Blaming ourselves for others' actions

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, bsjkki said:

I think a lot of people fall into self blame too easily and also blame others for their own misfortune. I think of it as the 'illusion of control.' We want to think our choices can make it so those bad things don't happen to us therefore when bad things happen it is somehow the persons fault or your own fault. I've seen this turn into very unhealthy behaviors.

It is also believed to be why when people see a story about something horrific happening (murder, rape, whatever) they tend to look quickly for something the victim did at the time that may have contributed to choosing them as the victim or something they did previously in their life that the viewer can use to somehow justify that they may not have deserved it but were flirting with danger or even deserved it. It is a "duck and cover" response used to reassure themselves that it could not happen to them or to someone close to them.

It is why when a rape story comes out and you let people talk about it you get deluged with all the mistakes the victim made leading up to it or "they were no angel" rationalizations based on a previous criminal record or something of that nature.

[Kenngo1969]

28 minutes ago, Calm said:

I am hesitant to click on any link that starts with “nude pictures”, lol. I am too well trained, I guess. 
 

It requires a subscription. 

Have you visited WaPo a few times this month?  You get, I think, three articles free, then it says, "You've reached your limit of [x] free articles this month.  Subscribe for [x weeks] for only [x $s per week]."

[The Nehor]

38 minutes ago, Calm said:

I am hesitant to click on any link that starts with “nude pictures”, lol. I am too well trained, I guess. 

I wouldn't worry. I am pretty sure they wouldn't let anyone put something like that on the internet at all.

[Amulek]

32 minutes ago, Calm said:

I am hesitant to click on any link that starts with “nude pictures”, lol. I am too well trained, I guess. 

Yeah, the title sounds a little racy, but it's on the Washington Post and is completely safe. 

The post is from several years ago and uses the celebrity iCloud hack / leak as a jumping off point to discuss victim blaming and how we talk about things. 

 

Quote

It requires a subscription. 

Strange. It pulls up fine for me, but maybe my ad-blocker is clearing that up. Might be able to access a cached, text-only version here.

If not, let me know and I can summarize when I have more time.

 

[Calm]

9 minutes ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Have you visited WaPo a few times this month?  You get, I think, three articles free, then it says, "You've reached your limit of [x] free articles this month.  Subscribe for [x weeks] for only [x $s per week]."

Yes, there were several Covid and political articles I wanted to read.  I don’t buy subscriptions in general in part because I don’t want to get trapped into reading too much politics or disasters to avoid depression. Paywalls remind me I need to stop surfing.

[Calm]

2 minutes ago, Amulek said:

maybe my ad-blocker is clearing that up. Might be able to access a cached, text-only version here.

That works, thank you. 

[Hamba Tuhan]

2 hours ago, bsjkki said:

I think of it as the 'illusion of control.' We want to think our choices can make it so those bad things don't happen to us therefore when bad things happen it is somehow the persons fault or your own fault.

A few years ago, I went with the Sister missionaries to visit a devout Buddhist. His close friends had recently had a baby with severe disabilities, and he tried to explain to us the anxiety they were experiencing as they went back over everything they had ever done to try to determine how they had caused this 'karmic' event. What a truly terrible burden!

At the time, I rejoiced inside that Latter-day Saints do not have cause to believe such things. I sincerely hope we don't start believing such things!

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Amulek said:

can summarize when I have more time.

I like this observation, I may add more:

Quote

First, much advice of this sort wrongly fails to acknowledge that the advice can be costly to take. No, no one has to take nude selfies or e-mail them to their lovers. But avoiding this behavior for fear that you’ll be hacked means accepting a limit on one’s autonomy generally (and the autonomy of one’s erotic life in particular). Likewise, avoiding going out alone at night — at least in certain places — for fear of being raped means accepting a much greater limit on one’s autonomy.

People who value freedom don’t like that. People who value freedom shouldn’t like it. Making it sound like the person is a fool for not limiting her own freedom this way ignores that cost to freedom

I think timing is very important, but when writing publicly we can’t control who is going to see our comments and often we don’t know who has been assaulted or harmed in the past, so we need to add as standard imo thoughtful commentary that makes explicit that safety suggestions are not implying responsibility for being harmed by others. 
 

