#3-20
“If I would have spoken up, there would have been seven people who would not have been abused. I think about that every day. I beat myself up about it. If I had gone to the police, somebody else would not be [messed] up like myself.”—someone whose priest repeatedly raped and molested him between the ages of 13 and 15
his would naturally distort anyone’s perceptions and thoughts, in a way that follows the same patterns as the absolutistically victim-self-blaming, cognitive distortions of modern Western depression. Form following function, also means that the form of our conceptions of our conflicts, must follow the function that our survival skills must serve. In looking at the cognitive distortions of modern Western depression, one could truly see how casuistry, which is supposed to be Objectivist, has such connotations of sophistry. The devastated would make themselves see their problems in terms of how they could best solve them through self-help: They’d have to focus their attention on how they could do a better job in taking response-ability for their own welfare. They’d have to figure that there’s always room for improvement since if one who solves his own serious problems 90% simply gave himself an A grade, he’d soon accumulate a lot of problems. Any and every victim-power has certain scary qualities to it, such as that it could get its persuasive power through manipulative sophistry rather than just an objective weighing of the facts, including such facts as how much one must forgive in order to be a functioning member of a society with rampant depression and anxiety disorders. L’individu is supposed to have all those rights and opportunities, so why can’t the individual make them work and be mature? It could indeed take some complex reasoning to make an unconditional pragmatic self-responsibility seem justifiable, or even reasonable.
The web site Surprising Risk Factor of Suicide, by Dr. Dean Edell, says about suicide, “It’s the eighth leading cause of death in this country, and in 1997 claimed about 30,000 lives - by comparison, only 19,000 people died as a result of homicide.” You’d think that a culture that exalts self-esteem as much as ours does, wouldn’t produce that much more suicide than homicide.
Yet as Beating Depression by John Rush, MD, copyright 1983, says, “In Africa, depressed persons rarely experience self-blame, guilt or suicidal rumination as part of their depression, whereas Western depressions typically involve much guilt and self-blame, and predispose to suicide. Arabs who develop depression tend to complain of difficulties in digestion, abdominal pain, and loss of appetite and weight. Again, guilt, self-blame and suicide are rare. On the other hand, westernized and more affluent Arabs develop a depression more similar to that seen in the West.... On current evidence, it seems that depression is less common in non-Western cultures, or rather that symptoms such as guilt feelings, self-derogation and suicidal thinking (and suicide attempts) are less common.”
When you’ve seen guides that say things like this, you may have thought, “So how am I supposed to fit in with all this? Sure, if I’m the one who has the problem, then I’m the one who has the most reliable motivation to solve it. To ask whose welfare is at stake, would be objective, while the question of who has what moral responsibility for it, would be subjective. If I did take care of it resiliently and perseveringly, that would make me seem honorable. If I explored the subjective question of who’s morally responsible, my opinion on this could very easily be labeled ‘manipulative,’ so acceptance of such opinions could actually be a moral hazard that could be very powerful, very forceful and compelling, and one can’t defend himself against it without looking as if he’s re-victimizing victims. This would allow the victimologists with the best sophistry to get what they want by manipulating others. Also, a forgiving and anti-judgmental attitude is to be expected. Yet that could very easily mean that what I’m supposed to fit in with, is exactly the sort of moral bankruptcy that naturally would lead to rates of depression and suicide like that, as well as the victim-self-blaming that’s distinctive to modern Western culture. In objective terms, this proves that much of what our culture tells us that ‘everyone knows’ that well-adjusted people adjust to, is actually beyond the threshold of human endurance! If only someone could prove that!”
Self-responsibility in the economic sphere means taking responsibility for one’s own problems, rather than one’s own choices. Though 20,000,000 Americans suffer a serious depressive disorder in any given year, it would still seem that each American is responsible for his own problems, so if he isn’t adequate to do this, loses the battle, fails, and comes up short with big consequences, he’d seem to be an irresponsible and inadequate, loser and failure with very consequential shortcomings. If he doesn’t adjust to this, adapt to it, function with it, fit in with it, and feel content with it, he’d seem to be a maladjusted maladaptive and dysfunctional, misfit and malcontent. Though one who looks at his own problems along the lines of the cognitive distortions of modern Western depression, would be most likely to find ways in which he could successfully prevent or solve his problems, your natural common sense should tell you that if this is seen as the social problem that it it, we could find better alternatives.
