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There is something to be said for when people identify as victims, they don't hold themselves to the standards of the society they perceive as having produced t
by motohagiography 6y ago
There is something to be said for when people identify as victims, they don't hold themselves to the standards of the society they perceive as having produced their bullies. The reasonable ones act out against it, as you get with kids in schools who reject representations of authority from a society they are raised to identify as outside of, and they still get punished for disrupting it. The unreasonable ones use it as self-permission to be cruel, abusive, or even less-human to others.
The idea that you can be elevated and even purified by your own anger is probably the most seductive idea of all. I'd posit there is almost no direct brutality committed by anyone who doesn't first think of themselves as a victim, and the person they commit it on is a symbol of their perceived bully.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoIs your supposition that abuse fosters anti-authoritarianism? If so, I think what doesn't clearly fit is this: Lasting suspicion of authority tends to be born from logic. However, abuse breaks judgment. It could be that the process of overcoming victimhood makes one more skeptical of authority.
- motohagiography 6y agoThe supposition is that people become authoritarians because they perceive themselves as victims, as a consequence of the origin of every act of discretionary cruelty being from the shame of the perpetrator. Believing that someone "deserves," for you to be evil is just a straight psychological hustle to persuade you to be evil. It's almost the essential, universal deception. A bit philosophical for a comment, but toward understanding the dynamics behind the article with an example moral consequence of what it asserts, it seemed worth adding.