#3-11
“We come into the program certain that we’d be happy if only the alcoholic would quit drinking. Surprisingly, he or she often does, and then we discover we’re still unhappy. Our problem isn’t the alcoholic. While it might be true that living with an alcoholic can be stressful and his or her behavior can complicate our plans, we decided to give up our happiness. The alcoholic never took it from us.”—The first paragraph from the Today’s Gift from Hazelden daily e-mail of July 5, 2003, originally from the book Timeless Wisdom by Karen Casey
oing too far, doesn’t go far enough. This must be as absolutist and unreasonable as each situation dictates, since reality and what it takes to deal with it, aren’t always moderate and reasonable. Niebuhr wrote in his diary just after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, that he’d hoped that it wouldn’t be as vindictive as it was, but that since it was written in diplomatic weasel-words which, if taken literally, wouldn’t be so vindictive, “words have certain meanings of which it is hard to rob them, and ideas may create reality in time.” As long as people started interpreting them literally, that would solve the problem. When it comes to a treaty, though, people could interpret it as they please, and if everyone else interprets it in a certain figurative manner, then anyone who interpreted it literally would be out-of-step. But when it comes to interpreting the expectations that we accept hardship and sinfulness unquestioningly, if we don’t take them as literally as our situations require, we’d seem out-of-step. When people are held to a standard 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. 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,” one really could say that these words have certain meanings of which it is hard to rob them, and these ideas will create and reinforce reality in time. As usual, form must follow function, and if the function is to deal with a certain amount of hardship, sinfulness, etc., then the form must be oriented toward this. If you had any objections to the culturally-defined discipline orderliness and punctuality, you’d be told that any industrial society would inherently need them, so if you think we could do without them, that would be magical thinking. Everything could seem excusable, since very little is unambiguously evil, and if you want to think like a winner, you’d courageously change what you could and serenely accept what you couldn’t. When it comes to the ethical responsibility that we take seriously, there’s always an out.
The book Working in the Dark, Keeping Your Job While Dealing With Depression, by Fawn Fitter and Beth Gulas, begins, “Depression is as common as a cold. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, it hits one in every ten Americans—almost 19 million people—in any given one-year period.” The text on the back cover begins, “Each year, eleven million Americans experience a major depressive episode. Keeping a job while struggling to regain health is one of the least talked about but most difficult aspects of recovery from depression... until now.”
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 statistics that depression hits one in every ten Americans—almost 19 million people—in any given one-year period, and each year eleven million Americans experience a major depressive episode, are part of a book to tell all these depressed people, whether their depressions are mild moderate or major, how they could do their jobs anyway. It seems that if that’s what 19,000,000 have gotta do, then that’s what 19,000,000 have gotta do. Sure, ‘Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,’ would mean that all would be well-adjusted in all circumstances. Yet your natural common sense should tell you that this panacea has the problems inherent in all panaceas, as well as the problems inherent in giving responsibility to those who must deal with the hardship, sinfulness, etc., and treating those who aren’t forgiving enough as if they’re scaringly suppressive.”
That book is published by the Hazelden addiction treatment center, which includes the transcendent spirituality of Twelve-Step groups. The ladies’ auxiliaries of Twelve-Step groups, those for addicts’ friends and loved ones, were set up specifically to use this transcendent spirituality to help those close to addicts cope with the problems that they cause. You might think that to tell such people that everyone knows that “mental health” means coping with whatever one’s realities are, so they must accept that they must make somewhat more of an effort to cope with their realities than most people would, that would go too far. Why must those in arduous situations have to live up to a higher standard in order not to seem mentally ill, than would those in comfortable situations?
But in fact, going too far doesn’t go far enough. Not only are those who live with addicts expected to make somewhat more of an effort to cope with their realities than most people would, but those family members would be expected to do whatever it would take to be well-adjusted to their realities.
~~
(Yes, that pamphlet that she’s reading, which she got from her first Al-Anon meeting, is titled “Living with an Alcoholic.” Learning how to live happily with an alcoholic, is what would constitute self-help for her, since that’s the reality that she must deal with.)
~~
~~
~~
~~
After all, even if one who lives in such a family wouldn’t be well-adjusted if he didn’t practice a Buddhist mindfulness along the lines of, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” his self-control and self-responsibility still would seem inadequate if he wasn’t well-adjusted.
