#3-32
eality Requires a Fail-Safe Cure
“[A man relates] She told me about Mississippi and Alabama, and marching with Martin Luther King, and what it had been like, working with all these people who were trying to make a difference.... [Norwood comments] Along with this dynamic, Alana appeared to Greg as compassionate, willing to suffer for something she believed in.” Yet this says nothing about her suffering, only “She said she loved being back in California, but that sometimes she felt she didn’t have the right to be so comfortable when other people in this country were suffering.”—Robin Norwood, Women Who Love too Much, from the chapter “Men Who Choose Women Who Love too Much”
“Much of what she does is in reaction to her partner, including love affairs, obsession with work or with other interests, or devotion to ‘causes’ in which she again tries to help/control the lives and conditions of others around her.”—Robin Norwood, Women Who Love too Much, from the chapter “Dying for Love,” during a relationship addict’s “‘crucial phase,’ a time of rapid deterioration”
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panacea, after all, is something that could cure potentially anything, so with victim correction as a panacea, the victims are to be convinced that since such pragmatism could at least treat potentially anything (At the very least, the victims could Stoically transcend even some extreme material realities.), and that something must be wrong with you if you reject something that’s this universally beneficent. If you start talking about how cognitively distorted this is or that it has big consequences such as self-blame for what happens to oneself, you’d be told that the goals of the distortions are pragmatic and only an intellectualist would care about their intellectual unsoundness. The big consequences would be dismissed absolutely in some way, such as being your excuse for not taking response-ability for your own welfare. Ann Jones, in Next Time She’ll Be Dead, satirically summarized this logic as applied to wife-beating, as, “Without the wife-beater’s wife there would be no wife beating.” One could use the same principle to say that without vulnerable people, those with destructive characters would do as little harm as possible, and that this is the most reliably self-motivated way to prevent or solve problems. Also, just as Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation attributes to everyone, whether it be the strong expressing it through objective power or the weak expressing it through subjective persuasion, every time that the weak assertively stand up for their own rights, everyone else could figure, “Sure, they honestly believe that they’re right, that they deserve more than what they won, but naturally everyone wants the world to be as they’d have it! What they’re saying is just insidious untermensch !”
The homepage for Depression Research at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute begins, “Depression is an illness that can be treated. It stands as one of the most common psychiatric disorders, and afflicts about one in eight people. The World Health Organization ranks depression as one of the top causes of morbidity world wide, and projects that by 2020, only heart disease will cause more disease burden globally.”
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? Those who read such descriptions should naturally be shocked at the magnitude of the social problem. An institute that’s supposed to research depression in whatever ways would do the most good, says that depression is that common and that severe, its rate worldwide is growing with Globalism, but depression is an illness that can be treated. Medicating as many millions of these people as possible, mega-medication, seems to be the way to go. Fixing the victims is very effective. Attempts to fix social problems could seem naïve whiny manipulative and judgmental, while treating the victims and making them more self-empowered would seem realistic stouthearted self-reliant and forgiving. But what about prevention? Sure, I want to be well-adjusted in all circumstances, especially the worst circumstances since that’s where I must be functional enough to win my big battles. Yet my natural common sense tells me that cures for all circumstances are panaceas, which are even more dangerous when they work by correcting the victims.”
Yet, since this is how people honorably get through life, it has to be a panacea. This really does have to be absolutist in the same way that the cognitive distortions of modern Western depression, which Dr. David Burns, in his book Feeling Good, listed as: All-or-Nothing Thinking, Overgeneralization, Mental Filter, Disqualifying the Positive, Jumping to Conclusions, Magnification or Minimization, Emotional Reasoning, Should Statements, Labeling and Mislabeling, and Personalization, which Dr. Burns defines as, “You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.”
For example, if you’re an alkie’s kid, then, as you could see in that Alateen comic,
the fail-safe cure that your realities would require, would be that you stop blaming others, and look at yourself instead. Then, no matter what the alkie did, that couldn’t make you maladjusted, maladaptive, or dysfunctional.
