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The premise of liberalism is a lie: liberation, equality, and freedom as innate rights.
Thus, we are constantly fighting off possible theft and violation of our rights. As such, we are all victims on the defensive against potential oppression.
The real irony is that it leads us, the always victims, to become oppressors.
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Your self-esteem goes down when you “play the victim” and lash out.
Your self-esteem increases when you “own your shit” and accept your part.
The conundrum is, that by standing up for yourself, you lose yourself: when we outwardly scream (tantrum), we are emotionally retreating under our mother’s skirt.
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The fortunate can ignore the unfortunate. Through myriad small (and large) benefits, it becomes impossible to relate, engage, or comprehend the distant poor except in the abstract.
The fortunate, or privileged, have localized, particular concerns that are distant from survival but not without emotional and social pain.
Today’s initiative is to demand their sight morally; that is, the gaze of the privileged must see the less fortunate and empathize (and feel guilt).
Yet, this symptomatically multiplies the positions and disparities instead of diminishing them.
Noticing the unfortunate (or victimized) begets feigned social signaling, adding a layer of selfish deceit and social utility to the sight so desperately sought-after. The gaze that was supposed to recognize a plight and generate focused action for the poor is activated into multiple effects, which act more substantively for the altruist.
Their gaze on the poor benefits the wealthy more.
This pantomime merely cloisters the wealthiest’s actual self further away: by demanding their attention, we are left somehow more blind as they recede behind enacted propaganda, leaving us seeing only an after-image of kindness with no substance.
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When we excessively shift fault to the negligence of others (by insisting they should’ve thought more of us or prevented hardship from happening to us), we create a space that disincentivizes responsibility and creativity.
For example, automakers who fail to recall vehicles often intentionally mask profiteering as accidental negligence expecting only a harsh rebuke. Yet, the victim deserves total remuneration, and the false practice must be deterred.
However, if we redefine “victimization” to a scale beyond any reasonable foresight and then punish makers for lacking Nostradamus-like predictive capacity, any intelligent creator will realize success makes you a target.
If you are inventive, perhaps create, then take the money and run. There will no longer be responsible oversight or incremental advancement, but instead hit-and-run creativity to avoid a victimization mob.
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Some people are an annoyance: they will suck off of you and bother you and steal your energy and resources. These people have no desire to become self-sustaining but do not actively intend harm.
The acceptance of the parasite allows a space for the camouflaged predator to approach. The predator is self-sustaining by ruining you completely.
Some people allow the parasite, which opens them up (softens them) to the predator. Others maintain a vigilant stance against any suffering by refusing empathy, which protects them against future predation.
The difficulty is judging people: beyond the parasites and predators, a third option is a person who requires a boost before weening themselves into self-sustaining behavior.
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The reason you recognize damage is because you were damaged.
The reason I can spot abuse, wrapped in pretty lies is because I was lied to, taken advantage of.
In such ways our insight grows: not to do what’s been done to us, but to ameliorate the progress of pain, while still imparting the learning.
After all, we do not want to eradicate a survival instinct, but we do not want to traumatize either.
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The most effective way to hurt something/someone is through studied intimacy.
The "blunderer" is forgivable out of their ignorance: in the unlikely event they land a haymaker to your soul or sabotage your company it is by chance or luck.
The devoted acolyte who accessed the inner sanctum through devotion knows precisely where best to strike. In knowing the betrayal is doubled. It is no longer simply a devastating wound, but the loss of trauma support. (This is why family and partners can hurt us so profoundly.)
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You can find a type of freedom by exempting yourself from responsibility. By playing the victim, you can often convince others to release you of burdens. However, the ensuing trap is to lose agency.
In a reversal of freedom, this “outsourcing of obligation” binds you to the other: in a master/slave scenario, you lose the burden of responsibility by incurring a guardian.
The victim sees external circumstances align against them, which excuses them from fault and responsibility, but becomes deterministic in that they cannot control their fate.
Freedom is the ability to create your own prison of responsibilities.
This “frees you” from the need to heed the edicts of others but ensures you must vigilantly maintain your own dictates, and guard your own duties and virtues, which sounds not at all like freedom.
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When a troubling event keeps bobbing to the surface, your subconscious tells you something is unresolved: a lesson needs to be learned.
Often the event involves pain (being hurt or hurting). Caught on this hook, unwilling to let go, we have pierced ourselves and the other together in self-traumatizing rumination.
The problem with releasing the barb is we must approach and experience the pain without shying away. We must remain open-hearted to grieving and forgiving, allowing us to process the memory, remove the barb, and let the wound scar.
Otherwise, we risk pushing the pain under only to have it continually bob back to the surface, wounding us repeatedly.
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First: you will never understand. I am either more enlightened, more oppressed, or more sympathetic than you.
Second: if you agree, the drama gets worse. If you disagree, you are a monster.
Third: do nothing. Observe. There will be plenty to do later.