Quote

Likewise, when someone has been raped or beaten, that’s a bad occasion to give people useful advice about not being alone in dangerous places, or about not dating the ex-girlfriend of a notoriously jealous thug. (I deliberately give here examples of behavior that is in no way morally culpable, that in a just world everyone should be free to engage in, and that can only be avoided at substantial cost to one’s freedom — but that, in our world, is still safest to avoid.) Now, the release of nude photographs isn’t quite in the same category as a brutal physical attack, but it’s still pretty bad stuff; and chiding the victim strikes me as similarly out of place there.

 

Edited June 16, 2021 by Calm

[Danzo]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

I would say we need to stop connecting preventative measures with responsibility for the crime...”if only they hadn’t (had)” type of commentary. 

So an accident investigator can never say that not wearing a seatbelt contributed to someone's serious injury or death?

Wouldn't that be a bit dishonest?

What about "if only they social distanced, if only they had been vaccinated?"

Perhaps we can stop using the phrase "if only", but I highly doubt it would prevent people from placing blame 

[Calm]

20 minutes ago, Danzo said:

So an accident investigator can never say that not wearing a seatbelt contributed to someone's serious injury or death?

An accident investigator and other professionals are in a different category than people making conversation about a tragedy, especially if they are intending to be supportive of the person injured. After the fact accusations aren’t going to change what happened. 
 

I am not sure the best way and time to share safety tips, but I think it should be obvious not to do it when the purpose of the conversation is to mourn with those who need mourning. 

[Scott Lloyd]

This has been an interesting discussion that I have mostly enjoyed, except fir the parts where it has drifted toward the snarky.   
 

I’ve been waffling back and forth about which side I come down on. I mostly lean toward siding with those who insist that a victim should not be blamed — or made to engage in self-blame — for his/her victimhood. 
 

But I think back to a time many years ago that occurred at my workplace. We had just finished a weekend covering general conference, the one in which President James E. Faust gave what to me was a memorable talk on the Book of Mormon concept that we experience mortality to learn to “act and not be acted upon.”

Our custom back then was for the last person to leave the office for the day to lock the office door in the interest of security.  
 

It was the role of one member of our staff to oversee production of our publication in what in newspaper parlance was called “the back shop.” His duties took him out of our office intermittently for two or three days out of the work week. 
 

On this occasion, not quite being finished for the day, he found himself locked out of the office. Early next morning, he sent a general computer message to each of us, his office mates, chiding us for locking the door without first checking to see if he was still around and would be returning to the office that day. 
 

He and I had (and still have to this day) a cordial, even chummy, relationship. Thus it was that I felt comfortable — if a bit mischievous —in poking him a little by saying that in the spirit of President Faust’s talk, he perhaps could get some practice in acting and not being acted upon if he were to remember to take his office key with him whenever he left the office to go to the back shop. 
 

Worth pondering, perhaps, in the context of this discussion about taking control or “ownership” of what happens to us. 

[Scott Lloyd]

7 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Have you visited WaPo a few times this month?  You get, I think, three articles free, then it says, "You've reached your limit of [x] free articles this month.  Subscribe for [x weeks] for only [x $s per week]."

Yeah, that’s called a “paywall.” The S. L. Tribune has one. I hate them. So do, I think, most readers, and a newspaper is apt to shoot itself in the foot by instituting a paywall. It relies rather too heavily on reader loyalty, which is less common these days. WaPo can get by with it because it is so old and entrenched. 

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Worth pondering, perhaps, in the context of this discussion about taking control or “ownership” of what happens to us. 

Expecting someone else to take care of you instead of being responsible isn’t really the same thing as expecting the person who harmed another to be held fully responsible for that harm.  The one harmed is not asking anyone to take care of them or be responsible for them. 

[AtlanticMike]

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Worth pondering, perhaps, in the context of this discussion about taking control or “ownership” of what happens to us. 

But what happens to us is always someone else's fault, making us a victim, don't you know that? Mentally, It's easier being a victim, that way, know matter what happens in our life, if we deem it negative, we can blame someone else and relieve our pain. Eazzzy peazzzzy Scott. You might want to look into that.

[Rain]

2 hours ago, AtlanticMike said:

But what happens to us is always someone else's fault, making us a victim, don't you know that? Mentally, It's easier being a victim, that way, know matter what happens in our life, if we deem it negative, we can blame someone else and relieve our pain. Eazzzy peazzzzy Scott. You might want to look into that.

