isn’t what its says it is. In other words, constructive people care not about what’s (morally) wrong with others’ actions, but what’s (tactically) wrong with their own reactions. Market discipline rewards that constructiveness, just like the constructiveness of, “If you’re wondering why depressive disorders affect about 34 million American adults, turn your thoughts to something more constructive: your own brain chemistry. First things first.”
Ironically, what’s bothering most of the American public about the war in Iraq, is that it fits exactly the pattern that Reaganomics attributed to victimhood and victimology. Dubya and the Bushmen made vacuous but confident statements that the population of the world were of the danger that Saddam could use WMD against them.
When that turned out to be unfounded, the argument then turned into claims that fighting in Iraq simply is good, and opposing this simply is bad. No one wants to be labeled as “bad.” This includes plenty of other claims that are based on faith, such as, “Even if this does inspire more terrorism, then that’s only because of course terrorists don’t like people to oppose them,” with the implication that only bad people would naïvely accept that if something instigates more terrorism then it must be bad. And of course, the guv’mint is behind all this, particularly the neo-Conservatives, who admit to operating in a vanguardist fashion. (“The ends justify the means.”) Like many other guv’mint programs, the more that it fails, the more that we’d need to continue it. It seems impossible to stand against this onslaught of victimology and victimhood, and still look like a moral person. Maybe one reason why mainstream America tends to feel uncomfortable with the Iraq war, is that mainstream America is far more likely to reject purportedly unquestionable whining, than they are to reject, “Depressive disorders affect about 34 million American adults, so these 34,000,000 American adults should take antidepressants or learn to have optimistic outlooks.” At least it’s possible to get most of those depressions under control, but when someone puts on the mantle of, “I’m good and you’re bad,”
which seems to be more important than anything else, how could anyone get that under control? Sure, many would say that the helplessness that leads to our rampant depression with self-responsible self-blame, is the price that we must pay for our freedoms to do certain things that leave others helpless, but this doesn’t seem to be, “The ends justify the means,” since neither the means nor the ends were dictated by a centralized governmental authority.
The book In the Shadow of Chance, the Pathological Gambler, by Julian Taber, PhD, includes a list of thirty distorted beliefs that pathological gamblers tend to have. He’d made this list into a test, to see if each person suspected of being a pathological gambler believed in these idiosyncratic ideas. Yet when he gave this test to even certain pathological gamblers, he found that they’d tend to say that they don’t believe them, yet they gambled as if they must be that out-of-touch with reality.
These beliefs are something like a headgame. That is, that someone honestly would think along these lines, but if any other person ever put them into words, they’d sound so ridiculous that those who believe in them would never say that they agree with the beliefs you’d just described.
About GamblingTest: Ideas
(Circle the number of any item below you agree with, or mostly agree with....)
Gambling, in the scheme of things, is a pretty important thing to be able to do.
People who don’t gamble seem to be relatively stupid, slow, or timid.
Gambling can be a healthy recreation.
My gambling is under control.
Etcetera. Therefore, I figured that I’d make a test for the ideas about victim correction as a panacea. These are the beliefs that a proponent would truly focus on, since solving a problem as effectively as possible would seem all-important. These, also, are like a headgame, in that even those who insist that you look at your problems along the lines of this paradigm, would feel squeamish if you put it into words. Any absolutist panacea that would correct victims, would naturally seem offensive.
Then again, probably many people who consider themselves realists, would say in so many words, that the more that someone agrees with the following, the more likely he’d be to succeed in life. This would be especially true if he ever should be in a big problem that unambiguously was caused by someone else. An absolutist panacea that would correct victims, would get problems solved in a very fail-safe, unconditional, and strongly motivated way:
Test: Ideas About Victim Correction as a Panacea
(Circle the number of any item below you’d agree with, or mostly agree with, if you were in a situation where someone else unambiguously caused you a big problem, and now you’d simply have to deal with it....)
No matter how much moral responsibility he has for your problem, how many things you did right or even exceedingly well, etc., it would still be all-important that you focus your attention on how you could better take care of yourself, your own problem. Victim correction seems to be the answer, since the person with the problem is always the one who’s the most reliably motivated to solve it successfully, this is pro-freedom and respectably self-reliant, this is objective whereas questions of how much injustice goes too far is subjective and naturally victims would want to believe that they deserve better, etc. If one rationale for victim correction doesn’t work, it’s replaced by another. Depression is the only dread disease of which many of the causes seem sacrosanct.
D
