Hero not Victim

There’s this thing in popular culture, at least in America, where people talk as if they are the victim. Not just when trying to portray actual victimhood, but also in casual conversation.

• It is raining - the weather is ruining the day
• They worked - they had to work all day
• They exist - they are so busy and exhausted

What is this? Do you find this kind of talk attractive?

Even in our normal, somewhat rote, greetings, when someone says, “How are you?” They expect a response that is something like “Fine” or “Busy” or “Tired” and when you roll up with anything positive, you have to preface it with comparing your condition to actual real suffering. You are “great” in comparison with someone who is lost in the jungle with no survival skills, or you are “fantastic” in comparison with someone who is being actively mauled by a bear.

Can we stop this?

This tendancy has bothered me for years, and I feel like I am in the twilight zone. Most of the people who I converse with are in a similar situation to me. We have good health, housing, jobs, food, and free time.

Most of us have so much more to be grateful and joyous about than anyone in human history.

Once you realize that dissonance where you are okay but going through life relaying your regular life as suffering, you start to realize that maybe everyone else is fine, too. I thought it was just me thinking I was trapped in the mask wearing crowd where we were all supposed to be victims.

I haven’t researched this in any deep way, but I have done a little exploration, and I think that there may be two different things going on here: an increase or amplification of narcissism/narcissists and a human tendency to focus on the negative. Let’s unpack my hypotheses a little.

Mawr Narcissm

In this area, I’m not entirely sure if it is possible to identify if the portion of people with narcisstic tendencies is increasing or if the technology and culture of the day just makes it easier for them to have the spotlight. It doesn’t really matter which one for this exploration, but it would matter if ‘we’ wanted to do something about it.

If narcissists are focused on themselves, why would that show up as victimhood? Glad you asked. It’s because the world revolves around them - they can either be the demigod who is causing things to happen in the world or they can be the victim to whom everything in the world things are happening to. Although, to be clear, you don’t have to be a narcissist to use this framing in stories.

I guess psychologists see Gabay cited in this Scientific American article refer to this behavior as interpersonal victimhood. They describe a tendancy towards interpersonal victimhood as a personality trait. As far as I can tell, they don’t think it is common to have a high tendency towards victimhood. Based on my preface, I disagree that this is rare, but I’m not doing science here, just noticing the public discourse. They also correlate interpersonal victimhood to narcissm.

Maybe It’s the Society

As it turns out, culture does explain part of this. Cultural responsibility for narcissism

They showed the differences in narcissm could be identified between people who grew up in the individualistic west vs the collectivist east after German reunification. “Our data provides empirical evidence that sociocultural factors are associated with differences in narcissism and self-esteem.”

I can’t go into all of the research cited in that paper, but it looks absolutely fascinating how in two generations, the western self-importance has absolutely changed. Since I’m part of Generation X, I’ve mostly only seen the ‘me me me’ side and not the earlier ‘maybe I’m not so important’ side.

Okay, so narcissism could be increasing because of our individual culture and/or because of something else. And/or the portion of people tending towards victimhood could be increasing.

Constantly improving

Or, maybe the whole narcissism thing is bologna (that spelling is crazy). Maybe people are just thinking about how things could be better. This article from Psychology Today covers that, but I also heard about it in a recent podcast episode - but for the life of me, I can’t find it. A sad challenge of listening to podcasts while walking and also listening to lots of great science podcasts.

In any case, the point here is that people maybe are just noticing how things could be better all the time. If I reflect on how myself is doing, and everything is great except I’m a little more tired than usual, I might focus on that, “I’m tired” because I could be less tired.

Frankly, I think this very well could be the case when people are talking about ‘how they are’, but this argument falls flat when people are narrating stories. Especially in public. If I am telling you how everyone is out to get me and hold me down, that’s not because I’m comparing real life to a world where everyone is not out to get me and hold me down. Very few people, most of them (i expect) criminals, actually have a lot of people out to get them.

Challenges

I have two challenges from this one. I hope we have fun with them.

First, I challenge us to describe a mundane event - a walk with the dog, for example - in two ways. Tell the story as if you are a victim (was it maybe too hot, too cold, was everyone taking up all the space?). Then, retell the story in a positive light, where you are the hero or at least have agency in the events. Which story would you rather hear?

Second, I challenge us all to call out victim narratives in real life - your friends, the news, etc. See something, say something. Sure, when your friend is “tired” for the second week in a row, maybe they need real help - that’s not normal. When companies, organizations, obviously-doing-just-fine-wealthy-business-people tell their story as if the man is standing on their head – check that behavior.

[aside: I recognize that some people really are suffering; I’m not talking about them]

[PPS: if you like the artwork, I had Microsoft AI draw out the crowd and layout and then I drew over it and changed up the appearance in procreate - every face I drew was terrifying, so ended up getting a freepik of ‘woman smiling’ - whoever this face is, you look so happy!]