As one could hear on any of those radio programs of the “Savage Nation” school, it doesn’t seem offensive to hold that what suits patriarchal norms seems good, so those who disagree with them are . David Brock, the ex-conservative who first brought light to the “vast right-wing conspiracy,” wrote in The Republican Noise Machine, that this endeavor to get as much influence on the mass-media as the right-wing could, began during Watergate, which the right-wing thought wouldn’t have really seemed noteworthy if liberal influences in the mass-media hadn’t made it an issue. Nixon’s press secretary Ron Ziegler had insisted this same thing, until May 1, 1973; the day after White House counsel John Dean and Nixon aides John Ehrlichman and H. R. Haldeman had resigned, when, after apologizing to Woodward and Bernstein, Ziegler said, “We would all have to say that mistakes were made in terms of comments. I was overenthusiastic in my comments about the Post, particularly if you look at them in the context of developments that have taken place.” Enough politicians have obviously remembered “mistakes were made,” to use this same excuse over and over, but not enough people remember this statement, to stop crusading for more media influence to make up for the supposed real reason for Watergate being an issue. As one could see in those Savage Nation programs, what seems good is being overenthusiastic, since excitement sells, and gutsiness seems all-American and pro-freedom, so opposing it seems restrictive, manipulative, etc.
And, of course, this wouldn’t sell as well, or win over as many people, if it looked at events on a case-by-case basis, rather than with the sort of absolutist condemnation of weakness that’s evident in the cognitive distortions of modern Western depression. For example, just imagine how these programs would sound if they looked at the Iraq war differently after no weapons of mass destruction were found there, than they had before!
The Gam-Anon chapter of Gamblers Anonymous’ handbook says, “Gam-Anon believes there is no limit to the spiritual growth and emotional maturity which can be experienced by those in the Fellowship.” Of course, the gamblers would greatly fit the old definition of emotional immaturity, of ignoring the reality principle, but the victims are to focus their own attention away from the gamblers’ inadequacies and shortcomings, and onto their own inadequacies and shortcomings. Attention that they gave to anyone’s immaturity besides their own, would seem futile, and, therefore, wrong. The devastated would have to dismiss absolutely from their minds what’s wrong with others since the devastated absolutely can’t change this, and caring about what’s wrong with red-blooded sinners seems mollycoddle and judgmental. (The GA handbook also says in the Gam-Anon chapter, at the head of their list of “suggestions for new members”: “Accept and learn to live with the fact that compulsive gambling is an illness,” and elsewhere in the book, “Since pathological gambling is a progressive disease, the afflicted individual eventually destroys himself physically and psychologically...,” “The Fellowship teaches its members to accept the compulsive gambler’s behavior as an illness, and to make no judgments concerning self or others,” and, “Recognizing the nature of the compulsive gambling illness, members realize that alone they are powerless to establish a normal way of thinking and living.” Of course this means that when victims don’t live up to these standards, they must be criticized, and get labeled that they’re characterologically weak and passive, even when they’d shown enough maturity that such labels should ring hollow.
The booklet Personal Financial Strategies for the Loved Ones of Problem Gamblers, put out by the National Endowment for Financial Education and the National Council on Problem Gambling, is actually mainly for the loved ones of former problem gamblers.
The strategies tend to require that those who gambled now realize that it would be best for others to have control over their money. This booklet says in so many words, “Many of the suggestions provided here and in the chapters that follow assume that the gambler has made a commitment to stop gambling and is willing to cooperate. But keep in mind that fixing the gambler’s financial life will not by itself fix the gambling addiction. That can come only from abstaining from gambling and, ideally, going through a gambling treatment program. Consequently, it’s best if you wait to take the actions suggested here until the person has not gambled for a reasonable period of time and has made a commitment to quit permanently.” Of course, whether or not the gamblers’ financial lives would be fixed, would also be whether or not their families’ financial lives would be. The booklet also warns against paying off debts, high-interest debts to loan sharks, etc., too quickly, as if this would have the effect of enabling. Recovering pathological gamblers could see the problems that they caused being solved fairly easily. They might think that if they start gambling again, the consequences of that gambling, too, shall pass, so why be afraid of causing them? Yet the innocent family would also have to suffer the consequences of the money being paid back slowly. This would be basically the same as refusing to enable the alkie in the family by refusing to tell his boss that he’s sick rather than drunk, but when he gets fired the whole family suffers.
