Defeating the Victimhood Mentality: Climbing Out of the Hole We Dug For Ourselves
June 29th, 2007Victimhood, Personal-Success Literature, & the Social Construction of Reality
My intention with this series of posts isn’t to answer questions or provide solutions. I’m simply pondering and thinking aloud in the hope of getting you to think along.
Growing up, I’ve had too many mostly seemingly unrelated interests and lacked a focus on one particular topic. More recently however there has been a convergence occurring in my mind, a convergence which I’m very excited about.
I sincerely believe that one of the biggest things holding us Muslims, Africans and Arabs back from moving forward is the collective state of mind we’re entrenched in and suffering from. Victimhood. But this is only a symptom of a deeper underlying problem, and that is a collective paranoia based on the premise that we’re under siege. It’s this deep paranoia that is crippling us and consuming our energy. Many, if not most of us are so obsessed and focused on outside threats or “threats” to such an extent, that it makes us lose the focus desperately needed to solve our internal issues.
How did that become our reality? How do we deal with it? These simple questions awakened me to the immense complexities we face if we are ever to truly progress.
I’m a huge fan of personal-success literature. In fact I like it so much that if I were the minister of education of any country, I’d make it part of the education syllabus. I’m dead serious. My most favorite author of all time is none other than Napoleon Hill. Anthony Robbins has also written some pretty good books. Moreover, he once said “the only thing that’s keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself.”
The story we keep telling ourselves is a negative one infested with victimhood. How do we change that? I believe a large part of “the answer” lies within personal-success literature and studies related to the sociology of knowledge. One particular topic that has recently captured my attention is social constructionism, originally born out of the book “The Social Construction of Reality“.
The Social Construction of Reality is a classic book in the sociology of knowledge written by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann and published in 1966.
The work introduced the term social construction into the social sciences. The central concept of The Social Construction of Reality is that persons and groups interacting together in a social system form, over time, concepts or mental representations of each other’s actions, and that these concepts eventually become habituated into reciprocal roles played by the actors in relation to each other. When these roles are made available to other members of society to enter into and play out, the reciprocal interactions are said to be institutionalised. In the process of this institutionalisation, meaning is embedded in society. Knowledge and people’s conception (and belief) of what reality is becomes embedded in the institutional fabric of society. Social reality is therefore said to be socially constructed.
The vast majority of people have the intellectual capacity to learn, do and become what they want. However the majority of those same people unfortunately don’t have the emotional capacity to step up to the challenges. IQ is great, but EQ is more important. A reality infested with victimhood only escalates the problem further.
There is a significant overlap between personal-success literature and what has been written about social constructionism. Also as a blogger or a person who reads sociopolitical blogs regularly, you’d realize that the internet and blogging are playing an increasing role in the social construction of reality for people around the world with access to cyberspace. Furthermore the effectiveness of the construction and or deconstruction of social reality is determined by various aspects including two things which I already have deep interests in, marketing and knowledge management.
Dominating the market place of ideas will only occur through better marketing, and that requires a thorough understanding of the audience we’re communicating our ideas to, which again brings us back to what the social reality of that audience is in the first place. What constitutes knowledge and what doesn’t to a particular society? In the West there is a higher emphasis on empiricism rather than revelation. In the Muslim world, the emphasis is instead generally on revelation. How can the proliferation of communication technologies and the internet be harnessed to spread empowering ideas that can bring about a positive mentality shift? If that happens, will it deal a sufficient and major blow to the victimhood mentality we generally suffer from? Those are just some of the questions that will be keeping me busy for the coming months (maybe even years).
I have a lot to read, consume, digest and learn. It’s fun. These are extraordinary times we live in. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to live and see the beginnings of the Sudan I envision, a Sudan with the best of Sudan, the UAE, America, Malaysia, Turkey, Europe and South Africa.
Information is like a drug and so I read to get my high.
(cross-posted from The Sudanese Thinker)
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I love the (to me) creative equating of social construction of reality (which makes sense to me) and personal-success literature (which I tend to dislike). What an interesting idea!
As for victimhood, I think this is a very dangerous mindset. It is hard to detect in oneself. The amazing thing about it is that even the most powerful people seem capable of feeling it. Members of the Republican party in my country (USA), for example, actually feel that they are victims of people who want more equality, for example.
