I'll be more brazen. I don't know about other countries, but if you live in the US and am an adult of sound mind and body, you're not a victim.
If your life isn't working for you, reassess your situation, develop a plan, and get busy!
If your life isn't working for you, reassess your situation, develop a plan, and get busy!
Imagine there are two identical twins in the womb, both equally bright and energetic. And the genie says to them, “One of you is going to be born in the United States, and one of you is going to be born in Bangladesh. And if you wind up in Bangladesh, you will pay no taxes. What percentage of your income would you bid to be the one that is born in the United States?” It says something about the fact that society has something to do with your fate and not just your innate qualities. The people who say, “I did it all myself,” and think of themselves as Horatio Alger – believe me, they’d bid more to be in the United States than in Bangladesh. That’s the Ovarian Lottery." ― Warren Buffett
No, it's really not. It's a thought experiment using a clearly fictitious mechanism to get the reader to consider what their experience might be like in completely different circumstances.
For the same reason It's A Wonderful Life and scifi about alternate universes don't have moot points.
I guess I'd reject the whole victim/perpetrator dichotomy and say that people's conditions are contingent on forces largely out of their control. That's a factual statement. Lots of people and societies find this very uncomfortable - we generally like the cosmos to be largely about us, down to our decisions, both for the better and for the worse.
It is a factual statement, I agree, but in the US it is not true. Peoples' lives are the sum of their choices, large and small. One can choose to learn how to make better choices.
I spent a significant portion of every day learning to make better choices and doing things that will improve my life. Such as exercising. Improving my diet. Trying to eliminate unproductive behaviors. Etc.
Things have changed a lot for people on the bottom rungs since the '90s, Walter. Some sympathy for the fact that bootstrapping is vastly more difficult for young people today might be a better look.
When I was young it was pretty much unheard of for people to get wealthy before 25. Now it's commonplace and unremarkable.
Source? even the most conservative people I know who went to school in the 80s/90s say they could never afford it now. I myself am trying to figure out how to pay for it without $40k grand in debt if I choose to go back.
K-12: https://www.khanacademy.org/
All free, available on the supercomputer in your pocket.
Not to mention entirely dependent on the unsupported precept that traditional teaching structures were apparently worthless - but, it's cheap to put your money where your mouth is on this: are you going to save a lot of time and money and educate your children solely via these resources?
Yet I wangled a job writing software despite a mechanical engineering job achieved without CS courses. I also know several people at Microsoft in programming jobs who had no college experience. There are tens of thousands of employers, all different. You can even start your own business doing programming, EE design, whatever.
> apparently worthless
Not at all. It's maybe a harder road, sure, but it's navigable for those who want to do it for free.
If everyone watched a 2007 youtube course on circuits at MIT and learned the material, the value of such a skillset would be equal to the value of flipping Burgers at Burger King.
Ironically, my grandfather at the time made his career by selling correspondence courses for college degrees. It was the equivalent in those days. He met my grandmother selling her a course in mechanical engineering she used to get a better job at the phone company.
My grandfather started literally at the bottom - shoveling coal into a steamship's boiler. A dirty, dangerous, sweaty job he did for years. He improved his lot by taking correspondence courses, and liked them so much decided on a career in selling them, primarily to sailors.
> If everyone
I wouldn't conflate "don't" with "can't".
I know about the MIT course because I took it myself (along with others) to fill in gaps in my education. And why not? Education doesn't stop with the diploma.
Not everyone can be remarkable enough to go to CalTech.
Appreciate the correction on spelling. I’m more a Midwest guy myself.
Sure, it's hard to just get by if you aren't out there hustling. The time of getting an average job with an average pension, which lets you buy a reasonable price house is over. The world is your oyster if you are willing to put in the time and have any ability to plan, organize, and work.
It's also true that many very successful people failed at business time after time before figuring it out. Fortunately, American culture doesn't look askance at people that fail at business and try again.
Covid craziness aside, that's still true. You can't do it in California, or Seattle or NYC but outside of those areas it's easily obtainable.
Most of these "homes were so cheap" anecdotes neglect to mention that you might be paying 18% interest on your cheap houses. Or they are talking about a place like NYC in the 70s. Yeah you could have gotten a house for a song in a bankrupt city suffering through the crack epidemic.
For mental issues from physical trauma, like a brain injury, I qualified my statement with being of "sound mind". I feel immense empathy for such people.
I think we both agree psychological trauma can affect people immensely. However, your statement saying they can just go get help is really hand-wavy and oversimplifies the situation.
