Of course it can. If you can identify thoughts that are not aiding you, you can actively replace them with more constructive uses of your mind and will power.
For a narrow enough definition of rich (10s of billions? You'd have to define "almost no one"). On a more useful level, reliable distributions of populations, no matter how reliable they tend to be, do not control individuals.
There's a spot on the big fat end of the distribution for pareto nihilists.
No matter where you lop the end of the Pareto distribution off the remaining curve still fits the same distribution. I though that was a defining characteristic of the principle.
> ... reliable distributions ... do not control individuals.
The people who've made it always talk to the people who haven't as if they can, by force of will, change their circumstances. That may be true if an individual has an untapped talent but in general luck will determine your outcome way more often than force of will. If it were possible for everyone to be rich there would be examples of that in society all across the world and all throughout history.
Just because something accurately reflects reality does not mean you are obligated to occupy your mind with it, especially if there is nothing to be done about it.
Does it not reflect reality to recognize that time spent feeling sorry for yourself could be better utilized in any number of other pursuits? Why the hostility to this basic notion?
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
I prefer the Buddha's simile of two arrows: the first arrow of the actual pain is not avoidable, but the second arrow is something we inflict upon ourselves in response to the pain. Marcus here makes it sound like we can totally avoid pain, but actually we can't, that first arrow will always hit and we shouldn't pretend like there isn't pain. The second arrow is what we have control over: our own personal response to the pain, seeing it as bad or good, wanting it to be gone.
Maybe by "external", Marcus was being quite literal: that first arrow is inside your body when it causes you pain. Until it physically contacts you, it doesn't hurt you.
Marcus Aurelius writings that are collected together in the Meditations were never intended to be published, they were his thoughts and advice for himself.
Kind of a weird take. Marcus Aurelius' life, although that of an emperor, was filled with a lot of strife that he used philosophy to deal with. His stoic philosophies come from his early life, which saw the death of his father, and adoption by a series of people he didn't know, all the way to the death of both of his sons.
Marcus did achieve the title of emperor, but dismissing him because of his accomplishments, especially when stoicism was a key and integral part of his life along the way, is odd.
(1) a person who mostly experiences challenges at or just
above their ability to solve them
(2) a person who mostly experiences challenges way above their ability to solve them (even plausibly so)
Stoicism, political conservatism, rugged individualists, etc. are just those in camp-1 unaware there's a camp-2.
(Likewise, social radicals are in camp-2, saying of 1, they're privileged as if that isnt desirable!. So both sides are superstitious about the other).
For much of Marcus' life he wasn't able to solve things though. In fact, that's what much of his philosophy talks about, and his (fairly open) history. Much of stoicism is focused around dealing with things you can't change, which also makes this take very odd.
That's not remotely true. Political conservatism and social radicalism demonstrably don't correlate with personal experience in that way: children adopt the beliefs of their parents (and/or peers).
Hence "champagne socialists" and "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
>Hence "champagne socialists" and "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
Can we put some numbers on this? A few offhand examples of "champagne socialists" and "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" doesn't really support your claim.
You can easily put numbers on it, lots of polling data. But from your memory just look at how there are "red states" and "blue states" -- they clearly don't correspond to personal life trajectory in the way stated. Political attitudes very clearly reproduce as culture, like language.
I'm not giving examples just citing these popular phrases which exist to note the phenomenon.
Just because one is an emperor does not mean they can suddenly solve any problem. This is precisely what Aurelius' writings [1] focus almost exclusively on. In spite of being the most powerful man in the world he found himself to be quite helpless in terms of actually improving the state of mankind which was his genuine motivation. As a peer comment mentioned, these writings were never meant to even be seen by anybody other than himself. They're effectively his diary.
He found himself not only largely unable to help better mankind, but could not even better his own son. Aurelius is generally regarded as one of the greatest leaders of humanity to have lived; his son (Commodus) - one of the worst. Father deified, son assassinated (to great celebration) and struck from all official record.
And it wasn't simply failure to achieve, but also failure of circumstance. He was surrounded by death which climaxed with a many years long plague that by some estimates killed more than 30% of the entire empire's population, including some of Aurelius' own immediate family.
[1] - http://files.libertyfund.org/files/2133/Aurelius_1464_LFeBk.... # That book has a lengthy, and necessary, intro (well multiple actually) explaining stoicism and providing various historical context. Aurelius' writings themselves only begin on page 25 of the book, 59 of the PDF.
Isnt it that most of the time you choose which camp you are in? If you study a subject you are apt for you are in camp 1, if you believe aptitude doesnt exist and you choose a different one you end up in camp 2.
If you just learned programming and apply to faang you are in camp 2, etc.
Viktor Frankl wrote _Man's Search for Meaning_ [0] about his experience in a Nazi concentration camp - something that he definitely didn't have the ability to 'solve on his own,' and developed a philosophy, logotherapy, that's pretty consistent with stoicism.
So just like every other human being but without the power, money, social standing or connections. I love MA writings (Seneca too) but I dont take their personal lives as any example of fight against adversity. They are like boxing coaches who rarely if ever boxed, let alone being knocked down by a rival. Same with Mr Munger (his very real tragedies notwithstanding).
Meditations is an important work to me, but it's absoltely valid critique to observe it was written by someone absolutely part of an elite, from birth. That does not diminish his setbacks, and it's an exercise for the reader to gain something from it, or not. But, like any pirce of advice, the scripture is biased and it's important to be aware of that.
That’s not a problem. Others find The Meditations applicable to their own lives because they contain honest self-advice. Some observe others finding the writing self-applicable, so they recommend it to people who haven’t read it yet.
You made the incorrect assumption either that having the "power to revoke" means the necessity to exercise that power, and/or that revoking feelings means inaction on all events leading to them.
The advice says nothing about how the downtrodden should act about their situation of downtroddeness.