Realism is realism, no matter who or what propounds it. For example, on the Sept. 28, 2008 episode of Sixty Minutes, Henry Paulson appeared defending The Great Wall Street Bailout of 2008. Interviewer Scott Pelley read him some e-mails sent between some analysts for the credit rating agencies on Wall Street about two years before the crisis, “’It could be structured by cows and we would still rate it,” and, “Let’s hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters.” Then he asked why we’re bailing these people out. Paulson answered, “Scott, first of all, that is outrageous behavior. Absolutely outrageous behavior. But what we’re doing, right now, Scott, is working to protect the American people. Because a breakdown of our financial system is going to hurt the American taxpayer.” The fact was that it mattered absolutely nothing how outrageous the behavior was, only what reactions to it would be the most pragmatic. That’s exactly the logic of victim correction as a panacea: don’t find blame; find a solution.
A cover article of The Economist on the Bailout, I want your money, says, “Although the economic risk is that the plan fails, the political risk is that the plan succeeds. Voters will scarcely notice a depression that never happened. But even as they lose their houses and their jobs, they will see Wall Street once again making millions.” And, though many would feel disgust at Wall Street making millions, in the end they’d have to accept that they have to make those millions as others suffer, since that would be the only way that they’d be motivated to keep the system operating. And even if the family member who’s making the family dysfunctional isn’t suffering from any mental disease that would make him not guilty by reason of insanity, the victims would be just as responsible as if he was, since they’d be motivated to solve the problems, and he wouldn’t be.
Jim Dinegar, president of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, said on September 28, “The nation dodged a bullet. This is as serious as it gets.” Of course, if we treated the executives, etc. who were responsible for this, as if they were responsible for this much, that would be both very punitive and very unpragmatic, since that way, they wouldn’t be motivated to do what they’re supposed to do.
On April 23, 2009, Dominique Strauss-Khan, managing director of the IMF, said, “All the experience we have of past banking crisis is that you never recover before you have completed the cleaning up of the balance sheets of the financial sector. You can postpone it—at the same time, you postpone the recovery.” Those who caused the problem not only must be taken care of, they must be taken care of totally. That’s how much power they have.
Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times said on Frontline that just before the big bailout was proposed, “There was a sense that there wasn’t an overarching plan. That, I think, contributed to a sense that there wasn’t someone in control, and that the government was reacting instead of acting, and that was damaging to confidence.” Of course, this need didn’t come with any excuse for why so many of those on Wall Street and their supporters who’d tried to convince everybody that they know what’s best for the economy, had now caused such a big catastrophe that of course they simply must have their nanny have a plan to keep them from panicking. What Wall Street tends to want could be called “dial-a-nanny,” in that they'd certainly condemn government interference with them as nanny-ism, but they want their nannies to remain on-call to bail them out when the lack of regulation leads to their taking risks that are too big.
This perspective is rather common, especially in the mental health community. For example, Sharon Lamb’s The Trouble with Blame, is all about “probing the psychological dynamics of victims and perpetrators of rape, sexual abuse, and domestic violence.” The chapter Victims, begins, “Victims blame themselves.” Later on, this chapter says, “As Herman puts it, ‘Traumatized people struggle to arrive at a fair and reasonable assessment of their conduct, finding a balance between unrealistic guilt and denial of all moral responsibility.’” On the next page, this book says,
The powerlessness is exactly what victims chide themselves for.
“I could have fought harder,” claims the rape victim. “Why didn’t I leave him?” asks the wife of the battering husband. “I can’t believe that after fifty years of living I’m such a bad judge of character.” “I was so weak to believe him.” “I was stupid to trust him.” “I shouldn’t have been tricked.” What victims rail against is their passivity and, more generally, their character. As noted earlier, all victims show some sort of characterological blaming; they ask, why me? not just, why?
But what does this powerlessness, have to do with morality or character? Asking, “why me? not just, why?” means nothing more than, “Why were my defenses weak enough that he was able to get the better of me? This I could courageously change.”
