#3-19
o One Has an Inalienable Right to Endurability.
“The ideas expressed in this chapter may be challenging and upsetting as they may defy what the reader and many people may consider politically or morally correct.... While some victims are truly innocent (i.e., the child who is being molested, a victim in the other car in a drunk driving accident), most violence involves some knowledge, familiarity or intimacy between victims and victimizers.... It has yet to be widely understood that by alleviating all women, minorities, inmates, or any victim, of any and all responsibility to predict, prevent or even, unconsciously, invite abuse, is to reduce them to helpless, incapable creatures, and in-fact, re-victimizes them.”—Psychology of Victimhood: Reflections on a Culture of Victims &How Psychotherapy Fuels the Victim Industry, “For an online course for CE credit based on this page”
uch expectations are glaringly unapologetic. The worse that your problem is, the more that you should do to take care of yourself, and the more self-defeating obstructionist and manipulative you’d seem if you don’t. This has a very strange quality to it, in that a genuine expectation made of someone in dire straits, might just as well be a reductio ad absurdum. That’s how this conception of personal responsibility must operate. After all, as that Coping.org Tools for Coping with Life’s Stressors, Tools for Personal Growth, Accepting Personal Responsibility webpage says, accepting personal responsibility includes, “Tearing down the mask of defense or rationale for why others are responsible for who you are, what has happened to you, and what you are bound to become.” Those who have such conceptions of personal response-ability would probably be most likely to succeed. They certainly wouldn’t seem to have the insidious quality of victim-power. Dangers are to be eliminated by the potential victims spotting when others pose dangers and avoiding them, which seems good, since motivations to protect oneself are more reliable than are motivations not to violate others’ rights. Being morally correct would be self-defeating and re-victimizing, since awareness of moral wrongness is (gasp!) , whiny, while moral bankruptcy would make the victim more serenely accepting.
For example, let’s take someone like Jane, except that her husband isn’t addicted to anything, yet he does cause her big problems, which she’s just as powerless to change as if he were addicted.
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To tell her that she should trust her own natural opinion about his behavior, could be said to be re-victimizing her. After all, she’d feel a lot more serene if she had a Stoic, artificial, outlook toward him, than if she thought and felt in a way that could be called (though if her husband were normal so she wouldn’t have to do so much in order to seem adequate, she wouldn’t seem passive).
If she had a natural perception of who would be personally responsible for what, this, also could be said to be re-victimizing her. After all, she’d be a lot more free of the problems he’d cause her, if she focused her own attention on courageously changing what she could, than if she acted in a way that could be called (though if her husband were normal, she wouldn’t seem passive). The point would be to make her the most likely to succeed in life, so anything else would be missing the point. Since our rate of depression is so high, The Missing Question is, “But what about the fact that these social norms accept helplessness that provably leads to an unnaturally gargantuan rate of depression?”
Victims could therefore be blamed without compunction, since this has all the benefits of pragmatism, the honorability of self-reliance, and the peacefulness of forgiveness. Beliefs that we do have an inalienable right to endurability, would seem scary, since guaranteed endurability would mean that people wouldn’t have the freedom to do unendurable things.
That webpage EMOTIONAL THOUGHT STOPPING (A Mood Enhancing Exercise), tells all those millions of depressed Americans, “Each year over 17 million people in the United States are depressed. Of those fewer than 30% get help! Each year over 30,000 people in the United States commit suicide.”
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? Am I supposed to act as if this hopelessness of all 17,000,000 of these Americans, is simply a bunch of illusions and delusions? If I’m to assume that it’s simply to be stopped by thought-stopping, then that’s what I’m to assume. What fraction of the population would have to feel or think a certain way, before it would no longer be treated as an aberration to simply be wiped out? Wouldn’t it make more sense to see 17,000,000 Americans each year having such intolerable thoughts, and 30,000 killing themselves, as a social problem? I’d think that the usual perspective of fixing the victims, would at least apologize for treating this social problem, as the personal problems of 17,000,000 Americans. Sure, this might lower people’s respect of our resiliently self-reliant norms. Yet my natural common sense tells me that caring about who’s morally responsible, isn’t a blame-finding attitude problem.”
When it comes to the moral responsibility that we really take seriously,
A CNN Presents program about John Paul II, quotes Delia Gallagher, CNN faith and values correspondent, as saying, “John Paul II canonized 482 saints and beatified nearly 1,400. That’s more than all his predecessors combined,” and then John Allen, CNN Vatican analyst, said, “There were always people in the Vatican and in other circles of Catholic life who were made a little uncomfortable by that, who thought this was all about kind of show boating, and that, you know, the Vatican had in effect become a saint-making factory, which had cheapened, you know, the value of each individual halo.