Focusing and making assumptions on the unfairness of the statement is a bit of victim mentality. In fact, your statement reminds me of an article I read somewhere. I think it was titled "Feeling like a victim is a perfectly disastrous way to go through life"
It could be quote from Epictetus, who had a similar philosophy and lived his life as a slave, made lame by his master breaking his leg, before becoming a philosophy teacher.
These dudes also had a (to most contemporary people) deeply weird metaphysics that brought them to these understandings and allowed them to share them despite extreme differences in their lives.
Unless you also believe that the entire universe including yourself is a single sentient being and every event is perfectly predetermined, you're gonna find some contradictions here.
It's not really a unified coherent practical philosophy when separated from that cosmology. Individual parts of it can still be individually valuable of course, but other parts truly are just an emperor telling people to deal with it.
A more western-digestible analogy would be believing in the resurrection of christ without believing in his divinity. You could still get useful advice from the sermons but it stops being a coherent foundation of belief for your role in the world.
Stoicism, Daoism, Buddhism, all the Hindu religions stemming from advaita vedanta, heck even proto Indo Europeans all have very similar monistic metaphysics, I don't think it's weird at all. Different names for the same thing:
- logos
- Dao
- Brahman
- Wralda
> It's not really a unified coherent practical philosophy when separated from that cosmology.
I absolutely agree with this, and I'd say anyone who wants to take Stoicism seriously should adapt a similar metaphysical perspective. I'd also say that anyone who already understands one of the above religions already has the ability to readily understand the others, at least compared to the standard Westerner.
If we're talking about in a local community (household, workplace, neighborhood), my opinion is that complaining signals to people that you are expecting someone else to solve it. It's a bad signal in a local community, because in a local community, everyone must be committed to solving most of the problems that occur, unless you have some kind of known reason for being unable to help (disabled, grieving, etc). Nobody likes complainers.
Instead of complaining, state the problem, why you believe it is a problem, and what you're going to do about it unless people stop you with a better idea. This way, everyone knows what to expect your actions to be. They also have an opportunity to oppose your plan if they feel strongly enough to overcome inaction. And you're not complaining, because you've made it clear that you intend to solve it.
Complaining can be an answer in a local community when the community is severely dysfunctional. For example, in the workplace, an overbearing manager who requires all decisions to go through them and doesn't allow any autonomy. In that case, complaining, leaving, or try to manipulate the manager are the dysfunctional alternatives.
The most common way that we are all victims is the inevitable deaths of us and everybody and everything that we care about, and no billionaire is yet immune to that.
Maybe one day we can simply not die, but until then, we are all victims of our own mortality, and plenty of people of all sorts feel plenty bad about that.
Are you always on guard about being slapped in the face? Surely there must be something you can be made victim of that is not on your mind at all times? Do you always check your shoes at the off-chance that someone hid a razorblade in there?
I'm not getting your point with these questions. Someone who is a victim of an assault may be "on guard" or "hyper-vigilant" for some time afterward. I can remember such an instance in my own life after I was robbed at gunpoint in a foreign country.
Just pretend that Teddy doesn't have leukemia. Tell the doctor you don't believe in western medicine. Buy a homeopathic healing crystal (it's just a grain of sand). Deny the reality, deny the feelings. Problem solved.
No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one’s sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time.
What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content.
The condescending dismissal of a) (almost) all of American writing as being unworthy, and b) all Americans as being clueless drones parroting the same few works is deeply unappreciated.
Yes, there are Americans who would look down their noses at you for not instantly recognizing a quote from Moby Dick, or, say, The Grapes of Wrath. They are representative of a particular category of literature snobs, not Americans in general, thank you very much.
You're absolutely right of course. I was having a mild dig at the snobs: don't take it too seriously. My apologies for any offense.
If it's any consolation, I've found better literary recommendations on random HN threads than in any mainstream reviews. I know Iain Banks had similar views.
I'm not an American literature expert. Just in case it helps, read Dashiell Hammet and Raymomd Chandler. They have some big similarities (differences too), and both are, at least for me, examples of solid american writing, the skill of which is made manifest through its simplicity.
Chandler, I'm told, was a big influence on Hiruki Murukami (not American, though I think he here now, but another favorite). The whole idea that the novel is about the journey and not the plot. Chandler is also an inspiration for the Big Lebowski.
Or perhaps the passage itself was more relevant than the source.
I strongly disagree that Americans have a dearth of decent writings. Dozens of the greatest authors of the past few centuries were American. I know it's fashionable to treat America as a punching bag for all sorts of perceived slights and shortcomings, but that's absolutely uncalled for here.
You of course can disagree, but my experience matches OP too. I understand every country likes to hype up its writers, but at least outside America this is more or less the assessment of its writers:
- Great, incredible writers, worthy of every accolade: Poe, Melville, Faulkner and probably Whitman.
- Good, solid writers, a tier below: Hemingway, Hawthorne, Steinbeck, Pynchon, Dos Passos, Gaddiss and many others...that sort of caliber, nobody will complain if one of them is included among the great writers but nobody will miss them either
- Literary mediocrities, overhyped by a culture with a serious lack of good literature: Frazen, DFW, etc
This is really good advice - for externalizers. For internalizers however, it is perfectly terrible. Before deciding to go all in on advice like this, it's crucial to know where you fall along that spectrum[1].
Externalizers tend to place the locus of control outside of themselves which symbolically castrates them to fantasize about the objet petit a[2]. When it negatively impacts your life, you become the friend who likes to complain about everything but does nothing. Or worse, you're a person against the world who owes no one and impotently rages against everything.
Internalizers do the opposite. They will place immense burdens upon themselves to unrealistically adapt and change when most people would confront the challenge directly. An example is the Missing Stair[3] metaphor. An internalizer works around everything, always pushing the problem inward and never forcing the world to change. Internalizers can be harder to identify as they silently suffer in an absence of self-kindness.