Would a debauched character shirk her responsibility for taking care of herself, while a good character wouldn’t? As G. Brock Chisholm, co-founder of the World Federation for Mental Health (WFMH), said, “If the race is to be freed from the crippling burden of good and evil it must be psychiatrists who take the original responsibility,” and that conception of moral character doesn’t involve those repressive conceptions of good and evil. If someone took moral responsibility seriously, how could he possibly stand a chance? He’d simply seem repressive, naïve, whiny, manipulative, unforgiving, judgmental, etc.
That conception is also more pragmatic, reliably self-motivated. It would more efficacious to define strength vs. weakness of character, like this. Our society would have a lot less problems if our culture tried to make the victims or potential victims, serene courageous and wise enough that they’d prevent or stop the problems, than if it tried to make those who’d cause them, serene courageous and wise enough that they’d prevent or stop them. Naturally, since the victims are a lot more motivated to prevent or solve the problems, than are those who caused them. We’d get a lot more problems prevented or solved if we defined “weak character” as not fighting hard enough, not leaving a batterer quickly enough, not having survival skills that are wise enough, etc. Mental health professionals must look at any social problem on a microcosmic level, in terms of how each client could keep from becoming maladjusted, maladaptive, and dysfunctional, given what her realities are. Some things are so banal, that they’re very profound.
Without this rousing faith, too many losers would have too many excuses, and even legitimate excuses have a price.
This sophistry-based headgame is very similar to the victim-correction in psychology, that tends toward self-help; whoever has the problem, provides all the help. A big model for modern self-help is AA’s Big Book, and The Serenity Prayer. In Chapter 5, How it Works, they go into detail about the “defects of character” that their 4th 5th and 6th Steps deal with: “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves,” “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs,” and, “Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.” What that chapter goes on to say, in depth, about these defects of character, is, “Resentment is the ‘number one’ offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else.... If we were to live, we had to be free of anger.... [Fear] somehow touches about every aspect of our lives. It was an evil and corroding thread; the fabric of our existence was shot through with it.” Elsewhere, the Big Book makes isolated comments about selfish character defects, which obviously play a much greater part in causing drinking problems.
And exactly what constitutes thinking like a victim, is a matter of opinion. The PDF by the mother of a transsexual, Mom, I Need to Be a Girl, says that after she divorced the father of their kids he was a deadbeat dad, but, “Many single mothers I knew were playing the role of victim, dependent on the whim of the father to provide child support.” So for the ex-husbands to make their child support payments, would seem to mean that the ex-wives are playing the victim role. Of course, many would say that for an ex-wife with kids to accept their father not making child support payments would constitute playing the victim role, since they’d therefore be in desperate situations that they could have courageously changed by taking the ex-husbands to court. Likewise, if a woman treats her problem boyfriend or husband as if he’s the problem, she could be seeming to play the victim role by playing the headgame that Dr. Eric Berne called “It’s All You,” i.e. it’s all your fault, but if she doesn’t, she could be seeming to play the victim role by accepting a codependent relationship.
For my Making the Political, Personal webpage,
I did a Metacrawler and Dogpile search for the words depression, weak, and character. I figured that that was a good way to find webpages that talk about millions of Americans afflicted with depression, as if this consists of either millions of rather severe weak characters or millions of rather severe medical conditions, such as the Learning About Depression webpage on the Zoloft website, which 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.” You’d find some webpages that give the statistics for our unnatural rate of depression, along with the usual discussion of whether this constitutes 34,000,000 rather severe character flaws, or 34,000,000 rather severe medical conditions.
On that search I found another webpage like this to add to the list on my webpage. I also ran across two that had the same basic idea. A webpage on depression with the domain name of christiancounselors.org, has the usual, “Depression is much more common than you might think. One in every four women and one in every eight men will suffer at least one episode of depression in their lifetime according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,” “Depression left untreated can become life threatening. The most serious complication of depression is suicide. Even less intense levels of depression rob an individual of the daily joys experienced by healthy individuals. Depression affects a person’s whole life- social, home, school, work,” and, “Depression is NOT caused by weak character or lack of faith. Depression is a medical condition that can be treated.” At least to Christian counselors, this could make sense, if they believe that God created the world 6,000 years ago, so that’s all that the human race had to survive with such a high rate of depression.