If you’re the one who has the problem, then either you’ve got it under control as well as you optimistically think that you have, or you don’t. Despite the Serenity Prayer’s calling for “wisdom to know the difference” between what one can or can’t change, those who have the problem often don’t have enough information on which this wisdom could be based. The stolid realize that the more optimistic that one is that he has the opportunity to change his problem, the more likely he is to try hard enough, and resourcefully enough, to win. Moral responsibility might as well not exist. As Democrat majority leader of the Senate, Harry Reid said about the Great Wall Street Bailout of 2008, “Every American has an interest in fixing this crisis—inaction would paralyze the economy.” Irrespective of who caused any problem, those who have the problem are the ones with the most reliable motivation to try to solve it.
Such a person would engage in All-or-Nothing Thinking, Overgeneralization, Mental Filter, and Disqualifying the Positive, since if he’s got 90% of his problem under control, that wouldn’t mean that he deserves an A grade, but that he’d better focus his attention on what he doesn’t have under control.
He’ll probably have to jump to conclusions, since (speaking from experience here), if he insists on not drawing conclusions unless they’re well-founded, he could seem to have an unrealistic demand for scientific certainty. Under those panicky circumstances, he’d be likely to jump to conclusions, and engage in Emotional Reasoning, even when he didn’t have to.
If one sets out to courageously change what he can and serenely accept what he can’t, he’d have to engage in absolutist Magnification or Minimization, since he absolutely can change himself and absolutely can’t change anyone else, and absolutely must get his problem under control as well as he optimistically thinks he can.
Also, a personal responsibility that consists of response-ability for one’s own welfare, one’s own problems, seems a lot more pragmatic, honorably self-reliant, and forgiving, than does a personal responsibility that consists of even the most worldly ethical responsibility. For the devastated person, this means that he must pay attention to his responsibility, and ignore others’.
The whole idea would be both Should Statements and Personalization, since his thinking must be along the lines of, “How could I best courageously change what I can and serenely accept what I can’t?”, not, “God, grant me wisdom to know what I am or am not primarily responsible for.” If one cared about whether or not he was the one who was primarily responsible for what he should accept or change, that distraction would seem to constitute a pointless blame-finding and resentful diversion from what needs to be resolved, and, of course, he shouldn’t do that.
And everything must be labeled according to how it fits these goals. Being “achievement-oriented” and “goal-oriented” is one of our most important values, and that includes labels that are oriented toward whether or not one achieves his goal of succeeding in life. Since the only thing that really matters is how effectively the person with the problem, is dealing with whatever his realities are, you’d be amazed by the degree to which how powerless he is, determines how his actions or inactions are labeled. He’d have to figure that he’s personally responsible for changing or accepting whatever he must. 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. Since desperate thinking about how one could solve a problem or prevent similar problems in the future, has to be absolutist and all-or-nothing (never, “I got this X% under control, so I should give myself partial credit and feel good about it.”), the labels given to oneself and others along these lines, would be just as absolutist. Also, if you’re strong you’ll likely be judged and labeled according to the übermensch, redblood, standard (honored, forgiven, presumed innocent until proven guilty of malicious intent, etc.), while if you’re weak, you’ll likely be judged and labeled according to the untermensch, mollycoddle, standard (dishonored, firmly held responsible, treated as guilty of manipulative or self-defeating intent even if it can’t be proven, etc.). This, also, would likely be in absolute, unconditional, terms.
One couldn’t see such situations as multi-faceted, as any sociologist would. What must be taken care of, must be taken care of, single-mindedly. If we didn’t firmly hold those who have the problems, response-able for their own welfare, then anyone could get what they wanted by giving enough arguments to prove that they’re victims. Who’s to decide what is, and isn’t, manipulation? Naturally people would sincerely believe that they deserve better that what they’d gotten. As Hitler’s favorite philosopher Schopenhauer put it, “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.” Naturally people would want to believe that they’d been hurt so bad that anyone who doesn’t think so is horrible, amoral, shameful (sob, sob). This could also reflect the striving of the in each case, since he could manipulatively get something by guilt-tripping people, etc.