What the article glosses over is knowing yourself[4] well enough to understand which tendencies you have. Maybe you tend to be an externalizer with your career and an internalizer with social relations or vice-versa or some other mixture entirely. It can be hard to be honest with yourself and ask, "Is this truly working for me?" But, those questions are hard precisely because they are the first step towards personal growth.
I thought he didnt have results in the modern sense, more like personal interpretations and generalisation of individual patients. There is nothing to replicate.
It's my personal belief that people have the capacity for change and it is largely dependent on desire and willingness. Having the words to conceptualize one's self can catalyze the process of self transformation and that's why it's important to talk about it. No one can snap change nor is a willing person's mind immutable. Maybe they find it possible to change one aspect of their life more than others. There's also therapy.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough before, but what I'm trying to ask is whether or not being an internalizer that acknowledges oneself as a victim (through burnout or a shocking epiphany) could lead to becoming a pessimistic externalizer. That because this ex-internalizer has recognized he has been victimized, he will try to study how he's been wronged and come to the conclusion that he had little control over his life. Or perhaps that staying quiet was what made one a victim in the first place, so that one should do the opposite.
At that point, would "don't be a victim" be useful advice or an empty platitude?
That's certainly possible. Someone who has tried every possible way to direct their agency inward without results can simply burn out and feel helpless to affect change. By process of elimination, they've shifted their locus of control outward.
This isn't a given though. I know plenty of people who overinternalize to the point of burnout and don't become cynical externalizes[1].
In my experience "dont be a victim" means "please stop complaining" more than anything else. A friend who truly does wish to help might start with getting curious about why the externalizing victim feels like they cannot affect change, but this is tricky. Often people don't want to be offered unsolicited advice or be made to feel like they have to prove that they have exhausted their options before being offered sympathy. It's a fine line.
1. Before someone else chimes in with it being a useless model because it does not make predictions - that's not the point. It's a mode of interpretation/critical lens, not a predictive model.
> That's certainly possible. Someone who has tried every possible way to direct their agency inward without results can simply burn out and feel helpless to affect change. By process of elimination, they've shifted their locus of control outward.
That's a clear and concise summary of what I meant. What, in your experience would the solution to such a Catch-22 be? I'm sure most reasonable individuals would want meaningful and effective agency but denying the reality and pretending they have sufficient agency isn't helpful either.
Sorry, I don't think I'm the right person to give that advice. That genuinely sounds like the start of a healthy and productive journey with a therapist.
feeling like a victim and being a victim are different concepts. the latter is reality, the former is a feeling, and how you deal with it. to me feeling like a victim implies that i can't change my situation. which exactly means that i feel that i can't get away from the aggressor. in order to get away from that i need to not feel like a victim, but take responsibility to better my situation by getting away.
could you clarify the difference between externalizing and internalizing please?
isn't feeling like a victim the very definition of externalizing?
wouldn't internalizing mean to blame yourself instead?
doesn't accept personal responsibility translate (crudely) to: don't blame others, it's your own fault. (i realize that this is not the intent, i actually understand the article to mean that i should take responsibility for changing the situation, not just for getting into the situation in the first place. so this is just exaggerated to draw out the point)
so yes, i agree this is for externalizers, but that's because internalizers would never see themselves as victims. (well maybe one can see oneself as a victim of ones past self)
sorry, if i sound confused, i am trying to work this out as i write.
so basically, the advice to not feel as a victim is a no-op for internalizers because they don't do that already. but what follows still applies: take responsibility to get yourself out of that situation
likewise internalizers are also not immune to self-pity.
externalizers feel they can't do anything because everyone else prevents them. internalizers feel they can't do anything because they themselves are lacking the necessary capacity.
but the article says that neither is true. you can take responsibility and make your situation better. i think that applies equally to both.
an externalizer can say: yes, that happened to me, but i can fix it, even though it's not my fault. and the internalizer can say, yes, i got myself into that situation, but i can also get myself out of it.
so i don't really see much of a difference there, and why the advice would be terrible for internalizers.
I think GP's point might be that, if you tell an internalizer who is miserable -- and thus seeing the fault in themselves -- that it's bad to feel victimhood or a fault in others or in their circumstances, you might push them further into self-blame even if their misery was brought by bad luck, or if they're disproportionately seeing a failure in themselves already.
What you say makes sense from a solutions point of view that assumes people presently have the mental capacity to improve their lives and circumstances. Sometimes it works, and it's always attractive to think of and offer solutions, but it can be a two-edged sword. If you say that to someone who's burned out (for lack of a better expression; doesn't have to be burnout), out of capacity and miserable and disproportionately blaming themselves for that, you might just increase their self-blame rather than positively encouraging them towards solutions even if your intention is the latter.
i believe recommending solutions to someone is not really a good idea. rather i'd encourage the person to look for for their own solutions and then help them validate whether those are a good.
AFAIK, in therapy, the therapist's focus on giving advice correlates negatively with success. I imagine the relationship between the two might depend on the problem, interpersonal chemistry and various things I can't think of, but especially if the problem isn't something absolutely concrete, advice probably isn't something that helps. Most people aren't stupid, and if a psychological or emotional problem were just a simple solution away, they'd probably have thought of it already.
Friendship or other "normal" relationships and interaction aren't therapy, of course, but the negative correlation might be an insightful observation nevertheless.
yes, exactly, because it is not advice that people need, but validation of their feelings and ideas. good friends validate and support. therapy of course goes beyond that by for example pointing to new ways to think about your situation, and recognizing problems that friends may not be able to see.
Not necessarily. Validation of bad state is harmful.
A therapist shouldn’t, for instance, tell someone it’s ok to feel uncontrollable rage because the mail was 5 minutes later than normal yesterday.