People who suffer trauma during childhood can have impaired brain development, stunted emotional development, poor executive decision making, and are way more likely to enter situations that retraumatize them -- causing more damage.
Simply saying "I will not be a victim" isn't really a thing. You adapt to the trauma by learning coping skills that are not healthy. When this happens in childhood, it is baked into your personality and then later in life you are left wondering which parts of you are really "you" and which are just maladaptive coping. Thus, the sum of you isn't due to just your decisions.
I speak from personal experience on this. I've never had a victim mentality. But now, at 35, going to therapy for cPTSD, I look at the young child I was and can truly see I was a victim. Does this mean I go around now saying I am a victim? No. But, realizing that I was in the past allows me to show more understanding and sympathy for myself.
1. put my hands on the wheel in plain sight and keep them there
2. when the cop says "driver's license" I say "it's in my wallet in my right front pocket. I do not move.
3. cop says "ok, you can get your wallet".
4. I use one hand to get my wallet and the license.
5. cop says "registration"
6. I say "it's in the glove box" and I do not move.
7. cop says "ok you can get it"
8. I move slowly to get it.
What I never do is lunge for my cell phone, reach under the seat, turn around and try to get something from the back seat, try to grab the officer, try to drive off, etc.
Nothing's perfect, but your odds of survival improve greatly by doing this.
Yes, I've been held at gunpoint by a cop, too. Been robbed at gunpoint as well.
* - and a sliver of teachers and other influential adults, but the overwhelmingly majority are from people who could say good night and good morning to each other.
That is patently false. You can divide Americans into any number of segments which they are born into and reliably determine that segment's success. E.g. white people earn more than black people. Children of rich parents do better in school than children of poor parents. Lawyers who graduated in 2000 are more successful than ones who graduated in 2008. Forces out of their control determined this. Their "conditions" are functions of this. Your statement would imply that the people in these segments just happened to make worse choices unrelated to the circumstances of their segments. That would be quite the coincidence.
Maximally small government / libertarian people would like to pretend that everything is about individual character because this would justify their preferred public policies, but thinking about it even a little bit it should be obvious that internal and external factors both matter.
I remember in a previous discussion here Walter was objecting even to the use of standard economic terminology around things like what wealth-creation means (dating back to Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations in 1776), so I'd take his views here with a grain of salt.
Which is absurd, and why it is not respected despite decades of evangelical proselytizing.
I can see it at the extremes, meaning Martha's Vineyard and Compton perhaps as examples of positive and negative predictors. I haven't visited either, so I wouldn't know first hand. The vast, vast majority of zip codes aren't the extreme by definition. In my zip code, there are both wealthy people in million dollar properties as well as HUD housing and the majority somewhere in between.
Individuals with an external locus of control have worse life outcomes. Having an internal locus of control, the idea that you do have a large amount of control over your life, results in better outcomes.
If possible, go out. Talk to people. It's quite refreshing how different the world is outside of the media machine.
For example: If I'm the victim of a crime, the first step to reporting the crime is acknowledging that fact. Certain categories of criminals (con artists and sexual abusers) rely on the fact that victims are often reluctant to acknowledge their victimhood, even to themselves. This allows those individuals' behavior to go unreported so they can prey on more people.
Because if you had no role in the matter, you couldn't have prevented it.
There's also the fact that often you couldn't have prevented it.
Chicago cops frisking you all the time -- wear skin tight pants.
Car accident -- use defensive driving techniques.
Being shot and killed for sleeping at a Wendy's -- don't resist arrest.
Wife divorced you, took your house and kids -- don't get married, OR, learn to discriminate.
Sexist manager won't promote you -- join a company run by females, OR, start your own company.
Pandemic -- move to the country.
On the other hand, if you prefer not to solve your problems yourself, you can say "Why should I change, when other people are the ones doing something wrong", fold your arms, and wait for a man to solve your problem for you.
If someone steals from your car, nobody plays philosophical games about whether you were victimized and understanding that you were is the very first step to even understanding the situation and then adopting habits of not leaving expensive stuff in your car, investing in locks, taking a focus to the causes of crime, etc...
I am a victim of a crime - I need to take the required action to get legal retribution.
Saying “I am not a victim” does nothing to help me.
A simple example which was in the news this week due to a Supreme court case: crack sentencing disparities. You made a bad life choice and sold 50 grams of cocaine and got caught, you might go away for 2 years and then turn your life around. But if you sold 5 grams of crack and got caught, you were probably going away for 20 years. The penalties for crack were literally 100 times higher.
