The following exchange is from Dialogue Group 8, Thread 21.

1. Victims, victimhood, victimology, and maybe even victimolatry
Mon, Jan 4, 1999 - 4:38 PM/EST
Deborah

It seems to me that the topic of victims deserves its own thread.

There are a couple of levels on which we could discuss this. First of all, there's the national political situation, which is what inspired Reality Check in the first place. Are there any victims - and if so, who are they, and how should the problem be addressed?

Then there is the level of personal suffering - experiences that a number of members of the group have disclosed. Does suffering make you a victim? Is victimhood a choice? Is there a difference between an experience of victimization and a lifelong role as a victim? Does being a member of a minority group make you a victim by definition?

How do our religious and social realities shape our attitudes and feelings about victimhood?

I'm very interested to know what everyone in the group thinks.

Best regards from Deborah

2. Victims in the current political nightmare
Mon, Jan 4, 1999 - 5:15 PM/EST
donald

Victims in the current political nightmare are victims of self inflicted wounds. Slick Willie, Monica, Kathleen Willey, Ken Starr, House Republicans, Hillary Clinton, the whole gang. They all shot themselves in the foot and will live to see another day.

7. Various senses of 'victim'.
Tue, Jan 5, 1999 - 9:39 AM/EST
Mack

Pretty clearly there are at least two senses of the term 'victim' which need to be kept separate.

In one sense, the term is primarily descriptive: a victim is a person who has suffered wrong or unjustly inflicted harm of some sort at the hands of another. True, there is an evaluative component here - to be a victim is necessarily to be on the receiving end of someone else's wrong behavior. The main component of this sense of the term, however, is this: that the victim is entirely *passive* with respect to the wrong suffered, or harm done.

In another, and wholly distinct sense, the term refers to a person's *attitude*, not his/her objective state. A person is a victim in this sense insofar as he/she considers him/herself to be a victim in the first sense of the term.

It is quite apparent that one can be a victim in sense 1 without being a victim in sense 2, and vice versa.

If all this is so, it seems incorrect to describe our political leaders as victims of their own shenanigans. They may be suffering the consequences of their own immoral or foolish behavior. But they are not victims in either of the two senses I have outlined.

8. Thank you Mack
Tue, Jan 5, 1999 - 9:52 AM/EST
donald

I stand corrected, by definition those who shoot themeselves in the foot are injured, but not victims.
Question: If someone is injured by the unintended consequences of another persons "correct" action, is the injured person a victim?

9. Donald
Tue, Jan 5, 1999 - 10:02 AM/EST
Mack

I'd say not. Two elements in your example seem to be missing: a wrong done, and a wrong-doer.

On the other hand, we do speak of "accident victims." So maybe my definition needs to be enlarged a bit.

10. Mack, how about this
Tue, Jan 5, 1999 - 4:16 PM/EST
donald

If my property suffers the destruction consequential to a tornadic storm and I do nothing to repair or restore what was ther prior to the storm and complain about the loss, don't I qualify as victim no.2?
On the other hand, think about Christopher Reeves and the near life ending injuries he suffered in his horseback riding "accident". The progressive recovery and positive attitude he projects is hardly victim like. In fact one of his speeches came very close to implying that his quality of life has improved.
Following these examples, perhaps accident victims are only victims in sense no.2 if their response is not to pick up and move on with their lives?
Eager for your further clarification.
Best Regards

11. Mack
Tue, Jan 5, 1999 - 5:11 PM/EST
Gemini2

This is getting good. Victimhood: There are true victims, such as Hitler's targets during his reign of terror. These are people who did nothing to bring on their own torture and death except to exist. Then there are pseudo-victims, those who participate in their own oppression. In psychology, there is a well-known traingle known as the victim-rescuer-persecutor triangle. In codependent relationships, the participants move among these points on the triangle, never getting to just plain "being." They're always being in relation to what another person is doing.

I spent a lot of years being encouraged in therapy to think of myself as a victim of emotionally unbalanced parents. That's only one way to look at it. The more helpful way to look at it is that I grew up in a family where my parents were not emotionally equipped to experience or express feelings, and therefore, I didn't get affirmation for expressing feelings, and I never felt loved as "me." No victimhood there, just a fact. Had I learned that earlier, perhaps I would have healed sooner. But maybe not. Maybe feeling like a victim is just a stage all "oppressed" people must go through in order to get through to the other side: liberation. Thoughts?