Noting it is happening is of course important. But challenging the client is also important.
Is that helping them? Do they know why they felt that way? Are there tools we can use to discover why, if not? Are there actions that can be taken to put them in a place where they can feel something that IS helping them, for instance.
Friends who always encourage or validate are toxic, just like those that never do. It’s contextual.
you are right. i didn't mean it in the extreme like that. in that mail example, the late mail isn't the problem. so i'd validate that something has you upset, and maybe recognize that the late mail was a trigger. then help you figure out what the actual problem was.
i meant validation in contrast to just dismissing their their feelings or pushing them to your solutions.
also, validation is not encouragement. if you come up with a bad solution to a problem, i'd have you walk me through it and explain to me why that is the best option. and if i am not convinced, but neither you or me can come up with a better solution, then i'd be very hesitant and validate cautiously.
and even in the best case an enthusiastic validation is less useful, if at all. if i get that from a friend it feels like they have not even thought about the problem and they are just trying to be nice without taking me seriously.
> Internalizers do the opposite. They will place immense burdens upon themselves to unrealistically adapt and change when most people would confront the challenge directly. [...] An internalizer works around everything, always pushing the problem inward and never forcing the world to change. Internalizers can be harder to identify as they silently suffer in an absence of self-kindness.
Nah. That's just nonsense pop psychology with no real scientific basis. Avoiding seeing yourself as a victim is good advice for everyone, regardless of their perceived locus of control.
Rape victims dont like falling into a black hole where they are 'marked' as victims. They dont like when most people in their life relate to the rape event as the primary subject and not the person who was raped.
I'm getting at the difference between people that give up because they feel they have no control and people who feel like they can only change themselves. Both of those are maladaptive in their extremes. Figuring out which sort of tendencies one has and adjusting that is a step toward owning your problems. The steps toward ownership looks different for these two types.
Internalizers shouldn't work around things, they should turn away from evil.
The Missing Stair metaphor was started from talking about a rapist in a bdsm community. Sexual immorality should be removed from the communion.
Generalizing the Missing Stair metaphor to any given Challenge, opens the user up to studying evil and spreading the fire by challenging it.
Turning away from evil "missing stairs" works better as a generalized concept as it works better in most cases and gives the missing stair person, a chance of redemption by turning to the good by following the internalizer.
It seems like in both cases, the relevant portion of the advice is just fixing that missing stair step in the most effective way. Work on what's broken inside your house, before complaining about the world.
Ignoring the Charlie part, if you do feel like that, is there a professional of some occupation that you can go to, to assess the situation? What occupation is that?
(also, what could have made my phone decide that I live in Las Vegas?)
I don't think this is true in general. If a rape victim feels like a victim, it's because they are and society should validate that. But if your kid dies and it's no one's fault in particular, the advice given here might help you (or might not).
Victimhood is a crucial but temporary step in the healing process, where you acknowledge your pain and recognize that the trauma was not your fault. But if you get stuck there, you stop growing and healing. The next step is recognizing yourself as a survivor - that you did the work, you overcame adversity, and the trauma ultimately made you more mentally tough and resilient and better equipped for future life challenges. It’s only in this final step where a victim actually takes the power back.
Source: me, after 15 years of difficult work with an exceptional therapist.
It's a good sentiment, but I'll note it's probably also easier to not feel like a victim when your uncle owns a bank and your grandfather is a Federal judge... the article simultaneously says he "didn't have much money" and that he owned multiple rental income properties.
Everyone has a struggle but I doubt Munger was actually ever truly "broke". These bootstrapping stories always have some hidden safety net that is de-emphasized.
Feeling like a victim is only bad if you're not actually a victim of anything.
If you ARE a victim, then it's delusional not to feel as such.
I know how everybody in the US loves hustle culture, but this story isn't applicable to everybody. The story is written and emphasized in such a way that this could happen nowadays to you and me but it can't.
When this guy lost his home, he had a backup at the university club, presumably granted to him by powerful friends at the university; no worry about sleeping on the street, no police knocking on his car-window in the middle of the night, no worry about having to find a place to shower or wash your clothes. No getting fired for being unhygienic or sleeping on the street.
> In those days, there was no health insurance, you just paid everything out of pocket
Yes, but in the fricking 1950s. Before the absurdly inflated costs of current american healthcare. In those days you would pay an amount more closely related to the actual amount of doctor-hours and medical supplies you use.
I really don't get people in these comments, it's as if they've never met poor people before; it's perfectly possible to make all the right choices that life offers you, but still end up in a bad state.
I'm sure there are some situations where aspiring entrepreneurs need a kick in their butt, but in other situations putting the blame on the person's 'mentality' only distracts from dealing with the real issues.
> If you ARE a victim, then it's delusional not to feel as such.
Spot on. Additionally, modern neurology has proven that people experiencing stress and anxiety for years risk loss of cognitive abilities and long-term emotional harm. This is not something that you can just shake away with some "positive affirmations" and walk in a park.
This kind of narrative blames people who are facing learned helplessness.
Even if you are not a victim - but you are unhappy for any other reason it's crucial to recognize and address it. Recognizing it is step one in order to overcome it.
Unfortunately some cultures tolerated decades of hustle culture / rugged individualism to the point of becoming unable to admit difficulties.
This is psychology 101 and it's really telling that HN downvotes you and me instead.
The main problem is when people who are legitimately a victim in one situation or one aspect of their life loose perspective and let this dominate their self identity and world view. The only solution to irrational learned helplessness is to reframe your mental model.
It can be difficult to get back to a healthy mental state, and some people need help.
That said, feeling a helpless victim is a terrible way to go through life, and usually far worse than the original harm.
> If you ARE a victim, then it's delusional not to feel as such.