Now, consuming crack is really bad for you, but consider the situation of some kid without much life experience that is tempted into making a quick buck. Depending on where they happen to be and what's in front of them, the same failure of morality/judgment would have staggeringly different consequences.
Your approach to dealing with life is valid, but you push it so aggressively it makes you sound like one of those yoga evangelists who is so into their thing that they lose sight of how it's not the answer to every problem.
Note how there are no complains about harm of victimhood when single guys complain about being single and blame society for it.
The real topic here is that there should not be such a thing as activism. It should be shameful to talk openly talking about disadvantages or -isms. Instead, you should pretend none of that exists, so that everybody feels good about society being fair. It makes you feel safe and in control too. Bad things happen to people who deserve it.
I agree you can do everything right and still have grievous harm befall you. But you can dramatically reduce the odds of that.
For example, I know what sorts of natural disasters the Pacific Northwest is prone to. I've taken steps to reduce the odds of one of them destroying me. There's still an element of risk, and I accept that.
What amount of violence would you need to experience before you would acknowledge victimization? There's plenty that goes around that you apparently don't know about.
Let's say you are poor, went to a protest, and got arrested. You can't make bail (you're poor) and are fired from your job because you are in in jail. You easily win your case and see no prison time, but your life has been massively impacted in the negative by others unjustly.
This person was a victim of policing and likely the system in general that creates these trade-offs and punishes a lack of material wealth. You cannot begin to even understand the situation without acknowledging the fault and the injustice.
It's an unfortunate moral code that creates unrealistic expectations, as well as handy judgments for those in the lower classes (and moral justification for those with too much wealth and power). The "meritocracy" is the modern form. I got to watch it in action during the few years I lived there.
You’ve picked some arbitrary definition of what it means to be a victim based on god only knows what philosophy or life experience and then tried to state it as some kind of objective fact or enlightened wisdom.
I'm well aware of how other people perceive it. It's completely contrary to the barrage of what I call "cult of the victim" that spews forth from nearly all media.
I don't expect to change your mind. But give it a chance. For example,
A man falls down the stairs and breaks his leg.
Victim: "I'm so unlucky, my leg broke. Oh, life is so unfair."
Non-Victim: "Phew, I'm so lucky! I could have broken my neck! My broken leg will heal and I'll be fine. Next time I won't leave my toys laying on the steps."
Walter: "I put carpet on the stairs so I wouldn't slip on them. I go jogging to (in part) increase bone density so they are less likely to break."
What life lessons do you want for the parent of a child who was sexually abused for example? Are they allowed to feel like a victim? What about the child?
"‘He insulted me, hit me, beat me, robbed me’–for those who don’t brood on this, hostility is stilled.
"Hostilities aren’t stilled through hostility, regardless.
"Hostilities are stilled through non-hostility: this, an unending truth.
"Unlike those who don’t realize that we’re here on the verge of perishing, those who do: their quarrels are stilled."
--Dhammapada, ch. 1, circa 1st century common era (trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu)
[Villain music]
Somebody who loses their legs after getting hit by a drunk driver just needs to make a plan, stop being a victim and try to grow their legs back.
Got COVID? The ticket to a speedy recovery is hard work and positive thinking.
Pull yourself up out of nutritional deficiency and homelessness by your bootstraps! If you don't have boots, start by making some out of leaves and twigs.
Come on, Walter. You can say "sound mind and body" if you like but the reality is that "normal" is an arbitrary distinction set by one person or another, and at any moment you can become a victim because you get pushed out of "normal". You or I can look at someone and say "what do they have to complain about?" but you have no way to know if they're currently dying of an autoimmune disease or being blackmailed or working 3 jobs to pay off their spouse's medical bills.
The vast majority of victims are of sound mind and body, they aren't legless. If your legs are crushed by a drunk, you have my sympathy. If you were playing on the freeway at the time, my sympathies would be a bit muted.
> Got COVID?
Personally, I did everything I could to reduce my risk, and am now vaccinated. 2/3 of Americans are not vaccinated, yet one can now just walk in and get vaccinated. I'm respectful and sympathetic to the health workers and essential workers who put their lives at risk.
But today, when vaccines (in the US) are trivially available, I'm not so sympathetic to those who do not get one, and then get Covid.
I had a conversation with one person who said she wasn't getting the vaccine because God would look out for her. I replied that God looked out for her by making the vaccine available.
The overwhelming majority of people in America are of sound mind and body.