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Victimisation vs. Victimhood
We are all likely to be victimised in some way in the course of our lives. At some point we will suffer some kind of affliction or calamity or abuse, caused by circumstances or people or institutions over which we have little or no control. This is life. And this is victimisation. It comes from the outside.
In contrast, victimhood comes from the inside. No one can make you a victim but you. We become victims not because of what happens to us but when we choose to hold on to our victimisation. We develop a victim’s mind – a way of thinking and being that is rigid, blaming, pessimistic, stuck in the past, unforgiving, punitive, and without healthy limits or boundaries.
This is from The Choice by Edith Eger, who had survived Auschwitz. The book, a best seller, appeared in 2017, when she was 90 years old.
Published in General
This sounds right to me.
But I’ve lived my life with little to no victimization, so it’s pretty easy to agree.
The article makes an important distinction between two ideas. It also proposes new (I assume…new to me, anyway) semantics to communicate the distinction.
I completely agree on the substantive point. I’m fine with the arbitrary new choice of noun definitions, should it become standard English.
I’m reading The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, which explores this distinction and how a victimhood mindset has been causing trouble on college campuses.
Listening to high school students, I’m hearing that victimhood status is desirable. They’re getting the message that it makes them unique and special. Then it becomes their identity and they would lose that special status if they overcome their victimhood. Teens who can claim membership in a historically oppressed group play that up, thereby creating a barrier between themselves and their peers who can’t claim that status.
This seems tragic and counterproductive given that these teens are internalizing the experiences of previous generations, although I’m sure they would argue that they face all sorts of micro-aggressions.
It’s how one achieves status these days. The whole “intersectionality” thing is about identifying as many victim groups to which one belongs in order to increase one’s standing and immunity from criticism.
This may explain some of the appeal of climate change alarmism. If you can’t acquire victim status another way, you can at least scream about how older generations have ruined your environment and stolen your future.