As the above says, this is Al-Anon approved literature, for Alateen.  You couldn’t make this stuff up!  Persuasion to think like this works best with Groupthink, but if you, on your own, must deal with a devastating reality in order to fit in and function, then you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, and our self-responsible cultural norms would provide the Groupthink.  As Addiction: Why Can’t They Just Stop?, by John Hoffman and Susan Froemke, says, in a survey of addicts’ family members, “...the words that everyone used were powerfully negative: ‘devastating,’ ‘abusive,’ ‘horrible’.”  Serenity, indeed!

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 WILLFUL ones, since everyone’s beliefs regarding what they deserve are shaped by their own SELF-WILLS, and the weak can exercise their supposed SELF-WILLS 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 WILLFULNESS.  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.  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, unearned 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.  NOTHING CAN LIMIT HOW MUCH ALL THIS COULD AFFECT YOU.  (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!

 

         

 

“The idea of looking inside oneself for important research problems was well put by C. Wright Mills who advocated in his book The Sociological Imagination that social scientists ‘translate private troubles into public issues.’  If you are going through a divorce, that’s a private trouble.  When half the marriages in America are failing, divorce is a public issue.”—David A Karp, Speaking of Sadness, Depression, Disconnection, and the Meaning of Illness

 

 

Al-Anon’s book of meditations, One Day At A Time In Al-Anon, says,

We are told in Al-Anon that there can be no progress without humility.  This idea is confusing to many at first, and it almost always encounters a stubborn resistance in us.  “What!” we say, “am I supposed to be a submissive slave to my situation and accept everything that comes, however humiliating?”  No.  True humility does not mean a meek surrender to an ugly, destructive way of life.  It means surrender to God’s will, which is quite a different thing.  Humility prepares us for the realization of God’s will for us; it shows us the benefits we gain from doing away with self-will.  We finally understand how this self-will has actually contributed to our distress.

Everybody needs a moral compass, and this is theirs.  If the informal definition of “fascist” is “based on might-makes-right,” then the above conceptions of who has what personal rights, and who has what personal responsibilities, is fascist.  The psychological zeitgeist that’s based on the worldview of Twelve-Step groups, would define both “coping skills,” and “personal responsibility,” just as this does, whenever it’s applied to anyone we can’t change.  “Coping skills” would involve correcting victims to this degree.  If you trivialize someone’s problem, and convince him that he should trivialize it since since the resulting serenity would benefit him, that’s “giving comfort.”

“Personal responsibility” means “no one else is responsible for solving our problems,” that a market economy is based on incentive and motivation, and you’re the one with the most incentive and motivation to solve your own problems.  To blame the victims, such as in the thinking regarding codependency, therefore, would seem good, since this would say that the women who must take care of their own problems are also the ones who are morally responsible for them.  Also, they could feel confident that they really do have self-determination, since they’re really the ones who determined their own misery.

And, of course, both of these would apply equally to your interactions with anyone you can’t change, whether they’re addicted or not.  Trivializing the problems that anyone caused you, and taking care of  your own problems, would benefit you equally no matter why he caused them.  And, of course, since Bill Wilson wrote the chapter of AA’s Big Book “To Wives,” pretending to be his own wife so he could claim to truly understand what other alkie’s wives are going through, both of these reflect how men with addictive personalities would want their wives to see their own personal responsibility.  And, of course, when such definitions of “coping skills,” “personal responsibility,” etc., are applied to our entire society, to the normalized traumas that lead depressive disorders to affect about 34 million Americans, then naturally we’d see plenty of acceptance of what causes the traumas, and victim-self-blaming when those who have the devastating problems figure that “no one else is responsible for solving our problems.”  To whatever degree you haven’t yet gotten your problem under control as much as you think you could, you’d have to look for all of your faults that you therefore must correct.

This is how Al-Anon works for families & friends of alcoholics, and, therefore, how self-help would work for anyone with any problem.  Even the worldliest moral responsibility would be others-help.  “Self-help” necessarily means, “It’s every person for him/herself.”  “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,’” and the question of who is personally responsible for what, would look very different for alkies’ spouses, that it would for alkies.  As Backlash also says, “First published in 1985, Norwood’s book on female ‘relationship addiction’ became the guiding light to more than 20 million readers....  Like so many therapists in the decade, Norwood had an opportunity to observe up close the increasing toll of emotional and sexual violence against women.  She puzzled over the evidence of millions of women suffering verbal and physical abuse from husbands and lovers.  Yet, in the end, she proposed an explanation that entirely ignored the social dimensions of these developments and turned the problem inward.  Women today, she writes, are literally ‘addicted’ to men who hurt them.”

And there really wouldn’t be much difference between that, and saying, “Ads and guides that tell us how we should treat our rampant depression, say that antidepressants or other therapy that fixes what’s inside the victims, are to be the salvation of the 34 million Americans affected by depressive disorders.  Mental health professionals could certainly see all of the problems outside of the victims, which lead to this obviously unnaturally high rate of depression.  Yet, in the end, they propose an explanation that entirely ignored the social dimensions of these developments and turned the problem inward.  That many people today, they hold, are simply burdened by one of those biological diseases that are parts of the natural order.”  That approach to treating depression, is just as mainstream as Al-Anon is.