“And I think the pope’s instinct was to say, no, that holiness is something achievable in the here and now and by ordinary men and women.”
And, in fact, no matter how one defines high moral virtue, it’s pretty much guaranteed that anyone who truly wants to live up to its expectations, can. Sure, this would probably feel very unpleasant, and many people would give it up quickly. Yet anyone who doesn’t want to give it up, doesn’t have to. It’s not like the luckier he is, the more likely he is to succeed. Yet if it seems untermensch to hold that others are responsible for who you are, what has happened to you, and what you are bound to become, then a lot of what you’d hold yourself responsible for, would depend on your luck. Everyone could be saints, but not everyone could be millionaires, or even people in the middle class.
Just look at all of those diagnosed as codependent since it seems that they chose to “play the martyr role” for the sake of something extremely banal, to endure an addict. All these people would have to do is “play the martyr role” for the sake of something profound, and they could be in the same league as Mother Teresa!
(At the same time, though, John Paul II went right on supporting Rev. Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ,
though several obviously good-hearted men insisted that he sexually abused them when they were young. Those men obviously aspire to what’s good, but protecting a darling of the conservatives seemed more important. The Vatican under Pope Benedict XVI, a.k.a. Rat-zinger, did censure Maciel, and probably would have done more if he wasn’t so old and in frail health. Considering the way that he treated many of his teenage seminarians, the difference between the founding of the Legionnaires of Christ, and the founding of the Brotherhood of St. Gerard Majella, a conservative Australian Congregation which has served to provide its leaders with a teenage male harem, was only relative. In 2004, John Paul II sent Maciel a letter, congratulating him for 60 years of “intense, generous and fruitful priestly ministry,” to join in the “canticle of praise and thanksgiving.” In January 2005, Cardinal Franc Rodé, the Vatican’s top official for religious orders, celebrated a Mass at the end of the Legionaries’ General Chapter at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in which he called Maciel, “the instrument chosen by God to carry out one of the great spiritual designs in the church of the 20th century.” According to the National Catholic Reporter, “Vatican observers suggest that at the time John Paul II regarded the charges against Maciel as malicious, ascribing them largely to hostility to Maciel’s doctrinal conservatism and his tenacious defense of the papacy.” But the original accusers were very obviously good-hearted!)
Especially when you consider how many of our modern Western norms were a reaction against the tendency that the Catholic hierarchy would naturally have to protect itself, rebelling against this sort of self-serving authoritarianism seems very acceptable. In that section near the end of Joe Cultrera’s film about his brother Paul’s molestation by Massachusetts perv-priest Joseph Birmingham, Hand of God, Bishop Richard Lennon, who at the time was serving as Law’s replacement, tells Joe, “It’s all in your head, sir. You’re a sad little man.” Next, we see Paul responding, “It is all in your head, and they put it all into our heads, and I thank them for putting it there.”
Sure, Catholic true believers would say that to be grateful for the consciousness-raising that resulted from the molestations of Paul, would indicate that the person is manipulatively using the evil of the molestations, as an excuse to think for himself. Yet as far as most Americans are concerned, it’s fine to say that you’re glad that some self-serving authorities put into your head, some cynicism about that sort of tactic. Yet it’s certainly not fine to say that for over 17 million people in the United States to be depressed each year, isn’t just among the diseases that are parts of the natural order, so they put that into our heads, and, “It is all in your head, and they put it all into our heads, and I thank them for putting it there.” Even if you’re grateful that they put into your head a fear of the moral bankruptcy 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,” you’d seem to be grateful that they gave you some weak, maladjusted, and whiny attitudes, and only untermenschen would be grateful for those. You’d seem to be manipulatively using that moral bankruptcy, as an excuse for you to indulge your untermensch . Of course, in enough situations, the only way in which you could think for yourself, is if you refused to take as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as you’d have it, even though your could look dishonorably weak, manipulative, etc.