But even though the gamblers seem so impaired that their families are to treat them as not guilty by reason of insanity, the law doesn’t then have the restrictions that those considered to be that incompetent, would get. If pathological gamblers are really so incompetent that their family members would simply have to “Accept and learn to live with the fact that compulsive gambling is an illness,” then the law should certainly appoint others to be conservators over the gamblers’ money. The main theme of Alan Dershowitz’s The Abuse Excuse is that if a criminal defendant says that he couldn’t help himself in committing his crime because of his mental illness or traumatic experiences, so this problem makes him not responsible, that would also mean that he and others with the same problem would have to be treated as irresponsible to the same degree. Yet that’s not how the Magnification or Minimization of victim correction, works. It’s very ready to understand and forgive, but very unready to restrict or belittle.
As In The Shadow of Chance: The Pathological Gambler, by Julian Taber, Ph.D, says, “Pathological gambling, the invisible mental disorder, is more common than many better-known diseases and mental disorders, and it is far more costly.... Keeping in mind that we are only making estimates, if we multiply the conservative yearly minimum loss figure of $10,000 per gambler by the conservative estimate of 5 million pathological gamblers nationwide, we get a figure of $50 billion lost annually,” much of which wasn’t earned, but was conned or pilfered from others. So that’s the magnitude of the problem that, either it’s an illness that impairs people enough that they couldn’t have chosen not to do that, or it isn’t. If one can’t choose not to do that, then naturally he’d have a conservator appointed over his money, and similar precautions given to those who couldn’t help but steal.
This is along the same line as the statement that Cardinal Law made on May 9, 2002, in his deposition about his mishandling of pedophile John Geoghan, “I viewed [pedophilia] as a pathology, as a psychological pathology, as an illness. Obviously, I viewed it as something that had a moral component.” In 1996, after Geoghan’s retirement prompted by his molestations, Law wrote to him. “Yours has been an effective life of ministry, sadly impaired by illness... God bless you, Jack.”
Here we also see the cognitive distortion of modern Western depression, that Dr. David Burns, in his book, calls “Magnification or Minimization,” and defines as, “You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement) or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the ‘binocular trick.’” It seemed so easy to say, “When he did that, it was because his illness impaired him,” but so difficult to say, “Since pedophilia is an illness that takes away the pedophiles’ free will, I can’t trust any priests with histories of pedophilia, around kids.”
Yet the criminal law doesn’t allow basically functional nutcases, to avoid responsibility completely by pleading not guilty by reason of insanity, though the law certainly isn’t immature. The mature devastated people, simply because they don’t have the power to change what the law has the power to change, simply must focus their attention on what they should do better, and internalize response-ability for whatever happens to them whenever possible, since this way they can be oriented toward finding the most advantageous ways that they could react, and optimism that in the end they have self-determination. They’d have to basically maintain confidence that one has available what it takes to succeed if only he used it wisely enough. All this could very easily be called Doctrine of Original Sin, Over Person, since those whose interpretations of such sinfulness could be called unpragmatically discouraging, mollycoddle, or unforgiving, are supposed to wash such interpretations from their brains, as if that’s just the way that human nature is so the only thing that they can change is how perseveringly they handle it.
A webpage of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, heads a webpage about the sexual misconduct cases mishandled in the Chicago Archdiocese since 2002, “The McCormack case isn’t a mistake. It’s a pattern.” Yet those who aren’t cautious enough are likely to have a pattern of mistakes, and inadequate caution isn’t a sin. In the case of the Chicago Archdiocese’s Cardinal Francis George, the public has every right to assess how well he’s doing his job. On the other hand, if you don’t have the power to hold someone accountable, you’d be expected to serenely accept what he did. Attributing what he did to a morally-neutral “mistake,” even if he had a pattern of acting recklessly, would make you less resentful, so that’s what you’d do if you’re well-adjusted.