Even if you are a victim, by adopting a "victimhood mindset" you inflict further harm upon yourself.
Probably the best book written on this is Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" in which he writes about his experience as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp.
Since life is suffering (and other things), I don't really internalize quips like these anymore. We lose everyone and everything around us before we die. That realization is perhaps the foundation of becoming an adult. Which is why I avoid becoming one whenever possible.
There's liberation in realizing that this is all a game. The shared reality we take as fact, rooted in science, is not actually how any of this works. We're all dreaming this in the perpetual now. Time is an illusion. The past is a wake behind a boat we're riding in, not the cause of our present reality. The future is a sea of endless possibility we manifest through conscious intuition, not something we build manually.
Once I learned to meditate and tune in to the vibration of the reality I want to exist in, and tune out the rest, things got better. Also stepping back from 3D to 4D/5D helped me see the suffering in others and their projection of that onto me. As above, so below.
As my reality shifts, the universe goes to great lengths to adjust the context, trading one presence for another, and that chaos magic process can be exhilarating but also frightening. Since science may never be able to explain source consciousness or how its force constructs reality, we're all divine by definition. I think that's what they mean by stepping into our power and changing the world around us. With great power comes great responsibility. Which again, is why I avoid using it now whenever possible.
Certain things seem to nurture spiritual growth: negative reinforcement, loss, surrender, service, faith, hope and love. And many more. Anyone can rise above at any time, but we're usually too busy saying "nah, maybe some other time."
The great psychologist Eric Berne distinguished between a victim, someone who has a misfortune befall them, and a Victim, someone who's life position is to feel like a victim.
Unfortunately if one is a victim too often, too many bad things happen, it's natural to become a Victim and live your life that way.
I like that distinction - some people are victimized, but others are oriented towards life as if they were forever a victim - the latter is what is dangerous
This is all really complicated, and telling the difference between those things is the hard part, even when you think you might know the answer.
This has been on my mind a lot because of some circumstances I found myself in that ended up being disastrous. When I complained to a good friend, he would often characterize me as just being too negative or something. For years what I would do is the stoic thing, sort of tell myself I was just making too big of a deal about it, and so forth and so on.
At some point though I realized my problem was the opposite, that I wasn't making a big enough deal about it, I wasn't taking enough action, and by the time I understood what was going on, it was basically too late.
In my case, I think the problem was that I didn't know how bad things really were, because I didn't have any frame of reference for anything else. I didn't know how it should be, so I didn't understand how far things were off. And my friends projected, assumed that where I was, things were like where they were at, that if I complained about Serious Problem X, I really meant Less Serious Problem Y, even though I actually meant Serious Problem X.
When this goes on long enough, and no one really knows what's going on -- you can't help yourself because you don't recognize what's happening, and no one around you is helping for whatever reason -- it can look like you're wallowing in victimhood when it's really just that no one is really identifying the actual source of the problem. There might not be any real victims involved, or maybe everyone is a victim. It doesn't matter.
At the risk of sounding pedantic, this is the essence of classical Western tragedy: no one is really a victim, they're just screwed in ways no one forsees.
this is indeed a challenge. when you have no friends who take you really seriously, when you have no-one who can give you a frame of reference to your situation, when the issue is sensitive that you can't really talk about all the details with everyone, and you have no-one who you can trust with those details...
it's almost impossible to get out of that. you really need that friend that can validate your feelings and can help you confirm that you are taking the right steps to get out of that problem, especially when those steps are counter your intuition, or counter to what you think everyone else around expects from you.
Well made points. Expanding on one part, there is a social contingent who gatekeeps victimhood itself. In their eyes they see too much victimhood and decide that the solution is that less people should be calling themselves victims. Would some victims do well to shift the locus of control inward, sure, but that's probably best left to the victim to decide rather than being decided for them.
Part of this behavior denies victimhood as a form of social control. It's a malignant form of denying victim hood and it's most dangerous form
This raises the interesting question of why victims seek external validation in the first place.
I think it is often the case that victims are seeking something, so it seems natural for the cohort to gatekeep. If someone were to ask me for special consideration or treatment on account of being a victim, I want to know they are genuine.
It’s actually extremely useful to go through life feeling like a victim.
There is such an intense social pressure to succeed in something, you can just attribute any failure to the dice being loaded and reduce that pressure
This is an oversimplification of a complex topic: People can be victims of situations since certain life events are disturbing and at the same time genes determine to a certain degree how you take life. Nonsense article about „positive“ thinking.
I can tell you couldn’t overcome “victim mentality” to achieve in spite of the blows that life dealt him: Teddy Munger. This one-size-fits-all prescription is nonsense.
Charlie Munger has spent his life doing nothing productive, and done promotional videos for “capitalism”. As long as he has enough money to pay some prostitute to suck his dick, we “can’t throw away the capitalist system”. Thanks for your contributions to humanity, Charles!
Please don't break the site guidelines like this. Perhaps you don't owe nonagenarian billionaires better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
Edit: you've unfortunately been posting tons of unsubstantive and flamebait comments. If you keep doing that, we're going to have to ban you, because it's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules? The idea is a forum with curious, thoughtful conversation on topics that people (including you!) find intellectually interesting.
Accept that what has happened to you in the past can’t be changed. So instead focus 100% of your energy on what you can do now and in the future to improve your situation. You might not succeed. But it is still the best way to live your life.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 205 ms ] threadThere's a spot on the big fat end of the distribution for pareto nihilists.
No matter where you lop the end of the Pareto distribution off the remaining curve still fits the same distribution. I though that was a defining characteristic of the principle.
> ... reliable distributions ... do not control individuals.
The people who've made it always talk to the people who haven't as if they can, by force of will, change their circumstances. That may be true if an individual has an untapped talent but in general luck will determine your outcome way more often than force of will. If it were possible for everyone to be rich there would be examples of that in society all across the world and all throughout history.