Codependence and Enabling--The Reciprocal Disorders, on the website of Empowered Recovery, Candidly Helping the Family and Friends of Alcoholics Recognize, Understand, and Resolve an Alcoholic Relationship, is headed, “‘I’ve decided what’s best for you and I’m going to help you do it.’—The epitome of codependence.” Yet in order for someone to legitimately be considered a codependent, the problem person has to have a pretty unambiguous problem. In the case of an addict, “I’ve decided what’s best for you,” would mean, “I’ve decided that living free of booze and dope is what’s best for you, and I must take responsibility for owning my own opinion.” This webpage quotes an alkie’s wife as saying, “All the times I demanded that he not attend various functions were attempts to manipulate him into not drinking,” that trying to keep an alkie from booze is manipulative machinations. Though this website obviously doesn’t intend to treat alcoholism as if it’s just another choice that some people make so if others interfere then they’re imposing their wills on the alkies, that’s where the amoralism of self-help has to lead. This isn’t just moral relativism, that if you’ve decided that what’s best for an alkie is that he gives up the booze, that’s just your opinion, and everyone has their own preferences. This is amoral absolutism, that if this is what your opinion is, then you’re in basically the same position as the person who The Serenity Prayer describes as wanting this sinful world to be as he’d have it, so that would be condemned as an offensive and pathological attitude problem. This also isn’t about the fact that active addicts’ spouses are powerless over the addiction, only that if they didn’t want to be powerless over it, they’d seem to be control freaks.
Similar to this is the statement on Codependence / Codependency = A Spiritual dis-ease, “Setting boundaries is not a more sophisticated way of manipulation . . . The difference between setting a boundary in a healthy way and manipulating is: when we set a boundary we let go of the outcome.” So if you set a boundary without letting go of the outcome, you’d seem to be pulling machinations. “Letting go,” in this sense, is a choice to be completely helplessness over the outcome. In spiritual terms, if you don’t “let go,” you’d seem to be one of those who want this sinful world to be as you’d have it.
AA’s Big Book says in its sixth chapter, Into Action, that when a male alcoholic who just began recovery from his alcoholism, has just confessed to his wife that he had an affair while drunk, “Our design for living is not a one-way street. It is as good for the wife as for the husband. If we can forget, so can she. It is better, however, that one does not needlessly name a person upon whom she can vent jealousy.” After all, “serenity to accept the things I cannot change” means thought-stopping, la belle indifference, rather than venting, or even sizing up the situation to see what response would be proportional to, and balanced for, what happened. This is also what emotional thought-stopping means in a society in which each year over 17 million people are depressed and over 30,000 people commit suicide, unless one is to assume that this is just one of those biological diseases that are just a part of the natural order.
If this is limited to forgiveness of what was done while a recovering alcoholic was drunk, it’s not too unreasonable to say that as long as a harmful person forgives himself, then if the victim doesn’t forgive him, this would be condemned as a “one way street.” Yet since this way of life is instead serenity as a coping skill which is just as readily applied to individuals whose spouses are still actively alcoholic (or on dope, or pathologically gambling away the families’ money, or persistently engaging in disruptive inappropriate sexual behaviors, or...), forgetting about past harmful behavior would seem better for the victim than for the sinner, and therefore more strenuously expected, since the victim is the one who, otherwise, would be venting resentment. Your Mental Health says that a good conception of what mental health would look like is what the ancient Greeks called the “golden mean,” meaning no extremes either way, but according to victim correction as a panacea, “too much forgiveness” could mean only staying with someone who could have been avoided or escaped. As long as you’re helpless to change something, even if you have an attitude that’s very much on the forgiving side of the golden mean, this still might not be enough to achieve serenity, so you could still seem to be a whiner.
The Prayer of Saint Francis says, “Lord, make me an instrument of your Peace. Where there is hatred, Let me sow Love. Where there is injury, Pardon. Where there is doubt, Faith. Where there is despair, Hope. Where there is darkness, Light. Where there is sadness, Joy.” So peace is to be achieved by becoming mechanistic instruments which simply supplant even the most warranted hatred, awareness of injury, doubt, despair and sadness; with love, pardon, faith, hope and joy. Unlike the Serenity Prayer, the Prayer of Saint Francis has a line that’s aware that moral responsibility exists, “Where there is darkness, Light,” but enlightenment doesn’t guarantee peace though inculcated love pardon faith hope and joy, do, and the teacher would likely leave out any possible enlightenment that would make people less forgiving. This all is as cold and calculating as are the Serenity Prayer’s expectations that, in general, we approach hardship, others’ sinfulness, and anything else that we’d change if we could, simply with serenity courage and tactical wisdom. (True wisdom about such things would seem counterproductive.)
This is the sort of wisdom that’s described in the statement from Chapter 8 of AA’s Big Book, “To Wives,” as the chapter is just opening up, “As wives of Alcoholics Anonymous, we would like you to feel that we understand as perhaps few can. We want to analyze mistakes we have made. We want to leave you with the feeling that no situation is too difficult and no unhappiness too great to be overcome.” “Mistakes” seems to mean tactical mistakes in dealing with situations where none are too difficult and no unhappiness is too great, “learning from experience” would mean learning from experiences like this how to handle one’s own problems the most effectively, etc.