Thanks for a terrific post!
– ge
Thanks George, I’m glad you liked it
Personal success literature isn’t all that bad. Some stuff are just pure garbage but Napoleon Hill is the king of the genre. I absolutely love the guy’s books.
As for victimhood, everyone is capable of feeling it but to varying degrees. The thing however is that it should not be our mindset by default. It shouldn’t at all. Unfortunately for too many people, it is. That’s what needs to be changed and it can only truly happen once the social construction of reality can be altered by injecting fresh and unheard of empowering ideas that break down victimhood rather than enforce it.
i think you are right that we shouldn’t define ourselves as victims, and victimhood shouldn’t be the primary influence on our identity formation. it is dangerous for us and doesn’t help us to change or challenge our situations.
but i hear this sentiment used against us by racists quite frequently. (i am speaking from a very american point of view btw) if we bring up any example of unfair, discriminatory, or dehumanizing treatment, there are plenty of groups and individuals who attempt to paint this as us “playing the victim,” when really we are just speaking our truths.
it makes it difficult for me to make the critiques you make here because i feel that they are already constantly and unfairly made by the people who hate us. also, i think more important than personal success is collective success. while we must do the work within ourselves first if we want to be of use to our communities, i think there should be an emphasis on those communities and not on being like people of other communities.
i agree with what you say to an extent but in the rest of this series i hope you explore the ways in which colonialism, orientalism and racism factor into our construction of reality and the opportunities that are available to us, because saying that most people don’t have the emotional capacity to shed victimhood and “step up to the challenge” without taking this history into account does us a disservice.
Nadia, thanks for your honest reply. I certainly understand where you’re coming from regarding the use of this victimhood argument by people who hate us but it all comes down to intent. Plus for me it’s easy to write such a post as I don’t live in US and I can’t relate to the context of being there.
“i agree with what you say to an extent but in the rest of this series i hope you explore the ways in which colonialism, orientalism and racism factor into our construction of reality and the opportunities that are available to us, because saying that most people don’t have the emotional capacity to shed victimhood and “step up to the challenge†without taking this history into account does us a disservice.”
I have to disagree with you on this one. Yes racism, colonialism etc. have defintely affected us negatively and they played a role. We were the victims, but just because we were, it isn’t a reason for us to develop/keep a victimhood mindset. For example it’s been 51 years since we Sudanese gained independence. That’s a long time and we could have moved forward but we didn’t. Why? Because in a lot of ways, our corrupt and dictatorial governments are responsible (not so much colonialism as it was quite long ago for most countries). They, the sometimes “Western-backed” tyrants that rule us, themselves play a major role in feeding the victimhood mentality by exaggerating outside threats or “threats” to distract us. As you might already know, it works really well.
I’m not sure if you read a lot of personal-success literature but it mostly revolves around a simple yet self-empowering concept which goes something like this: you can blame environmental factors which you have little to no control over, or you can simply choose to react to them differently and in a positive way (how you react is in *your* control, hence it’s self-empowering).
As for collective success, it is the sum of individual successes.
PS: knowing you were or you are a victim of something is very different from having a victimhood mindset.
drima, i am in total agreement with you here.
Yaaaaay!
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Drima – I’d be interested to talk to you about this topic. I’m writing a book aimed at thinkers in the ME based on Hill’s 17 principles. As you say, the concepts are simple and incredibly powerful. I, like you, believe that it is only through mass individual success that the region can move forward in peace.
You may contact me if you’d like on the following
sudanesethinker AT yahoo.com
If you like Napoleon Hill, have a look at Og Mandino…
“…collective paranoia based on the premise that we’re under siege…”
We are under siege: from the very people that we wrongly trust to govern us. People are controlled by the politicians and the media; and the politicians and the media are controlled by the global economic barons. It gets quite ugly when you go into after that. Have a look at the Zeitgeist documentary as a starter…
“How did that become our reality?” I think Confessions of an Economic Hitman by john perkins does quite well to answer that; as well as other ’so called’ 9/11 conspiracy theories. Sadly, most people don’t want to know. I agree with you though about putting success literature into schooling syllabus. It would give kids the inspiration to be all they can be: instead being dummed down, living in fear and victimhood. Knowledge, hope, and inspiration are considered dangerous seeds though to those that seek to divide, conquor (enslave) and rule…
All the best.