I applaud your optimism though.
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
(I'm mostly being facetious.)
No
Marcus did achieve the title of emperor, but dismissing him because of his accomplishments, especially when stoicism was a key and integral part of his life along the way, is odd.
(1) a person who mostly experiences challenges at or just above their ability to solve them
(2) a person who mostly experiences challenges way above their ability to solve them (even plausibly so)
Stoicism, political conservatism, rugged individualists, etc. are just those in camp-1 unaware there's a camp-2.
(Likewise, social radicals are in camp-2, saying of 1, they're privileged as if that isnt desirable!. So both sides are superstitious about the other).
I think the main difference is disagreement on what constitutes a solvable problem and the value of trying.
Hence "champagne socialists" and "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
Can we put some numbers on this? A few offhand examples of "champagne socialists" and "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" doesn't really support your claim.
I'm not giving examples just citing these popular phrases which exist to note the phenomenon.
He found himself not only largely unable to help better mankind, but could not even better his own son. Aurelius is generally regarded as one of the greatest leaders of humanity to have lived; his son (Commodus) - one of the worst. Father deified, son assassinated (to great celebration) and struck from all official record.
And it wasn't simply failure to achieve, but also failure of circumstance. He was surrounded by death which climaxed with a many years long plague that by some estimates killed more than 30% of the entire empire's population, including some of Aurelius' own immediate family.
[1] - http://files.libertyfund.org/files/2133/Aurelius_1464_LFeBk.... # That book has a lengthy, and necessary, intro (well multiple actually) explaining stoicism and providing various historical context. Aurelius' writings themselves only begin on page 25 of the book, 59 of the PDF.
If you just learned programming and apply to faang you are in camp 2, etc.
It is not a passive thing.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning
Except it isn’t that. Its the internal monologue of a roman emperor dealing with the extreme stresses of his life and his role in the world.
It's a good remark that it's effectively the emperor's diary instead, though. I didn't know that.
The advice says nothing about how the downtrodden should act about their situation of downtroddeness.
Focusing and making assumptions on the unfairness of the statement is a bit of victim mentality. In fact, your statement reminds me of an article I read somewhere. I think it was titled "Feeling like a victim is a perfectly disastrous way to go through life"
Unless you also believe that the entire universe including yourself is a single sentient being and every event is perfectly predetermined, you're gonna find some contradictions here.
It's not really a unified coherent practical philosophy when separated from that cosmology. Individual parts of it can still be individually valuable of course, but other parts truly are just an emperor telling people to deal with it.
A more western-digestible analogy would be believing in the resurrection of christ without believing in his divinity. You could still get useful advice from the sermons but it stops being a coherent foundation of belief for your role in the world.
- logos - Dao - Brahman - Wralda
> It's not really a unified coherent practical philosophy when separated from that cosmology.
I absolutely agree with this, and I'd say anyone who wants to take Stoicism seriously should adapt a similar metaphysical perspective. I'd also say that anyone who already understands one of the above religions already has the ability to readily understand the others, at least compared to the standard Westerner.
My point exactly.
Quietly feeling like a victim may indeed not be useful, but complaining effectively can get you a lot.
Also, I unsurprisingly see no evidence in this article that the ideas described will actually lead to success.
Instead of complaining, state the problem, why you believe it is a problem, and what you're going to do about it unless people stop you with a better idea. This way, everyone knows what to expect your actions to be. They also have an opportunity to oppose your plan if they feel strongly enough to overcome inaction. And you're not complaining, because you've made it clear that you intend to solve it.
Complaining can be an answer in a local community when the community is severely dysfunctional. For example, in the workplace, an overbearing manager who requires all decisions to go through them and doesn't allow any autonomy. In that case, complaining, leaving, or try to manipulate the manager are the dysfunctional alternatives.
even the most wealthy, most successful and privileged have something in their lives that victimises them.
It is exceedingly tempting to succumb to it.
I still say, the best way to avoid that feeling is not to be slapped in the face. Just my personal preference.
Maybe one day we can simply not die, but until then, we are all victims of our own mortality, and plenty of people of all sorts feel plenty bad about that.
Someone who is a victim of repeated assaults during childhood is very likely to tend toward hyper-vigilance their entire lifetime (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_post-traumatic_stress_...) but that's not me.
> Shortly after the divorce, Charlie learned that his son, Teddy, had leukemia.
What exactly is your solution?
I'm a victim of the Android/iOS duopoly. How do you suggest I change that? Throw away my smartphone? Build my own?
What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content.
Moby Dick, “Loomings” (1851)
The condescending dismissal of a) (almost) all of American writing as being unworthy, and b) all Americans as being clueless drones parroting the same few works is deeply unappreciated.
Yes, there are Americans who would look down their noses at you for not instantly recognizing a quote from Moby Dick, or, say, The Grapes of Wrath. They are representative of a particular category of literature snobs, not Americans in general, thank you very much.
If it's any consolation, I've found better literary recommendations on random HN threads than in any mainstream reviews. I know Iain Banks had similar views.
Chandler, I'm told, was a big influence on Hiruki Murukami (not American, though I think he here now, but another favorite). The whole idea that the novel is about the journey and not the plot. Chandler is also an inspiration for the Big Lebowski.
I strongly disagree that Americans have a dearth of decent writings. Dozens of the greatest authors of the past few centuries were American. I know it's fashionable to treat America as a punching bag for all sorts of perceived slights and shortcomings, but that's absolutely uncalled for here.
- Great, incredible writers, worthy of every accolade: Poe, Melville, Faulkner and probably Whitman.