I also ran into, “MYTH: Depression is a character flaw. REALITY: People who become depressed aren’t weak or failures. They’re just folks who have developed an illness -- one that is very common and highly treatable. Depression isn’t a reflection on anyone’s character.” (The Clinical Depression Page), and,
“Of the many different mood disorders, depression is the most common, and one of the most misunderstood. While modern research indicates that brain chemical imbalances cause depression, many people still believe that chronic depression indicates a weak personality or character flaw.” (Chronic Depression). Yet these didn’t include the ghastly statistics, and I’d rather use those that did.
On April 12, 2005, Maria Shriver appeared on Larry King Live, and said, “Yes, yes, struggle. I’m a big believer—one of the things—I listened when I was watching the pope’s funeral was somebody said they’d asked him when he had Parkinson’s and he was struggling, did he think of resigning and how much was he suffering. And he said, suffering is a gift from God. And I thought that, so often people talk about their struggles and woe me or people expect to be happy. And I write about that in the book. You can’t expect to be happy all the time,” and, “I think to understand that fear is normal, fear is common. And that it can be a great motivator. And that you shouldn’t be afraid of fear,” even when you’re advised to accept suffering that much. According to this, one seems unrealistic if he doesn’t accept unfairness and suffering as extreme as Parkinsonism. If he doesn’t accept that degree of struggles (and not just limited to genuine inevitabilities like diseases), he expects to be happy all the time, just as, if he objects to sinful behavior, he expects the world to be as he’d have it.
On January 17, 2002, Bob Herbert wrote in the New York Times about how much the popularity of deregulation has contributed to scandals such as Enron’s, “How long will it take? How many decades and how many scandals have to come and go before we catch on? We’re human. We’re self-interested. And when left to our own devices, some of us will do the wrong thing.
“Some perspective is needed. Unchecked deregulation is an express route to chaos and tragedy. Where the public interest is involved, a certain amount of oversight—effective oversight—is essential.”Yet acceptance that human nature is like this, could mean a fatalistic acceptance that this is just among life’s inherent imperfections that we must accept. What would constitute chaos and tragedy, is very much a matter of opinion. Those who do the wrong thing would be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Since white-collar fraudsters work in big corporations, it may be very hard to prove what each individual knew, decided, etc. And much of what’s illegal is so similar to practices, that Enron’s independent accounting and law firms both approved of much of Enron’s illegal practices. Just look at all the defenses that the Enron executives are using now, and you could see how any executives in any corporations that have done the same things, could use the same defenses. Even in the face of chaos and tragedy of great magnitude, one could still be admonished to have attitudes of, “You can’t expect to be happy all the time,” and, “Fear can be a great motivator.” All sorts of chaos and tragedy, could be included in the sinfulness of “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it,” or even in all of the realities covered by “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 seems that if that’s reality, then that’s reality, notwithstanding how morally bankrupt that conception of “personal responsibility” would be in the given situation.
Optimistic stout-hearted Americans would be confident that they could overcome any chaos and tragedy that would result from deregulation. Wholeheartedly condemning the chaos and tragedy could easily seem opinionated controlling idealistic manipulative and judgmental, but wholeheartedly condemning the victims’ resentment, cowardice, etc., that would make the resulting strife worse, would probably seem objective self-empowering pragmatic self-reliant and forgiving.
It should be obvious that no type of society inherently requires that people be loyal to a doctrine which says in its fine print, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it.” Yet if you’re in a situation where homeostasis would require that you live up to this expectation, and you rejected it, that would seem to be magical thinking, so you might as well be rejecting discipline orderliness and punctuality. It seems that aggressive tendencies are ineradicable, so we must eradicate the hurt feelings and other weaknesses that result from aggressive behavior. Though Matthew 5:44-45 commands, “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust,” very little in the real world is unambiguously evil. Any problems external to yourself could be minimized, so a lot of the ethical expectations that any industrial society would inherently need, such as expectations of reciprocity, could be overridden. Expecting millions of workers to deal with whatever depressions they may have, no matter what caused them or how severe they are, has the same socially-sanctioned moral bankruptcy, but if that’s what 19,000,000 have gotta do, then that’s what 19,000,000 have gotta do.