This means both a minimization of others’ moral responsibility, and a magnification of one’s own response-ability for his own welfare, his own problems. For example, you might think that if someone does something reckless, he’s morally responsible for it. But the Merriam Webster’s Dictionary’s definition of reckless, is “lacking caution : RASH, Synonyms hasty, brash, hotheaded, thoughtless.” One could argue that some people are inherently lacking in caution, hasty, and thoughtless, and some people’s moods are inherently rash, brash, and hotheaded. Therefore, to hold someone responsible for recklessness would be like holding him responsible for being inherently stupid, or, at the moment, inherently impulsive. If that sounds too much like sophistry, well, sophistry is how alcoholics’ wives overcome their own unhappiness. Well-adjusted alcoholics’ wives are major role models for modern self-help, using the spirituality of Al-Anon to adjust to whatever their realities are. After all, it seems good to be well-adjusted to anything that may happen, bad not to adjust to anything that may happen. According to this sort of sophistry, not only could recklessness seem completely understandable, but also a lot of maliciousness could seem at least acceptable. Even malicious choices that the person now claims to regret, could be called “mistakes,” and did happen in the past, so objections to them could seem silly.
Merritt McKeon, one of the contributors to the book Stop Domestic Violence, An Action Plan for Saving Lives, by Nicole Brown’s father Lou and others, tells of going to therapists to talk about her efforts to leave her violent husband who threatened to kidnap their sons and take them to Iran, which he ended up doing after she left. The psychologists talked with her in order to save her from herself, as if the problem was that she had to develop the right attitudes and strength of spirit, saying that her personality was both too weak and too strong in various ways, which is to be expected since those who don’t take as Jesus did this sinful world would likely seem both too weak in acting like victims and too strong in wanting the world as they’d have it. This led her to end up thinking, “I no longer want to see my ex-husband suffer. I only want to see my children again, and I hope for the best for all of us.” This is the attitude toward sinfulness that Niebuhr prescribed, which accepts it in such an unquestionably overgeneralized way that it’s as if any destructive thing that anyone chooses to do is a part of some unchangeable human nature which will inherently shape our destinies. You could bet a million dollars that none of what he regarded as the human nature that would make for our destinies, includes any of the passive aspects of human nature such as the threshold of human endurance. If you asked Schopenhauerians, “What is it that puts us above the animals, which we should work on strengthening within ourselves?”, they’d say that it’s our ability to forgive, and our ability to choose how we perceive our problems. If anyone said that this should at least include control over our sinful feelings, that would seem authoritarian and bitter. Though the entire Prayer of Saint Francis was written in Medieval times, and is all about fabricating people’s feelings to be the opposite of their natural opinions, the only part that sounds like a Medieval re-engineering of human nature is, “Where there is darkness, Light.”
While psychology before the Reagan/Thatcher era was known for helping anxious upper-middle-class people resolve childhood traumas with the psychologists making sure that the clients didn’t feel that their feelings were being snubbed, psychology since then has been known for telling lower-middle-class people, especially women, that they should simply choose to put a stop to discouraging feelings in general since they can’t afford them, as well as ever finding more ways in which they could practice self-help more effectively. A pre-Reagan introductory psychology textbook, Abnormal Psychology, Clinical and Scientific Perspectives by Barclay and Martin, copyright 1977, says about what was observed to be a typical childhood of someone who grew up to be obsessive-compulsive, “Emotions were generally ignored or ‘talked away’; a child with a nightmare, for example, might be told to think about pleasant things instead,” but today this sort of instrumentalism would be considered a good effective way to deal with even bad feelings about material problems. Any hesitancy about how offensive this is, would seem to be allowing unhappiness or even manipulations to continue; remember that the subtitle of that recent book, The Manipulative Child, is, “How to Regain Control and Raise Resilient, Resourceful, and Independent Kids,” so kids could very easily be construed as manipulative if they don’t handle their own problems resiliently resourcefully and independently.
Abnormal Psychology explains what may have caused the obsessive-compulsive disorders, “The parents tended to be highly verbal; ‘they acted as if talk... has a magic that dispels all sinister forces’... Parents who model an obsessive concern with words and talk rather than actions and emotions may play a role in the development of these symptoms,” but when Saint Francis supplanted even people’s most warranted hatred awareness of injury doubt despair and sadness, with love pardon faith hope and joy, he could do this only by talking to them about what they should think and feel.
Victim Correction as a Panacea, the Summary (Page 1)