12. An observer's tale...
Tue, Jan 5, 1999 - 5:35 PM/EST
soulcoughing

Isn't the term "victim" what others attribute to what they've observe happen to someone else?

"That poor victim...she's just a victim..."

I get the willies whenever I hear someone describe themselves as a victim. Most consider themselves "survivors". It's the old observer-bias phenomenon...

I suspect that feeling like a victim, is feeling disempowered...in any form (politically, sexually, religiously, economically,) Feeling that one's Will for movement/change/outcome what have you, is being thwarted. Is stolen sometimes, in the case of a rape.

Feeling disempowered and finding a target (accurate or not) responsible for it. The old it's-all-mom's fault is both true and not true (see quotes-thread). As a 2 month infant, very little responsibility regarding inadequate vaildation (emotional mirroring) can be held against the child. As a 32 yr. old daughter, the situation is "slightly" different.

We are supposed to be victimized at some point ( many points infact) b/c the world does not evolve around us...and therein lies the first trauma. And yes, maybe becoming a "victim" does fulfill a developmental process...i.e. a young child is suddenly the "victim" of an older child's after-school bullying.

Hopefully, the parents won't feel so disempowered themselves that they perpetuate that powerlessness to their children...e.g. "those darn Jews are just trouble, johnny, don't ever go near them again and you won't get hurt."

Well, everytime something goes arye and our needs are no longer the world's first priorities then I suppose we have the "victim" option. Developmentally we learn to acquire many more options. "I am my choices" -Sarte

14. P.S.
Tue, Jan 5, 1999 - 5:59 PM/EST
soulcoughing

My husband and I got rid of our television. We are no longer the victims of that brain-washing/edutaining (yes spelled correctly) inanimate box. Suddenly we looked around our living room and found it is very non-livable (b/c it was all oriented around the t.v.) so now we're moving the furniture to actually make it a "living" room not a "watching" room.

Empowered once again.

Perhaps we are victims far more often than we realize.

15. Gemini2 - kindred spirits
Tue, Jan 5, 1999 - 6:30 PM/EST
Mack

Your last paragraph. Boy, you musta had my parents for parents. Maybe we're bro&sis, no?!

I think there is a class of victims (in my sense #1) who *do* participate in their own victimhood, their own oppression, by aiding their oppressors. I'm thinking of the Capos (is that the word) who were inmates of the death camps, but who did the Nazi's bidding, and so kept themselves alive. Or, the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto who helped organize the community, passed out the various cards, armbands, and so on. This behavior is the most pitiful and pathetic thing, and *entirely* understandable, under the circumstances then existing. They were victims of a hideous oppression, *and* they participated in that oppresdsion as well.

16. Leet's see now, one at a time!
Tue, Jan 5, 1999 - 6:42 PM/EST
Mack

Donald: You might be a Vic#2. On the other hand you might be just lazy. ;-)

I don't know what to say about Reeves. If the moral element is essential, then he isn't a victim in sense #1, and in any event, clearly not a victim in sense #2.

Yeah, I think you pretty much nail it with your last sentence. I know a person who lost her two boys, one to a senseless shooting, and the other to a heart-attack. To this day I cannot fathom the devastation that must have been. It took her a year at an Ashram, but she moved on. She has a life.

Me? Sometimes I wonder if I'm not still wallowing in the slough of despond of a failed marriage and failed ministry some twelve years ago.

Gemini2: I'd be glad to try to contact the system operator (sysop) about continuing after the 15th.

19. Joy went to a very central point again
Tue, Jan 5, 1999 - 7:39 PM/EST
donald

I expereinced this by wallowing in real and imagined wrongs my parents and others visited on me during childhood throughout my twenties and thirties. between 35 & 40 as I released these thoughts and stopped having them, the hurt went away. It now takes great effort to even try to remember what those childhood issues were. Yes, as we think, we become. as we sow, so shall we reap. every thought is a seed planted in the field of mind. If we continue to plant the same seeds over and over we will continue to reap the same harvest.
Blessings to my friends group 8

22. Mack
Wed, Jan 6, 1999 - 10:52 AM/EST
Gemini2

I'm not surprised to hear that you and I "grew up in different families together." And I'm sure there are millions more in our extended dysfunctional family of origin. But the good news is, the past is gone, the future has not yet arrived, and here we have the Now Moment ("The Power of Now" is a great book by Eckhart Tolle you might be interested in) to become our best, highest selves. Or not. All up to us.