It is a small person who defines themselves more by their traumas than triumphs and whose perspective is dominated more by life’s burdens than its blessings. It seems like today our culture is in the business of making small people. We are told to broadcast our scars and sometimes blame innocent people for harm done to us. We have been conditioned to be hyper-sensitive, so much so that now that the term “microaggression” is part of our lexicon. And we have been convinced that only our interpretation matters when we feel offended, hurt, or violated regardless of what was done or said (and whether or not we even heard or saw what we thought we did).
Our society has created a moral credit system based on victimization. The more historically marginalized and oppressed a given people group was, the more moral street cred the members of that group now have. The more an identity is portrayed as a target of bigotry, harassment, and discrimination, the higher those with that identity are placed on the morality hierarchy. And the more oppressed minorities you have, the greater your relative moral superiority (this is called intersectionality). This is a significant shift in American culture because now morality is becoming less about your individual character and actions and more about your identities and ancestors.
Why is this pathological? Under this system, morality isn’t about self-improvement but societal destruction. Those who score lower on the intersectionality victim matrix are not only less moral, but also become the hated oppressors. In America today, white people belong to the only race that others can openly call for ethnic cleansing and genocide, and basically get away with it. Such calls are abhorrent against any racial or other group.
Also, your identity automatically imbues some degree of victimhood before you are actually the victim of anything. As a consequence, people are more likely to walk around with a chip on their shoulder and view any slight or perceived slight as confirmation of their victimization, a self-fulfilling prophesy if ever there was one. And that doesn’t sound like female empowerment (or any kind of empowerment) to me.
It’s also a moral system based on lies. History loses its nuance and becomes reduced to simplistic and often inaccurate or outright untrue “us vs. them” accounts that reflect the victim/ morality hierarchy. Then, in order for those peddling this pathology to convince the rest of us there is a moral crisis, they create fake hate crimes and misleading hate crime statistics (and, yes, some hate crimes are real, as is actual bigotry, harassment, and discrimination, all of which I unequivocally condemn, of course).
This moral system predicated on pathological victimization becomes more of a problem when its coupled with sentiments like “believe all victims” and “the ends justify the means.” When some people consider themselves more moral and righteous than others it both unjustly begins to dehumanize others and excuse a no-holds-barred approach to creating a new order to reflect this new, twisted morality. And the next generations are being recruited to do this dirty work.
Today our college campuses are filled with activist students who are throwing temper tantrums if they don’t get their way and are hell bent on canceling anyone who doesn’t toe the line (the latter I experienced myself). They do this in the name of justice because of all the oppression on campus. To be clear, these activist students see being assigned works written by dead white guys as a form of oppression. I have witnessed students and professors alike making this and other comparable claims in academic settings too many times to count. Other students, staff, and faculty are forced into silence or face the mob alone if they challenge these ideas.
It strikes me as the height of ignorance and narcissism that during World War II college-aged American men died by the hundreds of thousands to fight one of the most oppressive regimes in modern history, and today young adults loot and destroy in the name of justice while they attend desegregated schools with diversity officers, affirmative action policies, inclusion initiatives, etc.
And while there are problems that the American university system does need to address, one of its most significant problems is its production of droves of uneducated people who know very little of true oppression and injustice. That lack of knowledge needs to change so we never have to experience such horrors firsthand.
What is more, when people who claim victim status have this much power over their alleged oppressors, and the latter are denied due process rights and are publicly destroyed, it becomes hard to believe that they are the actual victims. Ironically, this was Nietzsche’s critique of religion with his call for a “will to power” because he saw the church making the weak moral, thus empowering their hegemony over the strong.
Don’t get me wrong. Discrimination, racial or racist comments and actions, and bigotry still exist, and that’s not right. When people are on the receiving end of such treatment, they deserve our support and protection. We are right to defend ourselves and others in such circumstances. Some people even deserve criminal charges for what they have done. We also must recognize a few things.
First, live long enough in the real world, and you’ll be a victim of something, and probably more than once. That doesn’t make it right or justify it. It just means that you’re not as special as your mama said you were. It also means that you have likely created victims yourself, often times without knowing it. So, we should learn to forgive when appropriate, give others the benefit of the doubt, and sometimes just let it go (cue the humming to that catchy but annoying Frozen song!).
Secondly, no one’s victimhood bestows upon them some kind of moral status or justification to go on a vindictive crusade against the individual who hurt them, and certainly not all of those who share similar identities to that individual. When individuals discriminate, harass, and otherwise victimize someone else, they need to be held accountable. To be clear, canceling someone is not about accountability, it’s about all out character and professional assassination. Anyone who tells you otherwise is gaslighting you.
Thirdly, many of us do not experience brutal victimization, so let’s keep a healthy perspective on what we actually experience. As bad as being a victim of cancel culture was, I’ve moved on, I’m not damaged by it, and I haven’t vilified those who did this to me. There are many times in which we need to learn to rise above it. Yes, try to do something so the next person isn’t a victim. But let’s avoid over-indulging how someone else tried to make us feel and be less than we are. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Let’s be more like our dogs who still think we’re great even when we accidently step on their toes or clip their nails too short sometimes and only become disloyal when truly wronged.
Photo:
"Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (AMF) ~400x" by Marc Perkins - OCC Biology Department is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/9906b75d-ab57-4de5-8aa2-1a8081d16adb