- Good, solid writers, a tier below: Hemingway, Hawthorne, Steinbeck, Pynchon, Dos Passos, Gaddiss and many others...that sort of caliber, nobody will complain if one of them is included among the great writers but nobody will miss them either
- Literary mediocrities, overhyped by a culture with a serious lack of good literature: Frazen, DFW, etc
- All the pulpy and trashy authors.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Externalizers tend to place the locus of control outside of themselves which symbolically castrates them to fantasize about the objet petit a[2]. When it negatively impacts your life, you become the friend who likes to complain about everything but does nothing. Or worse, you're a person against the world who owes no one and impotently rages against everything.
Internalizers do the opposite. They will place immense burdens upon themselves to unrealistically adapt and change when most people would confront the challenge directly. An example is the Missing Stair[3] metaphor. An internalizer works around everything, always pushing the problem inward and never forcing the world to change. Internalizers can be harder to identify as they silently suffer in an absence of self-kindness.
What the article glosses over is knowing yourself[4] well enough to understand which tendencies you have. Maybe you tend to be an externalizer with your career and an internalizer with social relations or vice-versa or some other mixture entirely. It can be hard to be honest with yourself and ask, "Is this truly working for me?" But, those questions are hard precisely because they are the first step towards personal growth.
1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-theater-the-brai...
2. http://cahiers.kingston.ac.uk/concepts/castration.html
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair
4. γνῶθι σεαυτόν - which everyone should practice before blindly taking advice
No, it wasn’t.
At that point, would "don't be a victim" be useful advice or an empty platitude?
This isn't a given though. I know plenty of people who overinternalize to the point of burnout and don't become cynical externalizes[1].
In my experience "dont be a victim" means "please stop complaining" more than anything else. A friend who truly does wish to help might start with getting curious about why the externalizing victim feels like they cannot affect change, but this is tricky. Often people don't want to be offered unsolicited advice or be made to feel like they have to prove that they have exhausted their options before being offered sympathy. It's a fine line.
1. Before someone else chimes in with it being a useless model because it does not make predictions - that's not the point. It's a mode of interpretation/critical lens, not a predictive model.
That's a clear and concise summary of what I meant. What, in your experience would the solution to such a Catch-22 be? I'm sure most reasonable individuals would want meaningful and effective agency but denying the reality and pretending they have sufficient agency isn't helpful either.
I wish I could upvote you 10 times.
The "don't feel like a victim" advice is a very dangerous when a person really is a victim and needs to get away from an aggressor.
Besides, advice that works very well for 50% (or even 90%) of the population and harm the others is terrible advice. We need nuance.
at least that is how i read the article.
Did you even read the article?
By not feeling like a victim, you own your problem, and this enables you to solve it. In this case, by getting away from the aggressor.
isn't feeling like a victim the very definition of externalizing?
wouldn't internalizing mean to blame yourself instead?
doesn't accept personal responsibility translate (crudely) to: don't blame others, it's your own fault. (i realize that this is not the intent, i actually understand the article to mean that i should take responsibility for changing the situation, not just for getting into the situation in the first place. so this is just exaggerated to draw out the point)
so yes, i agree this is for externalizers, but that's because internalizers would never see themselves as victims. (well maybe one can see oneself as a victim of ones past self)
sorry, if i sound confused, i am trying to work this out as i write.
so basically, the advice to not feel as a victim is a no-op for internalizers because they don't do that already. but what follows still applies: take responsibility to get yourself out of that situation
likewise internalizers are also not immune to self-pity.
externalizers feel they can't do anything because everyone else prevents them. internalizers feel they can't do anything because they themselves are lacking the necessary capacity.
but the article says that neither is true. you can take responsibility and make your situation better. i think that applies equally to both.
an externalizer can say: yes, that happened to me, but i can fix it, even though it's not my fault. and the internalizer can say, yes, i got myself into that situation, but i can also get myself out of it.
so i don't really see much of a difference there, and why the advice would be terrible for internalizers.
What you say makes sense from a solutions point of view that assumes people presently have the mental capacity to improve their lives and circumstances. Sometimes it works, and it's always attractive to think of and offer solutions, but it can be a two-edged sword. If you say that to someone who's burned out (for lack of a better expression; doesn't have to be burnout), out of capacity and miserable and disproportionately blaming themselves for that, you might just increase their self-blame rather than positively encouraging them towards solutions even if your intention is the latter.
Friendship or other "normal" relationships and interaction aren't therapy, of course, but the negative correlation might be an insightful observation nevertheless.
A therapist shouldn’t, for instance, tell someone it’s ok to feel uncontrollable rage because the mail was 5 minutes later than normal yesterday.
Noting it is happening is of course important. But challenging the client is also important.
Is that helping them? Do they know why they felt that way? Are there tools we can use to discover why, if not? Are there actions that can be taken to put them in a place where they can feel something that IS helping them, for instance.
Friends who always encourage or validate are toxic, just like those that never do. It’s contextual.
i meant validation in contrast to just dismissing their their feelings or pushing them to your solutions.
also, validation is not encouragement. if you come up with a bad solution to a problem, i'd have you walk me through it and explain to me why that is the best option. and if i am not convinced, but neither you or me can come up with a better solution, then i'd be very hesitant and validate cautiously.
and even in the best case an enthusiastic validation is less useful, if at all. if i get that from a friend it feels like they have not even thought about the problem and they are just trying to be nice without taking me seriously.
This blew my mind. Thank you for that.
Owning your problem will always result in a better outcome than focusing on victimhood and blame. Blame places control and solutions outside yourself.
The Missing Stair metaphor was started from talking about a rapist in a bdsm community. Sexual immorality should be removed from the communion.
Generalizing the Missing Stair metaphor to any given Challenge, opens the user up to studying evil and spreading the fire by challenging it.
Turning away from evil "missing stairs" works better as a generalized concept as it works better in most cases and gives the missing stair person, a chance of redemption by turning to the good by following the internalizer.