The true American traditions came from “The Age of Reason,” a time when people strove to emulate the pre-Christian Western enlightenment. Typical of the natural law for society which the culture of Colonial America strove for, could be called a “moral ferment,” meaning distress and confusion about immorality, the natural disgust which Law’s novena condemned, as in the early-twentieth-century statement by the late Professor Benjamin M. Selekman of the Harvard Business School, “Outside of church circles, I find nowhere so much moral ferment as among corporation executives and teachers of business.” Moral ferment has the spontaneity and decency of The Enlightenment. Yet, believe it or not, the fifth chapter of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, when discussing that “moral” inventory which targeted resentment, gave as examples of a “self-centered, ego-centric” “producer of confusion rather than harmony,” “the minister who sighs over the sins of the twentieth century; politicians and reformers who are sure all would be Utopia if the rest of the world would only behave,” basically the same condemnation that Cardinal Law made of good old American moral ferment.
Niebuhr, in The Nature and Destiny of Man, wrote, “The requirements of ‘natural law’ in the medieval period were obviously conceived in a feudal society; just as the supposed absolute and ‘self-evident’ demands of eighteenth-century natural law were bourgeois in origin.” If we had a version of the natural law that said, for example, “We hold this truth to be self-evident, that for suicide to claim so many lives, isn’t just a part of the natural order, and that this problem isn’t simply inside the victims,” this would give us plenty of answers.
If one wanted to have a balanced view of the situation he’d have to talk about the moral responsibility of those who caused the problem, along with any failings of the victim’s serenity courage or tactical wisdom, but victim correction as a panacea is oriented toward pragmatism, not intellectual consistency, and attempting to correct victims is a lot more pragmatic than is attempting to correct those who cause problems. The Gam-Anon chapter says, “It is also apparent that underlying the recovery programs of both Fellowships are similar assumptions about Behaviorist psychology [meaning cognitive therapy, not rewards and punishments], the value of belief in God or in other expressions of personal faith...,” and this spirituality means asking God to grant the forgiveness and the surrender to God’s will that’s outlined by the Serenity Prayer, the strength to be a more dignified person in trouble, though asking God to grant the moral strength to resist the urges to gamble destructively would seem . William Styron, near the end of Darkness Visible, wrote, “If our lives had no other configuration but this, we should want, and perhaps deserve, to perish,” though depression is hardly a transgression, but if he’d said that a non-lethal harmful behavior meant that he perhaps deserved to perish, that would seem draconian to the max. It seems that God as well as people can and should re-engineer the passive parts of human nature but can’t or shouldn’t re-engineer the active parts. Also, it’s a lot more pragmatic to put dichotomous all-or-nothing labels on people and things, especially when these labels inspire action and classify everything according to how they fit into the pragmatic scheme of things, than to say, “I’m responsible to some degree but not totally, and here are the nuances and specifics of this..., but then again, this does leave open certain questions, such as....” Violent husbands seem to be obstacles for the wives to overcome.
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A website of a group called “Constructive Love,” which helps those whose lovers or spouses are buttheads to deal with this problem through independent self-help, includes a webpage with the entire unredacted Serenity Prayer, so “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as He 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,” is a part of this constructiveness. Warranted objections seem to be unserene attitude problems and hindrances. The Gam-Anon chapter of the GA handbook says that a impulsive gambler’s spouse should deal with the financial travails that impulsive gambling brings by individualistically transcending them for his/her own benefit, “build[ing] on his or her own inner core of spiritual strength and maturity as the best way to live with the gambling problem,” serenely accepting it and “there is no limit” while there would be a limit to reasonable amenability. These aren’t reductios ad absurdum, and the only difference between the Fundament Christians’ interpretation of this, and the self-help interpretation, is that the Fundaments would say to accept that he’s that way and then try to live with him, and the self-help writers would say to accept that he’s that way and then avoid him. There’s no one too dumb for this program, but it’s possible to be too smart.
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.
Victim Correction as a Panacea, the Summary (Page 1)