If our society didn’t tend to give the strong the übermensch treatment, and the weak the untermensch treatment, just think of how much the weak could get away with manipulating, restricting, guilt-tripping, etc., the strong! Market discipline, which disciplines all according to their success or failure, would be, at best, half-hearted. Plus, this very much fits in with the pragmatics of such situations. The people who have the most reliable motivation to solve problems, are the people who have the problems. Therefore, labeling them as unforgivably irresponsible if they don’t, is more likely to lead to the problems getting solved, than would labeling the morally responsible people as unforgivably irresponsible if they don’t take responsibility. Labeling the victims according to the untermensch treatment, would then serve the same reliable goal.
And, of course, the worse that the problem is, the more that one would have to focus his attention on getting his own problem resolved, and away from the question of who’s morally responsible. One could see a specific example of this, in Margo’s story from Women Who Love too Much. This is the personal account near the end of the book, in the chapter “Dying for Love,” so could be called the climax of the book. It says of her, “‘My first husband... ran around on me... my second husband [molested my daughter, and the day after I first heard] I put my daughter and everything of ours I could fit into my car, and left.’... The next player in her marital round-robin was Giorgio, who drove a white Mercedes Benz convertible and made his living supplying cocaine to some of the wealthiest noses in Montecito.... For the woman who loves too much, her primary disease is her addiction to the pain and familiarity of an unrewarding relationship.”
Of course, there is no need to prove that such a woman “lets herself in for trouble.” If one makes any other claims about what is going on in someone’s subconscious, they would, at the very least, seem questionable. Many would figure that, plainly and simply, they’re conjectural. Yet if someone tells a woman who is victimized by men, “You let yourself in for it,” then that could very easily seem unquestionable, since if she did question it, she’d seem to be rejecting advice that would let her take care of herself much better than she is now. Once again, speaking from experience, I attended a therapy group for women diagnosed as codependent, and not once did any of those women say anything about any desires to play the martyr, caretake, live a melodrama, etc., or express admiration for this sort of thing. Instead, the discussion was about self-determination through fight-or-flight, how the women could better take self-responsibility by fighting back and getting out of the way when their men might cause them problems.
And, as could be seen in the case of Margo, the worse that the men’s behavior is, the more responsible the women would seem. We’d simply need a panacea like this. Men like that have what The Serenity Prayer would call certain “sinful” (and criminal) tendencies, and someone simply has to take responsibility for preventing and/or fixing them, all of them. If, instead, any of these women judged themselves according to a standard of, “I got this X% under control, so I should give myself partial credit and feel good about it,” or, “Sure, I failed to get my problem under control, but since I’m not primarily responsible for it, I’m not going to correct my failings,” a lot of women would seem to be abdicating their personal response-ability to take care of themselves.
No matter how much these women could prove that they didn’t “let themselves in for trouble,” this wouldn’t lessen their ultimate responsibility one bit. Each problem would simply have to be solved, and chances are that the men wouldn’t solve them. Then, form would follow function. If a woman tries to hold her man morally responsible, that could be labeled as her “trying to control him,” “trying to fix him,” “naïvely expecting someone like that to take responsibility,” etc. If she doesn’t seem to be trying hard enough to take care of herself by resolving her own problem, that could be labeled as “passive,” “passive-aggressive,” “irresponsible,” etc. Of course, even if he does absolutely nothing to resolve the problem, that could be labeled, “just the way that this sinful world is,” “just the way that he is,” “Boys will be boys,” etc. And the more desperate the situation gets, the more likely it is that these minimization-and-magnification labels would be used, since the more important it would be for her to serenely accept what’s wrong with him, and courageously change what could be wrong with herself.
Victim Correction as a Panacea, the Summary (Page 1)