Erich Fromm’s The Sane Society says, “All that is necessary is to know that things are fair—that the exchange is fair, and that things ‘work’—that they function.... In its original Jewish and Christian meaning, [The Golden Rule] was a popular phrasing of the Biblical maxim to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’ In the system of fairness ethics, it means simply, ‘Be fair when you exchange. Give what you expect to get. Don’t cheat!’.” According to the Reaganist ethos, we must accept that life isn’t fair, and what really matters in deciding the culpability of unfair business practices is whether the intent was malicious. If the intent was to cheat, then the act would seem culpable, though the cheated person could still be expected to accept it because mature people accept that life isn’t fair, and because if he solved his own problem, then things would ultimately “work.” On the other hand, when businesspeople made commitments not really knowing that they could keep them, even when this was undoubtedly reckless, that certainly wasn’t fair, but they still didn’t cheat. And the whole idea of The Serenity Prayer is that if any hardship, sinfulness, etc., impacts your life and you’re helpless to change it, then if you cared about how unfair it was, that wouldn’t work.
When Marcus Cotton was executed in Texas on March 3, 2004, his last words included, “Well Mom, sometimes it works out like this. When you are dealing with reality, real is not always what you want it to be. I love you.” He went on to say, “Y’all are fixing to find out some deep things that are real. Bounce back, baby. You know what I’m saying. Y’all take care of yourselves.” While I don’t know if he was claiming to be innocent, those words could easily have meant, “I’m being killed unfairly, but that’s reality. Take care of yourselves by bouncing back, though this might seem shallow and artificial.”
A businessperson could initiate a commitment with you, thinking that he could keep it, though he should have known that he couldn’t. He says that he’s to do something at a later date, in exchange for something that you’re to do immediately. You do your part of the bargain. When it’s time for him to do his part of the bargain, he finds that he can’t. He could still figure, “I sincerely expected to give what I expect to get!” and his intent would seem sinless.
Though your expecting to get a benefit on a date later than when your paid the cost, might look like exactly the sort of deferred gratification that we try to encourage, if on that later date you expect to receive the benefit for which you’d already paid the cost, your sense of entitlement based on past travails, would be labeled as resentment, playing the victim role, etc. A whole chapter of William Ryan’s Blaming the Victim about the blaming of poverty on poor people’s tendency not to defer gratification, begins, “ ‘Do you want your prize to be one Hershey bar today, or two Hershey bars next Wednesday?’,” and includes, “One of the authors, Seagull, in examining this conclusion, conducted a very illuminating study: he used the Hershey bar paradigm that was described at the beginning of this chapter, but introduced an additional element. The added factor consisted of giving the children an experience in which the promise of delayed gratification (two candy bars next week rather than one right now) was either kept or not kept.... As Seagull and his associates say, ‘The situational variable, then, rather than class affiliation, determined the ability to delay.’” But if a Hershey bar in the future must seem to be worth the same as a Hershey bar sacrificed in the present, then a Hershey bar sacrificed in the past must seem to be worth the same as a Hershey bar in the present. Today’s future is tomorrow’s present; today’s present is tomorrow’s past. Whatever you sacrifice now for the sake of the future, will, when that future arrives, seem to be past history. So if you get what you earned, that would be nice, but if you don’t, you’d seem to have an attitude problem if you thought that this past history entitled you to anything. Naturally this will discourage deferred gratification, especially among the poor, who are the least able to defend themselves. This wouldn’t mean that this vulnerability would determine “the ability to delay,” but rather, whether delaying would be a safe bet.
We’d all have to understand that righteous anger about that sort of unfairness would be just the opinions, the internal disabilities, of the weak. The same would go for any other reckless business decisions that weren’t illegal, such as the manufacture of the Ford Pinto after it was discovered dangerous. On the other hand, no matter what was the businesspeople’s intent, what would really make the difference between whether or not things would ultimately “work,” would be how well those who now have the problems, solve them. Things going wrong in business, and businesspeople’s self-obsessions, are inevitable, and determining moral culpability probably wouldn’t “work.” People failing to solve their own problems isn’t inevitable, and determining the most correct way to do this probably would “work.” Even if this means making crises work for them, this would be what our role models do.
Victim Correction as a Panacea, the Summary (Page 1)