- Charlie the shark, addressing a school of fish
(also, what could have made my phone decide that I live in Las Vegas?)
Source: me, after 15 years of difficult work with an exceptional therapist.
Everyone has a struggle but I doubt Munger was actually ever truly "broke". These bootstrapping stories always have some hidden safety net that is de-emphasized.
Feeling like a victim is only bad if you're not actually a victim of anything. If you ARE a victim, then it's delusional not to feel as such.
I know how everybody in the US loves hustle culture, but this story isn't applicable to everybody. The story is written and emphasized in such a way that this could happen nowadays to you and me but it can't.
When this guy lost his home, he had a backup at the university club, presumably granted to him by powerful friends at the university; no worry about sleeping on the street, no police knocking on his car-window in the middle of the night, no worry about having to find a place to shower or wash your clothes. No getting fired for being unhygienic or sleeping on the street.
> In those days, there was no health insurance, you just paid everything out of pocket
Yes, but in the fricking 1950s. Before the absurdly inflated costs of current american healthcare. In those days you would pay an amount more closely related to the actual amount of doctor-hours and medical supplies you use.
I really don't get people in these comments, it's as if they've never met poor people before; it's perfectly possible to make all the right choices that life offers you, but still end up in a bad state.
I'm sure there are some situations where aspiring entrepreneurs need a kick in their butt, but in other situations putting the blame on the person's 'mentality' only distracts from dealing with the real issues.
Spot on. Additionally, modern neurology has proven that people experiencing stress and anxiety for years risk loss of cognitive abilities and long-term emotional harm. This is not something that you can just shake away with some "positive affirmations" and walk in a park.
This kind of narrative blames people who are facing learned helplessness.
Even if you are not a victim - but you are unhappy for any other reason it's crucial to recognize and address it. Recognizing it is step one in order to overcome it.
Unfortunately some cultures tolerated decades of hustle culture / rugged individualism to the point of becoming unable to admit difficulties.
This is psychology 101 and it's really telling that HN downvotes you and me instead.
It can be difficult to get back to a healthy mental state, and some people need help.
That said, feeling a helpless victim is a terrible way to go through life, and usually far worse than the original harm.
Yet the article and most comments blame people for going through the victim stage.
This is like "Did your mother die last week? Grief is disastrous!"
I think the point is to remind that the state of victimhood, and paralysis that comes with it is not a healthy end state.
Even if you are a victim, by adopting a "victimhood mindset" you inflict further harm upon yourself.
Probably the best book written on this is Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" in which he writes about his experience as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp.
There's liberation in realizing that this is all a game. The shared reality we take as fact, rooted in science, is not actually how any of this works. We're all dreaming this in the perpetual now. Time is an illusion. The past is a wake behind a boat we're riding in, not the cause of our present reality. The future is a sea of endless possibility we manifest through conscious intuition, not something we build manually.
Once I learned to meditate and tune in to the vibration of the reality I want to exist in, and tune out the rest, things got better. Also stepping back from 3D to 4D/5D helped me see the suffering in others and their projection of that onto me. As above, so below.
As my reality shifts, the universe goes to great lengths to adjust the context, trading one presence for another, and that chaos magic process can be exhilarating but also frightening. Since science may never be able to explain source consciousness or how its force constructs reality, we're all divine by definition. I think that's what they mean by stepping into our power and changing the world around us. With great power comes great responsibility. Which again, is why I avoid using it now whenever possible.
Certain things seem to nurture spiritual growth: negative reinforcement, loss, surrender, service, faith, hope and love. And many more. Anyone can rise above at any time, but we're usually too busy saying "nah, maybe some other time."
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/the-4-types-of-intuit...
https://greatmystery.org/perspectives-four-fold-way/
Unfortunately if one is a victim too often, too many bad things happen, it's natural to become a Victim and live your life that way.
Both Games People Play and What Do You Say After You Say Hello, where the idea of life scripts is explained.
This has been on my mind a lot because of some circumstances I found myself in that ended up being disastrous. When I complained to a good friend, he would often characterize me as just being too negative or something. For years what I would do is the stoic thing, sort of tell myself I was just making too big of a deal about it, and so forth and so on.
At some point though I realized my problem was the opposite, that I wasn't making a big enough deal about it, I wasn't taking enough action, and by the time I understood what was going on, it was basically too late.
In my case, I think the problem was that I didn't know how bad things really were, because I didn't have any frame of reference for anything else. I didn't know how it should be, so I didn't understand how far things were off. And my friends projected, assumed that where I was, things were like where they were at, that if I complained about Serious Problem X, I really meant Less Serious Problem Y, even though I actually meant Serious Problem X.
When this goes on long enough, and no one really knows what's going on -- you can't help yourself because you don't recognize what's happening, and no one around you is helping for whatever reason -- it can look like you're wallowing in victimhood when it's really just that no one is really identifying the actual source of the problem. There might not be any real victims involved, or maybe everyone is a victim. It doesn't matter.
At the risk of sounding pedantic, this is the essence of classical Western tragedy: no one is really a victim, they're just screwed in ways no one forsees.
it's almost impossible to get out of that. you really need that friend that can validate your feelings and can help you confirm that you are taking the right steps to get out of that problem, especially when those steps are counter your intuition, or counter to what you think everyone else around expects from you.
Part of this behavior denies victimhood as a form of social control. It's a malignant form of denying victim hood and it's most dangerous form
I think it is often the case that victims are seeking something, so it seems natural for the cohort to gatekeep. If someone were to ask me for special consideration or treatment on account of being a victim, I want to know they are genuine.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: you've unfortunately been posting tons of unsubstantive and flamebait comments. If you keep doing that, we're going to have to ban you, because it's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules? The idea is a forum with curious, thoughtful conversation on topics that people (including you!) find intellectually interesting.