No one on here is suggesting even close to this.

[Amulek]

11 hours ago, Calm said:

I think timing is very important, but when writing publicly we can’t control who is going to see our comments and often we don’t know who has been assaulted or harmed in the past, so we need to add as standard imo thoughtful commentary that makes explicit that safety suggestions are not implying responsibility for being harmed by others. 

I really appreciate this comment. Mourning with those who mourn is not strictly limited to those who were directly impacted by whatever it was that happened to transpire.

 

[AtlanticMike]

2 hours ago, Rain said:

No one on here is suggesting even close to this.

I'm not talking about on here, I'm talking about life in general. In the past ten years or so "victimhood" and laziness has infected so many of our youth it's disgusting. In my profession, construction, I'm lucky to get someone under 30 years old to work a 40hour week for more than 2 weeks. They always seem to think the work is to hard or they can't deal with the stress. 

    Back when I started construction 30 some years ago we could joke on each other, poked fun, called each other names. Now, you have to be careful not to "offend" someone if they're under 30 or so. Everyone seems to want to walk around in a giant bubble so they can be safe. 

    Personally, I think all this is being done on purpose, I mean putting people in certain categories/boxes, because you can control people once you give them a certain identity. Once you accept the identity, then you can be lead around by a leash like a little puppy by the people who maintain the values/ideas you're supposed to accept while living inside their prison.

    Not me! Screw that!

[bluebell]

On 6/14/2021 at 2:59 PM, Fether said:

 

I’m glad you guys have more wisdom and life experience than a man who served multiple tours, one as a seal team leader in the battle of Ramadi, runs a highly sought after and world known consulting business, runs an extremely successful podcasts With over 1mil subscribers just in YT, is constantly asked to be and making appearances as guest on the greatest podcasts, political talk shows and news networks,  is Jiu Jitsu black belt, trainer, and gym owner, and has 2 (that I know of) NewYork Times Best selling books (one of which is the one you are discounting)

If I'm understanding you right, it sounds like this guy is espousing a pragmatic approach to life, which I can get behind because I'm a pragmatist at heart.  Pragmatically, it doesn't really matter who is at fault, the issue is to deal with what happened and try to find ways to keep it from happening again.  

I'm guessing his experience in the military is really what taught him to be like this.  If your envoy hits an ied and people are hurt and the group is in danger, spending emotional energy on who planted the ied is useless and could get you killed.  To get through that situation you have to deal with the aftermath of the experience and go forward using what you learned to protect yourself in the future.

I think that's a really smart way to look at life, BUT, i also think that eventually, we do have to deal with the emotional trauma that comes from having someone else's choices hurt us.  In the thick of things is not that time, but that doesn't mean that there isn't ever a time when that needs to be done.  

Because ultimately, we don't have control and we can't keep problems from happening to us.  Trying to live a life where we pretend we have kind of control is not healthy.  Something is going to break.  We need to recognize and deal with the trauma that comes from other people and we need to deal with that without taking any of it onto us.

But like I said, I think that a lot of people could benefit from less of an emphasis on how the world has done them wrong more pragmatism in moving forward.  But not to the extent that it sounds like this guy believes we need to go to.  That kind of comes across like his own way of coping with all his trauma is to pretend it's not actually trauma.  That's not going to work for long. 

I'm only going off of what you've said though so chances are I'm getting it completely wrong.

[The Nehor]

7 hours ago, AtlanticMike said:

But what happens to us is always someone else's fault, making us a victim, don't you know that? Mentally, It's easier being a victim, that way, know matter what happens in our life, if we deem it negative, we can blame someone else and relieve our pain. Eazzzy peazzzzy Scott. You might want to look into that.

Victimhood can be abused. That proves there are no victims.

I am very intelligent.

[AtlanticMike]

28 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

I am very intelligent

I agree, you are very intelligent. I was just telling my wife if I wasn't me I think I would want to be you. Maybe Oprah.

Edited June 16, 2021 by AtlanticMike

[The Nehor]

23 minutes ago, AtlanticMike said:

I agree, you are very intelligent. I was just telling my wife if I wasn't me I think I would want to be you. Maybe Oprah.

Never ever ever want to be me. Ever. Bad idea. No. Bad. Stop.

Definitely go for Oprah.