Elsewhere, as this book describes the forgiveness that Al-Anon propounds, it says that this doesn’t mean that members should just keep putting up with problems that others cause them, which they can change.  This is very similar to Dr. David Burns’ self-help book on cognitive therapy, from 1980, Feeling Good,

saying in its chapter on how we’re to deal with our anger, “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,” and that proof of this is that naturally predators attack and kill prey.  Just after that, he says that this doesn’t mean that he advocates anarchy or the elimination of social norms prohibiting destructive behavior, or that he thinks that all anger is bad including anger that could motivate people to change what they can.  The whole idea is to go into a Zen state instead of feeling any anger or other distress, at any problems that you can’t change, including those that addicts in the family caused.

Beyond a shadow of any doubt, this gives an inordinate amount of personal responsibility to the weak.  While this doesn’t intend to give an inordinate amount of personal rights to the strong, the expectations that it makes, and the expectations that it condemns, mean that it would naturally push our social norms and expectations in that general direction.

Though Feeling Good doesn’t specify how many millions of Americans are suffering from depression (probably because stating that truth would cause a lot of distress and pessimism that wouldn’t do the people feeling them any good), beginning only with, “Depression has been called the world’s number one public health problem.  In fact, depression is so widespread that it is considered the common cold of psychiatric disorders.  But there is a grim difference between depression and a cold.  Depression can kill you.  The suicide rate, studies indicate, has been on a shocking increase in recent years, even among children and adolescents.”

Yet one could still say about that, “This is to deal with a huge problem, that affects many people, affecting more and more as corporate Globalism progresses.  Like so many therapists in the decade, Burns had an opportunity to observe up close what causes this problem, which obviously isn’t just an inevitable part of the natural order.  Yet, in the end, he proposed an explanation that entirely ignored the social dimensions of these developments and turned the problem inward.  Despite the fact that this is admittedly a ‘public health problem,’ Burns is treating this in a way that Blaming the Victim, says is the opposite of the public health approach, which corrects problems outside of the victims.  Cognitive therapy is supposed to be the great natural alternative to anti-depressant medication, but the pathological obsession with fixing what’s inside the victims, is still there.”  And “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....,” is just as mainstream as Al-Anon is.

 

 

That’s why any victim-blaming that would come from such self-help, would have to be looked at along the lines of, “What else would you expect the sinfulness-takers to think?”  If a social movement’s zeitgeist says that all are simply supposed to deal with whatever their realities are by courageously changing what they can and serenely accepting what they can’t, then it would probably also want to hold to certain beliefs that would say that this isn’t just a matter of, “It’s your problem, so what are you going to do about it?”  Those who say that all should simply change what they can and accept what they can’t, are very likely to sense just how morally bankrupt this is.  Therefore, the more moral justification is given for minimizing the moral responsibility of those who are morally responsible, and magnifying the victims response-ability for their own welfare, the more morally justified such movements would seem.

Naturally such movements would tend to blame victims in absolutist terms that are simply to be accepted on faith.  Addicts’ spouses, ipso facto, would seem responsible for dealing with whatever hardship, sinfulness, etc., might impact their lives.  If any addicts’ spouses seem to have subconsciously “let themselves in for trouble” by intentionally marrying addicts (or maybe non-addicts who these spouses, subconsciously, recognized as having the character defects that would lead them to become addicts later), then it would seem that holding the spouses response-able for their own problems would seem more justifiable than just, “It’s your problem, so deal with it.”  It would also seem that these spouses could stop their own misery, by stopping their own penchants for the misery.  Of course, the addicts would remain addicts, so the only way that that could really solve any problems, is if no one got romantically involved with anyone who had mannerisms that would indicate that he had the sort of character defects that could lead him to become an addict.  But who is to determine exactly what those are?  Whoever could recognize them should become a member of a parole board, since by looking at each parole candidate’s mannerisms, she could tell if he has a character bad enough that he’d commit more crimes.  This is exactly the sort of logic that victim correction as a panacea must use, but this seems to be what we need, in order to avoid the problems of “blaming.”  It seems that we simply must do whatever it takes to take care of our own problems.  What else would you expect the sinfulness-takers to think?

The Gam-Anon chapter in the handbook of Gamblers Anonymous, with the same zeitgeist as Al-Anon, says, “Living or being associated with a compulsive gambler creates its own kind of hell.  For most people, it is a devastating experience: family relationships become unbearably strained and the home is filled with bitterness, frustration and resentment.  Emotionally, the stress takes its toll as the life of the Gam-Anon member seems to crumble and become unmanageable; tensions are aggravated because life, in material terms, is unstable.  At any moment the house might be lost or the furniture repossessed.  There may not be enough money to put food on the table or clothe the children....  Gam-Anon meetings provide an opportunity for a strong bond to form between those affected by the problem of compulsive gambling.  The meeting is opened with a moment of silent meditation and closed with the Serenity Prayer....   Members are encouraged to make home life as pleasant as possible for the compulsive gambler.  They are urged to make themselves attractive, both for the favorable effect on the compulsive gambler and for the therapeutic effect on themselves.  ...Because the only real happiness that one can be sure of comes from within, Gam-Anon encourages the member to build on his or her own i